RI: Stop was pretextual; court doesn’t believe that officer smelled MJ

Defendant’s car was stopped on the RI turnpike for no seatbelts after being noticed at a toll booth. The stop was valid. The officer saw a pill bottle in a mesh holder on the driver’s door, and then he announced that he smelled marijuana. “When viewing the remaining factors in their totality, the Court believes that this militates against finding the Trooper’s suspicions to be well founded or credible.” No drugs were found. When the officer opened the door of the car, however, he did see the magazine to a gun. The court grants that the officer may have had reasonable suspicion but not probable cause to support the automobile exception. In addition, the protective search doctrine for a frisk of the car wasn’t factually justified. Motion to suppress granted. State v. Ellis, 2016 R.I. Super. LEXIS 41 (Feb. 18, 2016):

The Court believes that the two fairly innocuous observations noted above combined with the occupant’s nervous demeanor and the fact that one of the passengers had an arrest history did not provide probable cause to effectuate a search. Taken in conjunction, it cannot fairly be said that a “man of reasonable prudence” would, after observing the aforementioned circumstances, believe there was evidence of criminal behavior or contraband located within the car. The Court arrives at this conclusion while remaining mindful of the fact that probable cause is based on “the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act.” Brinegar, 338 U.S. at 175. Essentially, the Trooper was acting on a reasonably articulate suspicion, but he did not have a sufficient factual basis to rise to the level of probable cause and ultimately justify the search of Ellis’s vehicle. See Santos, 64 A.3d at 319.

Having found there to be no grounds justifying D’Angelo’s warrantless search of Ellis’s vehicle, the Court must grant the Defendant’s Motion to Suppress. The Court further believes that the reasons offered by the Trooper for the search were merely pretextual. Indeed, neither the alleged smell of burnt marijuana nor the Trooper’s suspicions about the prescription bottle proved to be credible concerns. The Rhode Island Supreme Court has “acknowledged the potential invalidity of pretext searches and seizures in those cases where it was doubtful that probable cause ever existed to justify the initial stop, or a search conducted pursuant to a lawful arrest went beyond permissible limits.” State v. Bierke, 697 A.2d 1069, 1073 (R.I. 1997) (citing State v. Scurry, 636 A.2d 719, 723 (R.I. 1994)). Similarly, the Court does not believe that probable cause ever existed to justify the search and accordingly the search conducted by the Trooper “went beyond permissible limits” when he entered the vehicle. Id.