State v. Sasso

• Decision Date: 28 June 2016
• Docket Number: Docket No. Han–14–400.
• Citation: 2016 ME 95,143 A.3d 124
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. John E. SASSO.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

143 A.3d 124

2016 ME 95

STATE of Maine

v.John E. SASSO.

Docket No. Han–14–400.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued: Oct. 7, 2015.

Decided: June 28, 2016.

Ezra A.R. Willey, Esq. (orally), Willey Law Offices, Bangor, for appellant John E. Sasso.

Matthew J. Foster, District Attorney, and Delwyn E. Webster, Asst. Dist. Atty. (orally), Prosecutorial District No. VII, Ellsworth, for appellee State of Maine.

Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, HJELM, and HUMPHREY, JJ.

SAUFLEY, C.J.

[¶ 1] John E. Sasso appeals from the judgment of conviction entered in the Unified Criminal Docket (Hancock County, R. Murray, J. ) following his conditional plea of nolo contendere, pursuant to M.R.Crim. P. 11(a)(2), to the crime of operating after suspension (Class E), 29–A M.R.S. § 2412–A(1–A)(B) (2015). Sasso argues that the court (Mallonee, J. ) erred in denying his motion to suppress, contending that the officer's decision to stop his vehicle was pretextual and that the officer had no reasonable, articulable suspicion to justify the stop. We affirm the denial of the motion to suppress and the judgment of conviction.

I. BACKGROUND

[¶ 2] Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the court's order denying Sasso's motion to suppress, the record supports the following facts. See State v. Prescott, 2012 ME 96, ¶ 2, 48 A.3d 218. On March 28, 2014, an Ellsworth police officer, who was also part of an underage drinking task force, was on patrol. The officer watched Sasso, who was eighteen at the time, leave a convenience store, get into the driver's seat of a car, and drive away from the store. The night was rainy, and the roads were wet. The officer followed Sasso for a short distance and did not observe any problems with the operation of the vehicle. He did, however, notice a problem with the brake lights on Sasso's car. One of the brake lights appeared to be “stuck on.”¹ The officer described the problem of the brake light as “a safety violation.” He turned on his blue lights and effected a stop of Sasso's car. Sasso pulled over without incident. Sasso was driving with a license that had been suspended as a result of an OUI conviction, and he was arrested for operating after suspension.

[¶ 3] Sasso was charged by criminal complaint with operating after suspension (Class E), 29–A M.R.S. § 2412–A(1–A)(B). He entered a not guilty plea and moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the officer's stop of the vehicle, arguing that the stop was pretextual and that there was no reasonable, articulable suspicion to justify the stop. Regarding the alleged pretext, Sasso argued that the officer thought that Sasso had purchased alcohol at the convenience store, and he hoped to find evidence of underage drinking by stopping the car.

[¶ 4] Three people testified at the hearing on the motion to suppress: (1) the officer who stopped Sasso; (2) Sasso's mother, who confirmed that one of the taillights was a bit brighter than the other, perhaps because it was canted at a slightly different angle; and (3) another individual regarding a potential reason for the brighter taillight. At the conclusion of the hearing, the court denied the motion. The court made very brief findings on the record, including the finding that “there's clearly something out of whack with this car.” The court made no explicit finding on pretext, determining that the State was correct that in these circumstances the officer's suspicion regarding underage possession of alcohol was “neither here nor there.”

[¶ 5] Neither party moved for further findings and conclusions. See M.R.Crim. P. 41A(d). Although Sasso had argued that the stop was pretextual, he did not seek specific findings at the hearing or seek further findings after the hearing.

[¶ 6] Following the denial of the motion to suppress, Sasso entered a conditional plea of nolo contendere pursuant to M.R.Crim. P. 11(a)(2). The court found Sasso guilty and sentenced him to the mandatory seven days in jail to be satisfied by completion of ten days in an alternative sentencing program, a $600 fine, and a one-year license suspension. Sasso then timely appealed. See 15 M.R.S. § 2115 (2015).

II. OVERVIEW

[¶ 7] “The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, section 5 of the Maine Constitution protect motorists from being unreasonably stopped by police.” State v. LaForge, 2012 ME 65, ¶ 8, 43 A.3d 961. For a traffic stop to be constitutional, “a police officer must have an objectively reasonable, articulable suspicion that either criminal conduct, a civil violation, or a threat to public safety has occurred, is occurring, or is about to occur.” State v. Sylvain, 2003 ME 5, ¶ 11, 814 A.2d 984 (footnote omitted). “Safety reasons alone can be sufficient” to support a stop “if they are based upon ‘specific and articulable facts.’ ” State v. Pinkham, 565 A.2d 318, 319 (Me.1989).

