State v. Mya OO

• Docket Number: A25-0388
• Decision Date: 09 February 2026
• Citation: State v. Mya OO, A25-0388 (Minn. App. Feb 09, 2026)
• Parties: State of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Mya Oo, Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Court of Appeals

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State of Minnesota, Respondent,
v.
Mya Oo, Appellant.

No. A25-0388

Court of Appeals of Minnesota

February 9, 2026

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c).

Chippewa County District Court File No. 12-CR-24-290

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, Lydia Villalva Lijo, Assistant Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and Matthew Haugen, Chippewa County Attorney, Montevideo, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Amy Lawler, Assistant Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Schmidt, Presiding Judge; Bratvold, Judge; and Bentley, Judge.

OPINION

BENTLEY, JUDGE

Appellant appeals from a final judgment of conviction for controlled substance crime in the second degree—possession, in violation of Minn. Stat. § 152.022, subd. 2(a)(1) (Supp. 2023). He argues that the district court should have granted his motion to

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suppress evidence that officers discovered after they expanded the scope of a traffic stop without reasonable suspicion. We agree and, for that reason, reverse.

FACTS

The following facts derive from the evidence admitted at a contested omnibus hearing on appellant Mya Oo's motion to suppress. The evidence included officer testimony and video footage from the officers' body-worn and squad-car cameras.

Officer B.^[1] was on duty in May 2024 and conducted a traffic stop of a car with a headlight out. Officer B. approached the car, which had two occupants—the driver and a passenger in the front passenger seat. The passenger was Oo. When Officer B. initiated conversation with the occupants, there was a significant language barrier. About ten minutes into the stop, Officer Y. arrived on scene and connected with an interpreter on his phone to facilitate communication.

The officers confirmed the name of the driver and that he did not have a valid license. Oo initially told the officers that he had a driver's license, but he did not have identification on hand and wrote his name down. Officer Y. then ran the information Oo gave him and confirmed that he also did not have a license. Officer B. then expressed his intent to issue a citation. Officer Y. explained to the driver and Oo that they could not drive away because neither of them had licenses and that they would need to contact someone with a license to drive the car. Officer Y. testified that, while he was on scene, Oo "acted

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fidgety and nervous with his demeanor." Oo "had rapid hand movement, would avoid . . . eye contact with officers, and would slouch and try not to look at [the officer]." After running the occupants' information, Officer B. learned that the driver had an active Wisconsin arrest warrant.

During the wait to "confirm[] the warrant with Wisconsin," Officer B. asked the driver to get out of the car. The driver complied, leaving the door partially open at about a 45-degree angle, and walked with Officer B. to the rear of the car to talk. Officer B. explained to the driver that he had a warrant in Wisconsin, but they were not planning to arrest him at that time. As they were talking, the footage from Officer B.'s squad-car camera shows that Officer Y. approached the driver's car door, began looking into the car's interior with his flashlight, opened the door the rest of the way, and stepped closer to the interior of the car.

Officer Y. then alerted Officer B. that he saw what he identified as drug paraphernalia in the pocket of the door on the driver's side. The paraphernalia was described as "a small bottle with like a straw . . . attached to it on the side as if [it was] some type of smoking device with red liquid in it." At that point, Officer B. asked the driver if there were drugs in the car and received his consent to search the car. While conducting the search, Officer Y. searched a satchel on Oo's seat and found "a large amount of methamphetamine." He asked Oo if the satchel was his, Oo said yes, and Officer Y. arrested him.

Respondent State of Minnesota charged Oo with controlled-substance crime in the second degree—possession, in violation of Minnesota Statutes section 152.022,

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subdivision 2(a)(1). The district court held a contested omnibus hearing on Oo's motion to suppress evidence obtained in the search. At the omnibus hearing, Officers B. and Y. testified, and the district court received five exhibits including the body-worn and squadcar camera footage. In his testimony, when asked on direct examination if he "ha[d] to open the door [him]self . . . to see this meth paraphernalia?" Officer Y. said he "did not," and agreed that he "had seen it after [the driver] exited the vehicle himself and [the driver] open[ed] the door himself." On cross-examination, Officer Y. was asked if, after the driver left the car door open "at around a 45[-degree] angle," Officer Y. "immediately fully opened the door." He answered that he did "not recall if [he] did or not."

