Wrong-race anonymous tip didn’t justify traffic stop

A vague, anonymous tip a police officer had received about an undescribed white male engaged in undescribed suspicious activity in a parking lot didn’t provide the officer with enough reasonable suspicion to detain a black male he encountered in the same parking lot, the North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled, reversing a trial court judge’s ruling denying a motion to suppress evidence.

In November 2016, the Graham Police Department received an anonymous tip of a “suspicious white male with a gold or silver vehicle” walking in the parking lot of a closed business and relayed the tip to Officer Nathan Judge to respond. Upon arrival, Judge observed a silver sedan, but no one walking around outside. As he approached the vehicle, he shined his flashlight in the closed window and observed a black male behind the wheel. Judge tried to communicate with the driver, but the driver made no acknowledgment and continued to exit the parking lot.

Concluding that the driver was acting “a little odd,” Judge decided to follow the vehicle because “he didn’t know what he had.” Without observing any bad driving, traffic violations, criminal offenses, or furtive movements, Judge pulled over the vehicle. During the stop he discovered marijuana, large sums of cash, baggies of white powder, and a stolen handgun.

The driver, Xavier Horton, was arrested. After Alamance County Superior Court Judge James K. Roberson denied his motion to suppress evidence obtained during the stop, Horton pleaded guilty to several offenses and appealed the denial of his motion to suppress, arguing that Judge lacked any reasonable suspicion to stop him.

Judge Lucy Inman, writing for the court, noted that reasonable suspicion must be based on specific and articulable facts, and rational inferences from them, as viewed through the eyes of a reasonable, cautious officer. Inman concluded that Judge’s justification for the traffic stop was “nothing more than an ‘inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch,’” and the evidence from the stop should have been suppressed.

Anonymous tips require the reviewing court to assess whether the tip at issue possessed sufficient indicia of reliability. After reviewing several cases involving anonymous tips, the court compared the tip received by the police department to the tips at issue in those cases and concluded that the tip left little for Judge to rely on, Inman wrote.

The tipster was uncertain as to the color of the vehicle, made no claim as to any illegal activity observed, and incorrectly identified the defendant as a white male. And although “it might seem socially peculiar—possibly uncouth—that someone, like Defendant here, would ignore a police officer’s confrontation,” Horton had a constitutional right to avoid Judge, and so his doing so could not provide the basis for justifying the stop.

“Concluding otherwise would give undue weight to, not only vague anonymous tips, but broad, simplistic descriptions of areas absent specific and articulable detail surrounding a suspect’s actions,” Inman wrote.

Michael Grace, Greer Taylor, and Christopher Clifton of Grace Tisdale & Clifton in Winston-Salem represented Horton on appeal. The attorneys could not be reached for comment.

The 21-page decision is State v. Horton (Lawyers Weekly No. 011-094-19). The full text of the opinion is available online at nclawyersweekly.com.

Jonathan Loo is the opinions intern for Lawyers Weekly.