CO: Every officer involved doesn’t need to be called to testify to collective knowledge

The trial court misapplied the collective knowledge doctrine and held that the state failed to show reasonable suspicion without testimony from every officer involved. There was, in fact, reasonable suspicion for defendant’s stop. Officers followed a vehicle from the home she shared with her codefendant and lost sight of it for a few minutes and found it again. She wasn’t in it when it was stopped, but she was believed to be in it when they started. She was found nearby walking, and it was highly improbable she walked from the house to where she was found. People v. Threlkel, 2019 CO 18 (Mar. 11, 2019):

¶26 The trial court misapplied the reasonable, articulable suspicion standard. In effect, the trial court required the deputies to rule out the potential innocent alternative: that the female stopped was someone other than Threlkel who just happened to be walking and asking for a ride, in a residential community, during a frigid and snowy night, less than a mile away from her home, and just a couple of hundred yards from the location where the truck was stopped and Allen was detained. However, the fact that an innocent explanation may be imagined does not defeat the deputies’ reasonable, articulable suspicion. See Reyes-Valenzuela, ¶ 14, 392 P.3d at 523. Instead, the deputies were entitled to draw reasonable inferences from all the circumstantial evidence even if the evidence might also support other inferences. See id. The proper inquiry was whether, considering all the circumstances together, the deputies had an objectively reasonable basis to believe that the female they stopped was Threlkel.

This entry was posted in Collective knowledge, Reasonable suspicion. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.