[¶ 8] A “pretext” challenge refers to an allegation that, although an officer has proffered a legal justification to stop a vehicle, the stop was effectuated for some unrelated purpose for which no articulable suspicion or probable cause existed. Sasso argues that, because there was no reasonable, articulable suspicion for the stop, the stop must have been pretextual. As set out in part IV of this opinion, we conclude that the officer did have a reasonable, articulable suspicion for the stop, and we move to the next question: whether the separate, subjective motivation of the officer renders a stop “unreasonable,” even in circumstances where there is a valid criminal, civil, or safety basis for the stop. For the following reasons, we conclude that it does not.

III. PRETEXT

[¶ 9] In 1996, the United States Supreme Court addressed pretextual vehicle stops in Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996).² In Whren, District of Columbia vice-squad officers, operating in a “high drug area,” observed a motor vehicle that was stopped at a stop sign. Id. at 808, 116 S.Ct. 1769. Although they suspected drug trafficking activity, they had no initial basis, specific to that vehicle or its occupants, to stop the car. See id. The officers then observed the vehicle remain at the stop sign for an unusually long time, make a right-hand turn without a proper signal, and speed off at an unreasonable speed. Id. The officers stopped the vehicle, at which point they saw in plain view two large plastic bags of what appeared to be crack cocaine. Id. at 808–09, 116 S.Ct. 1769. They arrested the motor vehicle's occupants. Id. at 809, 116 S.Ct. 1769.

[¶ 10] The defendants in Whren argued that the stop was unconstitutional because the officers did not have probable cause³ to believe that the vehicle's occupants were engaging in drug-related activity, and the asserted basis for stopping the vehicle—the traffic violations—was pretextual. Id. They argued that because of “the temptation to use traffic stops as a means of investigating other law violations, as to which no probable cause or even articulable suspicion exists,” the fact that the officers had probable cause to believe that the traffic infractions were occurring was not enough, and a different standard was necessary to analyze the situation. Id. at 810, 116 S.Ct. 1769.

[¶ 11] In a unanimous decision, the United States Supreme Court rejected this argument and upheld the stop. Id. at 819, 116 S.Ct. 1769. It clarified that the constitutional reasonableness of traffic stops does not depend on the actual, subjective motivations of the individual officers involved. Id. at 813, 116 S.Ct. 1769. When a stop is based on an objectively justifiable basis, a separate motive does not strip the officer's actions of the legal justification. Id. The Court specifically rejected the inquiry into the subjective motivation of the officer, stating: “Not only have we never held, outside the context of inventory search or administrative inspection ..., that an officer's motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the Fourth Amendment; but we have repeatedly held and asserted the contrary.” Id. at 812, 116 S.Ct. 1769.

[¶ 12] The Supreme Court holding announced in Whren is consistent with Maine's standard for evaluating whether a traffic stop passes constitutional muster. In State v. Haskell, 645 A.2d 619, 621 (Me.1994), decided before the Supreme Court announced its decision in Whren, we described a pretextual stop as occurring “when an officer uses a legal justification to stop a vehicle to search for evidence of an unrelated serious crime for which he did not have the reasonable articulable suspicion necessary to support a stop.”

[¶ 13] Additional language in Haskell did, however, reference the officer's subjective motivation. We stated in Haskell that “[t]he test is not whether the officer lawfully could have stopped defendant, but whether a reasonable officer would have made the stop absent the invalid purpose. ” Id.

(emphasis added). Thus, Haskell could reasonably have been read to overlay a second test on the basis for the stop—in other words, even if the stop was undertaken on an objectively reasonable basis, the stop may be invalidated if the officer had a separate, subjective motivation for the stop.

[¶ 14] We have, however, more recently clarified that the subjective motivation of the officer is not relevant on the ultimate determination of a reasonable, articulable suspicion, which requires an objective analysis. As we announced in State v. Bolduc, decided after Whren, “[w]hether a reasonable police officer would normally have stopped [the defendant] ... is not important to the analysis.” 1998 ME 255, ¶ 6, 722 A.2d 44 (emphasis added); see also State v. Taylor, 1997 ME 81, ¶ 9 n. 6, 694 A.2d 907. Consistent with the standard established by the United States Supreme Court in Whren, the standard to be used is whether an officer has “an objectively reasonable, articulable suspicion that either criminal conduct, a civil violation, or a threat to public safety has...