State v. Peaslee

526 A.2d 1392, 1987 Me. LEXIS 712

• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Maine
• Decided: June 22, 1987
• Status: Published

Opinion

NICHOLS, Justice.

The Defendant, Robert Peaslee, appeals, from a judgment of Superior Court (Pisca-taquis County) convicting him after a jury-waived trial of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor, 29 M.R.S.A. § 1312-B (Supp.1986). The Defendant challenges the investigatory stop of his vehicle, made by a Dover-Fox-croft police officer acting upon certain information transmitted to him by radio by a Milo police officer who had observed the Defendant’s vehicle before it crossed the town line. The Defendant’s motion to suppress evidence derived from this stop had been denied by the District Court (Dover-Foxcroft).

To justify an investigatory stop of an automobile the officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts that, taken together with rational inferences therefrom, reasonably warrant suspicion of unlawful conduct on the part of the occupant of the automobile. The officer’s informant need not himself testify at the suppression hearing. The test is whether the information given contains sufficient indi-cia of reliability, not whether it establishes the truth of these particular facts. State v. McKenzie, 440 A.2d 1072, 1075 (Me.1982).

Upon the record before the District Court, the motion to suppress was properly denied.

The entry is:

Judgment affirmed.

All concurring.