State v. Miller

308 P.3d 24, 49 Kan. App. 2d 491
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kansas
DecidedSeptember 13, 2013
DocketNo. 109,354
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 308 P.3d 24 (State v. Miller) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Miller, 308 P.3d 24, 49 Kan. App. 2d 491 (kanctapp 2013).

Opinion

Leben, J.:

In the early morning hours of November 2, 2011, debris from a two-car accident on 1-35 in Lenexa caused authorities to shut the interstate to traffic. While Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Nicholas Wright was working the accident, a car driven by Heather Miller came toward hirn—it was the only car on a roadway that Wright thought was still closed to vehicle traffic. So he stopped Miller for the apparent violation of a state law requiring drivers to comply with traffic-control directions.

It turned out that the officers who Wright thought were still blocking the roadway had been diverted briefly to another spot, and Miller simply drove onto the interstate without disregarding any officers, emergency flares, or traffic cones. Unfortunately for her, once the trooper stopped her car, he quickly suspected she was under the influence of alcohol—a suspicion that was confirmed through field-sobriety testing and an evidentiary breath test.

Miller argued in the district court that the evidence against her should be suppressed because she had done nothing wrong by driving onto the scene, thus she shouldn’t have been stopped in the first place. The district court agreed. Though the court said the officer was “honestly mistaken” and showed no bad faith in stopping Miller, the court concluded that the officer nonetheless was mistaken and shouldn’t have made the stop. The court suppressed the evidence found after the stop, including the evidence that Miller was driving while intoxicated.

The State has appealed, contending that an officer’s action isn’t invalidated for a mistake of fact so long as the officer had a reasonable belief that facts existed that would have justified the traffic stop. We agree.

On appeal from a district court’s order on a motion to suppress evidence, we accept the district court’s factual findings if they are supported by substantial evidence. But we independently review [493]*493its legal conclusions, without any required deference. State v. Sanchez-Loredo, 294 Kan. 50, 54, 272 P.3d 34 (2012). Here, other than saying that the officer was “honestly mistaken,” the district court really made no specific factual findings. We will discuss the basic facts of the case, which do not appear to be in dispute, and then consider independently whether the evidence should have been suppressed.

Trooper Wright was the officer in charge at the accident scene, and he had directed closure of the interstate while the accident was investigated since there was debris scattered over the roadway. He had personnel from the Kansas Department of Transportation block traffic by forcing southbound vehicles to exit at 95th Street, and he had Lenexa police officers block the 95th Street entrance ramp going onto the interstate southbound. Wright observed those roadblocks in place. While working at the scene for 1 hour and 20 minutes, Wright saw no unauthorized vehicles come through.

He then saw Miller s car coming toward him. His understanding of police procedure was that the interstate would remain blocked until he—as the officer in charge of the investigation—ordered it to be reopened. Accordingly, he initially thought the vehicle was a police or Department of Transportation vehicle, but he testified that he was “shocked” to see that it was a private vehicle. Wright said he believed the driver either drove around traffic cones that were blocking the highway or drove around the Lenexa police officers who were blocking the entrance ramp. So he initiated a traffic stop.

Miller seemed confused when Wright asked her what she was doing. That reaction was understandable since Miller said there hadn’t been any police cars blocking the entrance ramp. And that proved to be true—Lenexa officers later came to the scene and told Wright that they’d left their post on the entrance ramp briefly because they had to deal with a disturbance involving a trucker.

By that time, however, Wright had begun to suspect that Miller was driving while intoxicated. He arrested her after she performed poorly on some field-sobriety tests, and her evidentiary breath test resulted in a .122 reading, well above the legal limit of .08.

[494]*494So where does this leave us legally? Based upon what Trooper Wright knew at the time, he believed that Miller had committed a traffic infraction. It’s a violation of K.S.A. 8-1503 to refuse to comply with an officer’s traffic-control directives, and an officer may conduct a traffic stop where an officer knows of specific and artic-ulable facts—facts that can be clearly expressed—that create a reasonable suspicion that a person has violated a traffic law. See State v. Coleman, 292 Kan. 813, 817-18, 257 P.3d 320 (2011); State v. Marx, 289 Kan. 657, 661-62, 215 P.3d 601 (2009).

The State argues that Wright gave specific facts supporting reasonable suspicion—a particularized and objective basis for suspecting that the person stopped is involved in criminal activity. See Coleman, 292 Kan. at 817-18. Indeed, Wright identified several facts supporting his belief that Miller had disobeyed an officer’s traffic instructions:

• Wright had directed that the interstate highway be closed to traffic while he carried out the accident investigation and cleanup.
• He understood that die standard policy was to keep the road closed until the officer in charge of the investigation—in this case, himself—had directed the road to be reopened.
• He had seen that police officers had taken positions blocking the entrance ramp and drat otiier personnel had placed cones directing traffic already on the interstate to exit before the accident site.
• Other than emergency and law-enforcement vehicles, Miller’s vehicle was the first—and only—car he had seen driving on tire closed section of tíre interstate in more than an hour, and he had not reopened the roadway to traffic.

Those facts, specific and articulated by Wright, provided reasonable suspicion that Miller had violated K.S.A. 8-1503, thus justifying a traffic stop.

Of course, we now know that Wright’s overall conclusion—that Miller had disobeyed an officer’s instructions—was wrong. But drat doesn’t negate reasonable suspicion. So long as the officer operates in good faith, a reasonable mistake of fact can still provide the [495]*495reasonable suspicion required to make a traffic stop. See Houston v. Clark County Sheriff Deputy John Does, 174 F.3d 809, 813 (6th Cir. 1999); United States v. Ornelas-Ledesma, 16 F.3d 714, 718 (7th Cir. 1994), vacated on other grounds 517 U.S. 690, 116 S. Ct. 1657, 134 L. Ed. 2d 911 [1996]); United States v. Bailey, 417 F.3d 873, 877 (8th Cir. 2005); United States v. Shareef,

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
308 P.3d 24, 49 Kan. App. 2d 491, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-miller-kanctapp-2013.