This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2016).
STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A16-0745
State of Minnesota,
Respondent,
vs.
Ralph Joseph Thunder,
Appellant.
Filed February 13, 2017
Affirmed
Connolly, Judge
Cass County District Court
File No. 11-CR-15-724
Lori Swanson, Attorney General, Edwin W. Stockmeyer, Assistant Attorney General,
St. Paul, Minnesota (for respondent)
Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, John C. Donovan, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)
Considered and decided by Reilly, Presiding Judge; Connolly, Judge; and
Bjorkman, Judge.
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
CONNOLLY, Judge
Appellant challenges his conviction of driving while impaired (DWI) on the ground
that the officer who stopped him did not have a reasonable articulable suspicion of criminal
activity because neither the informants’ tips nor appellant’s momentary weaving on his
motorcycle suggested criminal activity. Because we conclude that the officer who stopped
appellant did have a reasonable articulable suspicion of his criminal activity, we affirm.
FACTS
Shortly before midnight on April 25, 2015, a county dispatch service received two
complaints about an impaired motorcyclist. The first came from the resident of a house on
Highway 371, who reported that: (1) a motorcycle had stopped in her driveway; (2) she
believed the motorcyclist to be drunk because he fell repeatedly into a ditch at the side of
the road; and (3) a car pulled into the driveway a few minutes after the motorcycle. The
second complaint was from the driver of that car, who reported that: (1) he stopped to help
the motorcyclist, who seemed to be having trouble; and (2) the motorcyclist was male,
seemed to be drunk, smelled of alcohol, and could cause an accident.
The sheriff’s deputy who was notified of these complaints went north on Highway
371 in the direction of the residence. En route, he was told that the motorcyclist had left,
going north on the highway, so he continued going north past the residence for about a mile
and a half until he saw a motorcycle in front of him, also going north. He noticed that the
motorcycle was weaving very badly in the lane, feared that the motorcycle would crash or
be hit by another vehicle, and suspected that the driver was impaired. The deputy therefore
stopped the motorcycle. Its driver was appellant, whom he arrested for DWI.
Appellant was charged with two counts of first-degree DWI and one count of
driving after cancellation of his license. He moved to suppress the evidence on the ground
that the deputy who stopped him lacked a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity; his
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motion was denied. Appellant then stipulated to the prosecution’s case, pleaded not guilty,
waived his right to a jury trial, and submitted the issue of his guilt for a bench trial under
Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 4. The district court found appellant guilty of DWI—
alcohol concentration at 0.08 or above.
Appellant challenges his conviction, arguing that the stop was unlawful because the
deputy did not have a reasonable, articulable suspicion of appellant’s criminal activity.
DECISION
A limited investigatory traffic stop of a motor vehicle requires that the officer have
a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity, based on the totality of the
circumstances. State v. Morse, 878 N.W.2d 499, 502 (Minn. 2016). Trained police officers
are entitled to make deductions and draw inferences from all the circumstances, although
those deductions and inferences might well elude an untrained person. Id. This court
reviews a pretrial order concluding that a traffic stop was lawful de novo, but defers to the
district court’s factual findings unless they are clearly erroneous. Id. The requirement for
a lawful traffic stop is simply “that the stop not be the product of mere whim, caprice, or
idle curiosity.” Marben v. State, Dep’t of Pub Safety, 294 N.W.2d 697, 699 (Minn. 1980).
The district court found that, “[appellant] was weaving continuously within his own
lane of travel, which was testified to by [the deputy]. The squad video corroborates [the
deputy’s] testimony regarding [appellant] swerving severely multiple times within the
short distance he [was] in view before [the deputy] stopped him.” A review of the transcript
and the squad-car video shows that these findings are supported and by no means clearly
erroneous. “[C]ontinuous weaving within one’s own lane is sufficient by itself to create a
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reasonable articulable suspicion of criminal activity to support a traffic stop.” State v.
Dalos, 635 N.W.2d 94, 96 (Minn. App. 2001); see also Morse, 878 N.W.2d at 502
(upholding stop of pickup truck that squad-car video showed to be “drifting in its lane”);
State v. Ellanson, 293 Minn. 490, 490-91, 198 N.W.2d 136, 137 (1972) (upholding stop of
vehicle when officer observed vehicle weaving within its own lane, but not violating traffic
laws, because the officer “had a right to stop [the driver] to investigate the cause of the
unusual driving”). Thus, the weaving of appellant’s motorcycle was independently
sufficient to provide a reasonable articulable suspicion for the traffic stop.
Appellant relies on State v. Brechler, 412 N.W.2d 367, 368 (Minn. 1987) (affirming
suppression of evidence used to charge passenger with possession of cocaine and marijuana
on the ground that, absent any driving conduct suggesting criminal activity, officer who
“saw only that a car swerved on the road” lacked a basis for stopping the car). But Brechler
is distinguishable: the officer here saw a motorcycle weaving dangerously in a manner that
suggested the driver was intoxicated.
Moreover, the district court here, like the district court in Morse, did not rely
exclusively on the weaving but “correctly assessed the totality of the circumstances of the
stop.” Morse, 878 N.W.2d at 502. One circumstance was that the deputy had received
information from two independent sources that a motorcycle whose driver appeared
intoxicated was in the vicinity, traveling on the road and in the direction in which the officer
saw a motorcycle weaving continuously. Like the officer in Morse, the deputy “correctly
assessed the totality of the circumstances,” including the circumstance that the driver could
be severely injured if the motorcycle fell, and stopped the motorcycle.
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The district court’s factual findings were not clearly erroneous.
Affirmed.
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