After the hearing, the district court denied the motion to suppress. In its order, the district court found, "[The driver] partially opened the driver's side door and exited the vehicle. [Officer Y.] assisted in opening the door until he noticed drug paraphernalia within the driver's side door compartment." The district court further determined, "An officer opening a car door is an expansion of the traffic stop if not tied to the original purpose of the stop." (Quotation omitted). The district court concluded, nevertheless, that the officers had reasonable suspicion to expand the stop. The district court explained:

[T]he driver of the vehicle did not have a valid driver's license. This provided officers additional suspicion that he was driving without a license, a misdemeanor offense. Because there was an additional basis for an expansion of the traffic stop, [Officer Y.'s] decision to fully open the car door was lawful. The drug paraphernalia was in plain view to him once the door was fully open and his training and experience allowed him to identify the drug paraphernalia.

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(Citation omitted.) The district court also determined that the satchel was a "container inside the vehicle" that could be validly searched under the automobile exception.

A jury found Oo guilty of second-degree possession. The district court sentenced Oo to 108 months' imprisonment, with credit for time served and an opportunity to serve a portion of his sentence on supervised release.

Oo appeals.

DECISION

The issue on appeal is relatively narrow. Oo does not dispute that, based on the headlight equipment violation, the traffic stop was justified at its inception. See State v. George, 557 N.W.2d 575, 578 (Minn. 1997) ("Ordinarily, if an officer observes a violation of a traffic law, however insignificant, the officer has an objective basis for stopping the vehicle."). He also does not challenge the lawfulness of the officer's request for the driver to exit the vehicle. See State v. Askerooth, 681 N.W.2d 353, 367 (Minn. 2004) (stating that a police officer may order a driver to exit their vehicle during a lawful traffic stop "without an articulated reason"). Rather, Oo argues that the district court should have granted his motion to suppress because Officer Y. unlawfully expanded the scope of the traffic stop by fully opening the partially open driver's side door without reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity.^[2]

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We begin with a brief overview of the applicable law and our standard of review. We then consider whether Officer Y.'s conduct constituted an expansion of the stop. And, after concluding it did, we assess whether that expansion was supported by reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity.

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The Minnesota Constitution prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures." Minn. Const. art. I, § 10.^[3] "Warrantless searches and seizures are generally unreasonable," State v. Taylor, 965 N.W.2d 747, 752 (Minn. 2021), but there is an exception to the warrant requirement for limited investigatory seizures, Askerooth, 681 N.W.2d at 363. Under this exception, a police officer may briefly detain an individual when the officer "has a reasonable, articulable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot." State v. Timberlake, 744 N.W.2d 390, 393 (Minn. 2008) (quotation omitted). "Generally, if an officer observes a violation of a traffic law, no matter how insignificant the traffic law, that observation forms the requisite particularized and objective basis for conducting a traffic stop." State v. Anderson, 683 N.W.2d 818, 823 (Minn. 2004). But during that stop, an officer's actions

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must be "reasonably related to and justified by the circumstances that gave rise to the stop in the first place." Askerooth, 681 N.W.2d at 364.

Each incremental intrusion that is not closely related to the reason for the initial traffic stop must be "tied to and justified by" either "independent probable cause," or "reasonableness." Id. at 365. "Furthermore, the basis for the intrusion must be individualized to the person toward whom the intrusion is directed." Id. Evidence obtained in violation of the state constitution must be suppressed. State v. Diede, 795 N.W.2d 836, 842 (Minn. 2011); see also State v. Babineau, 23 N.W.3d 396, 410 (Minn.App. 2025) ("Generally, evidence obtained through an unlawful expansion of the scope of a vehicle stop must be suppressed.").

The parties agree that the applicable test in this case is the reasonableness of the incremental intrusion. The district court concluded that Officer Y.'s expansion of the traffic stop was lawful because it was supported by reasonable suspicion. "When reviewing a district court's pretrial order on a motion to suppress evidence, [appellate courts] review the district court's factual findings under a clearly erroneous standard and the district court's legal determinations de novo." State...