COLUMBUS, Ohio—The Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to decide whether a state trooper was justified in stopping a Cincinnati woman who turned out to be driving drunk after a passerby yelled to the trooper, “Hey, stop that vehicle -- that lady is drunk.”
The high court’s ruling in the case will affect how people in Ohio can alert law enforcement about potential crimes without having the subsequent detention of the suspect be inadmissible in court under the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Two lower courts ruled that trooper Jacques Illanz didn’t have the “reasonable suspicion” needed to waylay Tidwell, as Illanz acted on an anonymous tip of uncertain credibility.
On Nov. 11, 2017, Illanz was in a Speedway gas station parking lot investigating a nearby accident when a customer called out to him and directed his attention to Sherry Tidwell, who was very slowly backing her Hummer out of a parking space, according to court documents. Illanz motioned for Tidwell to stop, but when she continued slowly moving, the trooper stood in front of her vehicle.
Illanz testified that when Tidwell rolled down her window at his request, her eyes were bloodshot, her speech was slurred, and the inside of her vehicle smelled of alcohol. A field sobriety test showed she had a blood alcohol concentration of .213, more than two and a half times the legal limit.
The customer, who was instructed by the gas-station clerk to alert the trooper, left the scene without identifying himself, Illanz said.
Ohio’s First District Court of Appeals ruled that the customer’s shout to Illanz wasn’t enough to justify the trooper stopping Tidwell, because the unknown customer’s warning was an anonymous tip that couldn’t be tested and there were no other signs that Tidwell was doing anything wrong.
"Specifically, the tip did not contain any detail,” the appeals court ruling stated. “The customer did not say, for example, that Tidwell was falling down drunk or consuming alcohol inside the Speedway, or nearly hit something while driving to the Speedway.”
The rationale for such a standard, the court continued, is to prevent people from pulling pranks or using law enforcement to seek revenge or settle a grudge.
Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Melynda Machol, in her appeal to the Supreme Court, asserted that the appeals court ruling “will serve to cripple police officers performing their duties by forcing them to wait until preventable tragedies occur or until facts, far in excess of those traditionally required to develop a reasonable suspicion, make themselves known.”
Machol continued: “For example, if the Speedway customer here had witnessed a kidnapping and yelled to the trooper – ‘Hey, stop that car! That lady just kidnapped a baby!’ – the First District’s decision requires the trooper to seek proof that first, there was a baby, and second, that there was a kidnapping, all while the kidnapper speeds away.”
The Supreme Court, without comment, voted 4-3 to accept the case. Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and Justices Judith French and Sharon Kennedy dissented.
The court has not yet scheduled oral arguments in the case.
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