State v. Vohnoutka, 51149.

• Decision Date: 09 May 1980
• Docket Number: No. 51149.,51149.
• Citation: 292 NW 2d 756
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Appellant, v. Randall George VOHNOUTKA, Respondent.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

292 N.W.2d 756 (1980)

STATE of Minnesota, Appellant, v. Randall George VOHNOUTKA, Respondent.

No. 51149.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

May 9, 1980.

Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, R. Kathleen Morris, County Atty., Shakopee, for appellant.

O'Neill, Goggins & Traxler and Robert O. O'Neill, New Prague, for respondent.

Considered and decided by the court en banc without oral argument.

SHERAN, Chief Justice.

This is a pretrial appeal by the state, pursuant to R. 29.03, R.Crim.P., from an order of the district court suppressing evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds in a felony prosecution of defendant for possession of a large amount of marijuana. We reverse the suppression order and remand for trial.

At 5 a. m. on August 17, 1979, when it was still dark outside, police officers saw the driver of a motor vehicle shut off the lights of the car and drive it into the parking lot of a visibly closed service station. The officers drove behind the car, which was stopped, and defendant got out and approached the officers. While one officer asked defendant if there was anything wrong (defendant said that there wasn't), the other officer routinely walked up to defendant's car and shined his flashlight through the window into the passenger compartment to see if there was anyone in the car. When he did so, the officer observed suspected marijuana in open view. A subsequent search of the car resulted in the discovery of marijuana and hashish; more marijuana was seized from defendant in a search incident to his arrest.

The district court suppressed all the evidence seized from defendant on the ground that the initial flashlight-aided visual check of the passenger compartment was a search which was not based on probable cause.

Professor LaFave's treatise contains an excellent discussion of the cases dealing with the use of a flashlight to permit an officer to see inside a motor vehicle. 1 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure, § 2.2(b) (1978). It appears from that discussion that courts have consistently upheld the use of a flashlight by a police officer to look through a window into an automobile provided the officer's position vis-a-vis the vehicle has not been unlawfully acquired (as when the car is unlawfully stopped).

Our cases are consistent with this approach. Thus, for example, in State v. Landon, 256 N.W.2d 89 (Minn.1977), we upheld against a Fourth Amendment challenge the practice of police officers routinely shining flashlights through the windows of cars lawfully stopped for speeding.

In the instant case the officer did not stop or otherwise temporarily seize defendant's car. Rather, the defendant had already stopped the car when the...