Appeals court says mere suspicion of flight doesn’t justify traffic stop

A driver who pulled away after possibly being alerted to the surveillance of police officers was merely going on his way, and police officers lacked the reasonable suspicion needed to justify stopping the driver, the North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled. The court held July 5 that the defendant’s behavior didn’t constitute the sort of effort to flee police that would have justified the stop.

The police officers had been staking out an apartment complex suspected to be the venue for drug-dealing. Shortly after midnight, officers saw a car pulling slowly through the complex’s parking lot and at the same time noticed a man standing in front of one of the buildings. The man noticed the police car and yelled something in the direction of the car before backing away. The car then gained speed—but in a lawful manner—and exited the parking lot.

Officers pulled over the car, believing that the driver and the man had intended to conduct an illegal drug transaction. They discovered the driver, Jamison Goins, in possession of marijuana, drug paraphernalia, and an illegal firearm. Goins moved to suppress all the evidence discovered during the stop, arguing that police did not have reasonable suspicion to detain him. But a Guilford County Superior Court judge denied the motion and Goins pleaded guilty to several charges.

On appeal, however, a divided Court of Appeals reversed the conviction, holding that the evidence in the case did not support the officers’ suspicion. Although the officers suspected that the driver was fleeing them, this suspicion, without more, did not support a deduction that criminal activity was afoot.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held on one hand that a suspect’s flight from police is suspicious enough to justify an investigatory stop. On the other hand, though, citizens have a right to decline to engage with police, and a person’s decision to “go about his business,” without more, has been deemed insufficient to justify suspicion. Courts have noted that distinguishing one from the other can be tricky, however, particularly when the suspect is driving a car rather than on foot.

In this case, the court ruled that the connection between the police presence and the driver’s decision to keep moving was too tenuous to support the stop. The officers testified that they were unable to see the driver and couldn’t tell whether he had even spotted them. The court also noted that while the other man could be heard yelling something in the direction of the car, there was no evidence that he was alerting the driver to the presence of the officers, and that neither the driver nor the man had engaged in “headlong flight” away from their locations.

“We [make] a distinction between evidence sufficient to support a finding that a defendant was attempting to evade police contact and evidence that can only support a suspicion or conjecture that a defendant was attempting to evade police contact,” Chief Judge Linda McGee wrote for the majority. “Suspicion or conjecture that a defendant might have been attempting to flee police presence, absent additional suspicious circumstances, is insufficient to support reasonable suspicion that someone leaving a known drug area was engaged in criminal activity.”

Judge John Tyson wrote a stern dissent claiming that the majority’s opinion unduly focused on the characterization of Goins’ alleged flight without sufficiently considering the totality of the circumstances. Tyson’s dissent means that the state has the right to have the state’s Supreme Court take up the case.

Drew Nelson of Willis Johnson & Nelson PLLC in Raleigh represented Goins. Nelson said that one effect of the opinion is that attorneys and prosecutors may now need to pay more attention to the connection between police officers’ presence and a defendant’s behavior when considering the constitutionality of a police stop.

“I think they may be looking for a little more evidence that the defendant observed the officers or had some interaction with them, and try to put their finger on some moment in time that they were reacting to the officers and not just moving in a way that was coincidental,” Nelson said.

The 29-page opinion is State v. Goins (Lawyers Weekly No. 011-232-16). The full text of the opinion is available online at nclawyersweekly.com.

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