The Casper Star-Tribune (Casper, Wyoming)
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - The Wyoming Supreme Court has ruled that it is illegal for a police officer to stop a driver, issue a ticket or a warning and return the driver’s paperwork, then keep the driver in the patrol car and ask questions unrelated to the traffic stop.
The justices handed down that ruling Monday in a case involving the detention of an Illinois man and search of his car in 2002
As a result, Alan Campbell will be allowed to withdraw his plea of guilty to marijuana possession with intent to deliver the drug, and more than 8 pounds of marijuana allegedly seized by Wyoming State Trooper David Chatfield from Campbell’s car cannot be used as evidence against him.
Campbell was pulled over on Interstate 80 in Laramie County because a dispatcher said he had an expired registration. Campbell produced a handwritten Illinois vehicle registration card, and Chatfield gave him a “driver contact” form.
Before giving him the document, Chatfield asked Campbell if he had any marijuana in his vehicle. Campbell said no.
The trooper then handed Campbell the form and asked if he would consent to a drug dog sniff of his vehicle. Campbell consented to the drug dog search, which revealed the marijuana.
Campbell argued in district court that the drug evidence should not be allowed at trial because the extended traffic stop and dog sniff of his car violated his constitutional right not to be subjected to unreasonable search and seizure.
District Judge Nicholas Kalokathis denied Campbell’s motion to suppress the evidence. Campbell appealed that ruling, and the Supreme Court, in a ruling written by Justice Michael Golden, granted his request to suppress the drug evidence.
The Supreme Court found that Chatfield was out of line both to ask Campbell about drugs, because the trooper did not have reasonable suspicion of that sort of criminal activity, and to ask if the dog could sniff the vehicle without telling Campbell he was free to leave.
“Campbell gave his verbal assent to Trooper Chatfield’s request immediately after the improper questioning, and there were absolutely no intervening circumstances,” Golden wrote.
The high court concluded that Campbell’s consent to the search was “tainted” by the illegal detention and questioning immediately preceding his consent.
Chatfield contended that he had suspicion that Campbell might have had marijuana in the car because Campbell was college-aged; he was traveling from Fort Collins, Colo., a city Chatfield knows is a source for high-grade marijuana; Campbell’s trip was short, only four days; Campbell seemed nervous during the stop; and he did not acknowledge the drug dog in Chatfield’s patrol car.
During an evidence hearing in District Court, Kalokathis noted that those facts would apply to half of the college students from Cheyenne when traveling from Fort Collins.
“Trooper Chatfield embarked upon a fishing expedition ‘in the hope that something might turn up,”’ Golden wrote. “That type of purposeful probing is not permitted by the Fourth Amendment.”