State v. Sinquell-Gainey
| Citation | 282 A.3d 396 |
| Decision Date | 06 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | 20-306 |
| Parties | STATE of Vermont v. Michael SINQUELL-GAINEY and David Vaz |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Vermont |
Jennifer Barrett, Orleans County State's Attorney, and Michael A. Cricchi and Farzana Leyva, Deputy State's Attorneys, Newport, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Matthew Valerio, Defender General, and Rebecca Turner, Appellate Defender, Montpelier, for Defendant-Appellee Sinquell-Gainey.
Zachery D. Weight of Burke Law, P.C., Burlington, for Defendant Appellee Vaz.
PRESENT: Reiber, C.J., Robinson,1 Eaton, Carroll and Cohen, JJ., and Dooley, J. (Ret.), Specially Assigned
¶ 1. The State appeals from a trial court order granting defendants’ motion to suppress evidence obtained by law enforcement after an automobile stop. The State argues that a Newport police officer had reasonable suspicion to stop defendants because he observed a traffic violation and because the totality of the circumstances supported reasonable suspicion of impaired driving. We agree that the stop was justified based on reasonable suspicion of impairment. We therefore reverse and remand.
¶ 2. The following facts were adduced during two suppression-motion hearings. At about 1:40 a.m. on March 24, 2018, defendants Michael Sinquell-Gainey and David Vaz were in a vehicle that pulled into a gas station in Newport, Vermont. At that moment, Newport Police Officer James LeClair was parked in his police cruiser next to U.S. Border Patrol Agent John Marquissee in a vacant lot near the gas station. Two other Newport police officers, patrolling in a single cruiser, were also parked next to Officer LeClair and Marquissee. The officers were having a conversation, as they often did when working the night shift. In his rearview mirror, Officer LeClair noticed defendants pull into the gas station through an exit-only access. He watched defendants drive past a set of gas pumps, circle around, and return to park next to the first set of pumps. Officer LeClair turned back to his conversation with the others. He testified that he could not recall how long defendants’ vehicle remained at the gas pumps, or whether defendants actually pumped gas.
¶ 3. When defendants left the gas station a few moments later, Officer LeClair followed. He testified that he initially followed defendants because the bars had recently closed, and defendants had entered the gas station through an exit. At all times during the encounter, defendants were travelling two to three miles per hour under the speed limit. Furthermore, the trial court found that Officer LeClair could not discern the identities of the occupants of the vehicle until later when he approached defendants during the traffic stop on Interstate 91.
¶ 4. Defendants, with Officer LeClair following, came to an intersection controlled by a flashing yellow light for traffic approaching from their direction, and by a flashing red light for cross-traffic. Flashing yellow lights indicate that traffic must slow and proceed with caution; flashing red lights indicate that traffic must come to a complete stop before proceeding. 23 V.S.A. § 1024(a). Officer LeClair testified that the operator activated the left turn signal shortly before reaching the intersection. See 23 V.S.A. § 1064(d). He also testified that the driver "stopped for quite some time," even though no stop was required.
¶ 5. After stopping, the operator turned left onto an access road heading toward Interstate 91. The vehicle's left turn onto the access road swung wide enough that the vehicle crossed the fog line and traveled close to the guardrails for an appreciable distance. Officer LeClair described the distance between the vehicle and the centerline as "almost a full—half to a full car length." The operator traveled up the access road like this until the one-lane access road became two lanes, at which point the vehicle remained in the right lane, all the while driving just below the speed limit.
¶ 6. As the vehicle approached the entrance to the southbound lanes of Interstate 91, the operator briefly activated the vehicle's high beams before deactivating them and signaling a right turn onto the interstate. The vehicle turned right, up the onramp, and onto Interstate 91. Officer LeClair followed. The vehicles traveled a short distance in the right lane before defendants’ car drifted to the left side of the lane. Officer LeClair testified that he saw the driver-side tires cross the centerline.2 He activated his blue lights a few seconds later, at which point the cruiser's dash-mounted camera automatically began recording. As a result of a "look back" feature of the dash-mounted camera that begins the video recording thirty seconds before the lights are activated, the camera captured all the events on the interstate but did not record anything before that point. The operator pulled over without incident.
