{"id":6122,"date":"2012-11-06T06:58:28","date_gmt":"2011-10-09T12:07:23","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-09T12:07:23","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=6122","title":{"rendered":"ID & LA4: Officer’s opening car door was a seizure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opening defendant\u2019s car door to talk to him constituted a seizure because the defendant objectively would not feel free to terminate the encounter and leave. The motion to suppress was properly granted. State v. Liechty<\/a>, 152 Idaho 163, 267 P.3d 1278 (App. 2011):<\/p>\n

We first note that the instant case is unlike other cases where a driver rolls down his or her car window in response to an officer’s approach. In such cases, the encounter is consensual in nature because the level of coercion between the officer and the citizen is minimal. See Zubizareta, 122 Idaho at 827-28, 839 P.2d at 1241-42; Osborne, 121 Idaho at 524, 826 P.2d at 485. At that time, the driver has the option to decline to open the window to speak to the officer. However, when an officer approaches a vehicle and initiates questioning of a driver by opening the vehicle’s door without consent, instead of asking to speak to the person through the vehicle’s window, the level of coercion between the officer and the citizen is enhanced.<\/p>\n

We also note that, in determining whether a seizure occurred, the district court found, similar to Fry, the officer here placed himself in a position relative to the car that prevented Liechty from driving away. As explained above, this finding was supported by substantial evidence, and whether the officer took action to block a vehicle’s exit route is an appropriate circumstance to take into account when determining whether a seizure occurred. …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The officer had reasonable suspicion for a stop, but his opening defendant\u2019s car door and seeing heroin was an illegal search. There was no safety justification offered for opening the door. State v. Cure<\/a>, 84 So. 3d 592 (4th Cir. 2011).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}