Search & seizure; Motion to suppress evidence obtained after an investigatory stop; “Reasonable suspicion”; People v Champion

In an order in lieu of granting leave to appeal, the court reversed the Court of Appeals judgment (see e-Journal # 75960 in the 8/16/21 edition) and reinstated the trial court’s order granting defendant’s motion to suppress and dismissing the charges. The court held that the record did not support the determination that the officers knew defendant was the driver of the car when they made the traffic stop. Thus, a detective’s prior knowledge of defendant had “no bearing on whether the officers had a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity at the time the stop was made.” The court found that the majority of the Court of Appeals panel “clearly erred by considering that knowledge in concluding that reasonable suspicion existed.” The Court of Appeals majority also erred in relying on a deputy’s (P) “training and experience that hand-to-hand drug transactions were likely transpiring when the owner of the house was present because [P] did not discover that the owner was present at the time of the alleged drug transaction until after the traffic stop. Further, the majority’s reliance on the exchange of money in the driveway of a house known as a place where people sold drugs was flawed. As noted by” the dissenting Court of Appeals judge, Judge Shapiro, P conceded “he did not observe any other activity on that day indicative of drug activity. And despite the claim that it was known as a drug house, probable cause had never been established to search the home.” This left P’s observation of the car’s passenger “giving money to the driver of the car and the driver counting it. Without more,” this observation failed to “support a finding of reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. [P] did not observe the passenger take anything from the driver in return for the money.” As a result, his observation amounted to no “more than an inchoate or unparticularized suspicion or ‘hunch,’” and the trial court did not err in its ruling.

Dissenting, Justice Viviano concluded that, considered as a whole, the evidence here gave “rise to a reasonable suspicion sufficient to justify a stop. While it is certainly true that the exchange of money outside a house might not otherwise be suspicious to a lawyer or judge, [P’s] testimony indicates that the manner of the exchange here would reasonably raise the suspicions of an experienced police officer. In light of the information the officers received that the house was being used for drug sales, the decision to stop defendant reflects ‘commonsense judgments and inferences about human behavior.’”