In People v. Crane (App. Term, 2d Dept., 1/27/2010), the Second Appellate Term reversed an order of the Justice Court of the Town of New Windsor, which had granted the defendant's motion to suppress. The defendant had been stopped by a trooper for various traffic infractions. During the course of the stop, the trooper noted that the defendant's speech was slurred and that the defendant smelled of alcohol. The trooper also observed that the defendant's eyes moved rapidly and that the defendant was unable to complete two field sobriety tests successfully. Subsequently, the trooper arrested the defendant for DWI and related traffic infractions.
The Justice Court held a Mapp/Dunaway hearing and determined that, while the trooper had an "adequate predicate" to stop the defendant's vehicle, the People had failed to establish probable cause to arrest the defendant. In so holding, the Justice Court relied principally on the trooper's opinion that the defendant might have been under the influence of alcohol. In other words, the court said, the trooper had "reservations" about probable cause.
However, the Appellate Term held that Justice Court's reliance on the subjective opinion of the trooper was wrongly placed. Rather, Justice Court should have examined "whether a reasonable person with the trooper's expertise, and in the trooper's position, would have had probable cause for the arrest." A suppression court must determine the existence of probable cause from an objective analysis of the relevant facts, rather than from a witness's subjective conclusion about whether probable causes exists.
Applying this test to the facts as recorded from the Mapp/Dunaway hearing, the Appellate Term found that probable cause existed to arrest the defendant for DWI. (JTR/LC)
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