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Lewis v. State

The officer lacked reasonable, articulable suspicion to justify the traffic stop an informant's tip prompted.

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In this interlocutory appeal, John Lewis contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress, arguing that a sheriff’s deputy lacked reasonable, articulable suspicion to justify the traffic stop at issue. For the reasons set forth infra, we agree and reverse the trial court’s denial of Lewis’s motion to suppress.

Construing the evidence in the light most favorable to uphold the trial court’s findings and judgment,1 the record shows that around 1 a.m. on January 2, 2011, a deputy of the Twiggs County Sheriff’s Office was dispatched to the area of West Clyde Moore Road in response to a call from an anonymous tipster about a suspicious vehicle driving very slowly in the area. The caller described the vehicle as a red Chevrolet Blazer and provided the license-plate number. Upon identifying a vehicle matching the caller’s description, the deputy observed that the vehicle was traveling at approximately 10 miles per hour, which the deputy described as being suspiciously slow,2 particularly because the deputy knew that 1 numerous metal thefts had occurred in the area late at night and 2 there was normally no traffic in that area between midnight and 2 a.m. And based on this knowledge and the vehicle’s extremely slow speed, the deputy suspected that the driver was “casing” a property. Accordingly, the deputy initiated a traffic stop.

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