Suggs v. The State

The trial court properly denied defendant's motion to suppress all evidence surrounding and including his arrest for DUI-less safe after a sheriff deputy conducted a traffic stop in his appointed territory but performed a DUI investigation and arrested defendant outside of the territorial boundary of his law enforcement agency.

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Rickman, Judge.

After personally observing appellant Scott Suggs commit several traffic offenses in Hall County, a Hall County deputy sheriff conducted a traffic stop in that county but crossed the county line in order to conduct an investigation and effectuate an arrest of Suggs for DUI-less safe. Suggs moved to suppress all evidence surrounding and including his arrest, contending that the deputy lacked the authority to investigate and/or arrest him outside of Hall County. The trial court agreed with Suggs that the deputy exceeded his authority outside of Hall County, but held that suppression of the evidence was not warranted because the arrest did not amount to a violation of Suggs’s constitutional rights. We granted Suggs’s motion for interlocutory appeal in order to review the trial court’s order. For the following reasons, we conclude that the trial court erred to the extent that it held that the deputy was not authorized to investigate and/or arrest Suggs outside of Hall County; we nevertheless affirm the trial court’s order denying Suggs’s motion to suppress as right for any reason.^{^[1]}The pertinent facts underlying Suggs’s motion are undisputed, and we therefore apply a de novo review to the trial court’s application of the law to the facts. See Mitchell v. State, ___ Ga. ___, *4 (Case No. S17A0459, decided June 26, 2017) (“When the evidence at a suppression hearing is uncontroverted and the credibility of witnesses is not in question, we conduct a de novo review of the trial court’s application of the law to the undisputed facts.”) (citation and punctuation omitted).The record shows that in September 2015, a Hall County deputy sheriff was on traffic enforcement duty at an intersection located in Hall County when he observed Suggs fail to bring his vehicle to a complete stop before entering the highway. The deputy followed Suggs for approximately two miles, during which he observed Suggs repeatedly cross the center lane of the highway and make a wide left turn.

Suggs v. The State

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