Case Review - Illegal Stop for DWI

The Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, recently threw out a DWI conviction  because the the evidence of the intoxication was inadmissible as "fruit of the poisonous tree."  The defendant was initially observed by a municipal officer swerving his pickup truck while in the city limits.  However, the officer waited until the defendant had crossed the city-limit line before activating his stop lights and pulling the defendant over.  The officer then had the defendant wait in his patrol car until a state trooper could arrive at the scene to complete the arrest.  The trial court denied the defendant's motion to suppress the evidence based upon an unlawful stop and the defendant was convicted  of the DWI.  Upon appeal the appellate court found that the stop by the municipal officer was unlawful because it was outside of his jurisdiction and he was not in fresh pursuit.  The question then became whether this tainted the evidence collected by the state trooper.  The court stated that there are three doctrines used to determine whether there are "means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint" and they are:  (1) the temporal proximity of the illegality and the unlawful activity; (2) the presence of intervening circumstances; and (3) the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct.   The court then overruled prior case law in State v. Neher, 726 S.W.2d 363 (Mo. App. W.D. 1987), which was directly on point, and stated that the independent source rule must be carefully examined in order the prevent it from becoming an "illusory source requirement." After examination, the court found that the evidence in this case did not meet the requirement that it was obtained from a source "separate and distinct" from the initial unlawful stop and that there was no exception  to the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine in this case.  The appellate court reversed the ruling and remanded the case back to the trial court to sustain the motion to suppress.

Source:  State v. Renfrow, WD66102, (Mo. App. W.D. 02/27/2007).

Comments

[Ronny]

In this, is it not the police officer's responsibility to detain the individual for safety reasons. The obviously impaired driver could not maintain his lane of travel therfore posing a substantial risk to other motorist. Whether the driver was intoxicated and/or impaired has nothing to do with the reason for the initial stop. As it appears to me, upon initial contact with the driver, the officer had a reasonable belief that the driver was intoxicated therfore calling for assistance on a State Trooper for further investigation.