State v. Barber, 45856

• Decision Date: 16 April 1976
• Docket Number: No. 45856,45856
• Citation: 241 N.W.2d 476,308 Minn. 204
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Willie BARBER, Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 476

241 N.W.2d 476

308 Minn. 204

STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Willie BARBER, Appellant.

No. 45856.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

April 16, 1976.

James P. Swanseen, Legal Assistance of Ramsey Co., St. Paul, for appellant.

Pierre N. Regnier, City Atty., Thomas R. Hughes and Paulette K. Flynn, Asst. City Attys., St. Paul, for respondent.

Considered and decided by the court without oral argument.

TODD, Justice.

On stipulated facts defendant was found guilty by a St. Paul municipal court judge of driving after revocation in violation of Minn.St. 171.24. The issue on this appeal from judgment of conviction is whether the highway patrolman who stopped defendant had sufficient justification for doing so. We hold that the patrolman acted properly in stopping defendant, and accordingly we affirm.

At 1:15 p.m. on November 27, 1974, Officer William Henry of the Minnesota Highway Patrol observed defendant and a companion proceeding north on Interstate Highway No. 35, north of downtown St. Paul. The license plates on the automobile defendant was driving were wired on with baling wire instead of being bolted on as they are on most automobiles. Suspecting that the plates might belong to another automobile than the one defendant was driving, Officer Henry decided to stop defendant's automobile and investigate the situation. Upon stopping the automobile, Officer Henry walked up to defendant and asked him for his driver's license. Defendant replied that he did not have one and produced a notice of license revocation which he had received from the state. After confirming over his radio that defendant's license had been revoked, Officer Henry arrested defendant, and this prosecution followed. ¹

Officer Henry testified at the Rasmussen hearing that prior to making the stop, he had not observed any traffic violation. ² Therefore, the issue became whether Officer Henry was justified in stopping the vehicle because of his suspicions about the reason the plates were wired on instead of bolted on.

In affirming the conviction and upholding the trial court's ruling that the stop was legal, we rely on our recent decision in State v. McKinley, Minn., 232 N.W.2d 906 (1975), decided after the lower court's decision in this case. In McKinley, we dealt with the specific issue of whether police may stop a driver for a routine license check when the police have no grounds whatever for suspecting the driver of any motor-vehicle violation or other crime. There, the police during daylight hours stopped the defendant and asked him to produce his license after observing his driving in an alley in a lawful manner and within the 10-miles-per-hour speed limit for the alley. In affirming a dismissal of a charge of driving after revocation, we held that single nonsystematic stops for routine driver's license checks required as justification some reasonable suspicion by police of a violation. In that decision, we quoted approvingly (Minn., 232 N.W.2d 911) the following statement by the New York court in People v. Ingel, 36 N.Y.2d 413, 420, 369 N.Y.S.2d 67, 74, 330 N.E.2d 39, 44 (1975):

'It should be emphasized that the factual basis required to support a stop for a 'routine traffic check' is minimal. An actual violation of the Vehicle and Traffic Law need not be detectable. For example, an automobile in a general state of dilapidation might properly arouse suspicion of equipment violations. All that is required is that the stop be not the product of mere whim, caprice, or idle curiosity. It is enough if the stop is based upon 'specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant (the) intrusion' (Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, (20 L.Ed.2d 889, 906 (1968))).' ³

We believe that the above-quoted passage governs our decision in this case. Here the plates were affixed to the vehicle in an unusual, although apparently legal, way. Police and patrol officers from their experience learn to be on the lookout for things such as this because the appearance of license plates, e.g., clean plates on a dirty car, often...