¶ 7. A few seconds after Officer LeClair stopped behind defendants, Agent Marquissee arrived. Officer LeClair and Marquissee had a brief conversation that was not recorded. He then approached the driver, while Marquissee started toward the passenger side. Officer LeClair immediately asked the driver whether he had been drinking. The driver, who Officer LeClair learned was Sinquell-Gainey, said he had not. Officer LeClair explained that he pulled defendants over because they had swung wide on the left turn earlier, and that they had "crossed" the centerline on the interstate.
¶ 8. Meanwhile, Marquissee, without speaking with the passenger, returned to his truck to retrieve a K-9 trained to detect drugs. Marquissee walked the dog around defendants’ vehicle. The dog alerted to the possible presence of drugs. Separately, Officer LeClair testified that he detected an odor of unburned marijuana when he spoke with defendants. Officer LeClair asked defendants about the odor, and they told him they had smoked marijuana earlier in the day. Officer LeClair then asked Sinquell-Gainey if he would consent to a search of the car based on the odor of marijuana and the K-9 alert to the presence of drugs. Sinquell-Gainey initially agreed and signed a consent card authorizing the search. During the search, Officer LeClair observed five cell phones in the console area of the car and a white powdery substance in the trunk. However, before Officer LeClair could locate any identifiable contraband, Sinquell-Gainey revoked his consent to search. Officer LeClair stopped searching and subsequently seized the vehicle.
¶ 9. After obtaining a search warrant, officers found heroin and fentanyl in the engine compartment. Accordingly, Officer LeClair prepared an affidavit of probable cause in support of felony charges3 relating to drug possession and trafficking, describing the factors that provided him with reasonable suspicion to make the traffic stop. Just as he did when he first approached defendants on Interstate 91, Officer LeClair described the wide left turn and the "crossing" of the centerline as the basis for stopping defendants. In the affidavit, Officer LeClair provided two additional factors: that defendants’ vehicle pulled into the gas station through an exit-only access; and that it came to a complete stop at the flashing yellow light. Defendants moved to suppress the incriminating evidence obtained in the engine compartment, arguing in part that the evidence was obtained following a traffic stop that was not supported by reasonable suspicion.4
¶ 10. The trial court granted defendants’ motion. The court concluded that Officer LeClair did not have reasonable suspicion to make the traffic stop. Though the court credited his testimony that defendants committed a traffic violation by failing to signal within 100 feet of an intersection pursuant to 23 V.S.A. § 1064(d), the court concluded that the traffic signal violation, to be an objective basis for the traffic stop, "must have been the stated purpose of the stop to establish reasonable suspicion." Because Officer LeClair had not recited the violation in the probable-cause affidavit, did not disclose the violation to defendants as a reason for the stop, and raised it for the first time at the suppression motion hearing, the court reasoned that the violation could not form the objective basis of the traffic stop.
¶ 11. As to the purported centerline violation on the interstate, the trial court credited Officer LeClair's dash-mounted camera footage, which showed that defendants’ vehicle touched but did not, in fact, cross the centerline. The court found that Officer LeClair's mistaken observation that the car crossed the centerline was not reasonable because the statute he cited as the basis for the violation, 23 V.S.A. § 1031, driving to right, does not apply on a multi-lane roadway restricted to one-way traffic. The court reasoned that even if defendants had crossed the centerline, as Officer LeClair testified they did, defendants would have not violated § 1031 because the statute does not apply "upon a roadway restricted to one-way traffic." Id. § 1031(a)(4).
¶ 12. As to the other observation Officer LeClair cited as a basis for providing reasonable suspicion, the trial court concluded that the wide left turn onto the access road did not constitute a traffic violation. The court opined that the State's failure to explain why the wide left turn constituted a traffic violation raised a "red flag as to the issue of pretext."
¶ 13. Finally, the trial court rejected the State's argument that under a totality-of-the-circumstances analysis, Officer LeClair had reasonable suspicion of the operator's impairment. The court concluded that the entry into the gas station through an exit-only access, the unprovoked stop at the flashing yellow light, the wide left turn onto the access road, and the brief activation of the high beams did not collectively give rise to reasonable suspicion of driving under the influence. The State appealed.
¶ 14. Our review of a grant of a "motion to...
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