{"id":5856,"date":"2011-12-28T17:25:38","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T07:08:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-03T07:08:00","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=5856","title":{"rendered":"ME: Stopping motorist to ask about somebody else speeding violated the Fourth Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Stopping a motorist for information about a third party speeding was an unconstitutional seizure because the purpose of the stop was not sufficiently serious to justify the infringement of the motorist&#8217;s rights. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.courts.state.me.us\/court_info\/opinions\/2011%20documents\/11me85la.pdf\">State v. LaPlante<\/a>, 2011 ME 85, 26 A.3d 337 (2011):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[\u00b61] In this appeal, we consider the constitutionality of a state trooper\u2019s stop of a vehicle for the sole purpose of seeking information from the operator concerning another vehicle that the trooper observed speeding. &#8230; We conclude that a law enforcement officer\u2019s investigation of a third party\u2019s civil speeding offense cannot, standing alone, justify the stop and seizure of a motorist, and we vacate the judgment.<\/p>\n<p>. . .<\/p>\n<p>[\u00b611] As noted above, the investigation of serious crimes has been deemed sufficiently important to outweigh certain interferences with the liberty interests of stopped motorists. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>[\u00b612] In contrast, the investigation of noncriminal offenses is generally not a sufficiently grave public concern to outweigh the interference with a motorist\u2019s liberty interest that occurs when the motorist is stopped without any reasonable articulable suspicion. <\/p>\n<p>. . .<\/p>\n<p>[\u00b616] The Fourth Amendment protects the individual\u2019s reasonable desire for privacy, which arises from \u201cthe right to be let alone\u2014the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.\u201d Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). Every traffic stop involves some degree of interference with that liberty interest because the motorist, whether law-abiding or not, loses the freedom to travel without interruption. The resulting intrusion on a person\u2019s individual autonomy is not insubstantial. In his testimony, the trooper agreed that once he initiated his stop of LaPlante\u2019s motorcycle by activating the blue lights of his cruiser, LaPlante was \u201cobligated to pull over,\u201d was \u201cnot free to leave,\u201d and was \u201cseized for [all] effective purposes.\u201d See Brewer, 1999 ME 58, \u00b6 12, 727 A.2d at 355 (discussing when an officer\u2019s interaction with a citizen constitutes a seizure). Furthermore, if law enforcement officers routinely stopped motorists to inquire about third-party speeding offenses, the aggregate damage to individual liberty would be great. <\/p>\n<p>[\u00b617] In addition, none of the elements that have been found to lessen the severity of the interference with the liberty interest when a motorist is stopped in the absence of reasonable articulable suspicion are present here. &#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>b2evALnk.b2WPAutP <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=5856\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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-5856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}