Reasonable Suspicion for a Traffic Stop: Brake Light

There is a misconception among Ohio law enforcement officers that having a broken taillight is a traffic violation. They use this “violation” as an excuse to pull a driver over in the late night hours who is otherwise not driving erratically. From there, things go from bad to worse as the officer smells alcohol and notes other indicia of impairment, asks the driver to exit the vehicle and perform Field Sobriety Tests, thus establishing probable cause for arrest without a warrant for DUI.

But the problem is that the Fourth Amendment requires reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to pull a vehicle over in the first place. Absent such reasonable suspicion, all evidence gathered pursuant to the stop must be suppressed. There is case law in Ohio which stands for the proposition that having only one functioning taillight is legal.

Thus if, at the suppression hearing, your attorney gets the officer to testify that the only reason that he pulled you over was for the broken taillight, then it would be reversible error for the trial court not to suppress all evidence from the stop and onward, leaving the prosecutor with no evidence to place before a jury.
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Reasonable Suspicion and Tipsters

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires that before the police can stop a motorist there must be reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed. Usually this reasonable suspicion arises out of the police officer’s observations of the motorist’s driving. An investigative stop of a motorist does not violate a suspect’s constitutional rights if the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the individual is engaged in criminal activity. Terry v. Ohio (1968), 392 U.S. 1 at 22.

“To justify a particular intrusion, the officer must demonstrate ’specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.’” Maumee v. Weisner (1999), 87 Ohio St.3d at 299. Evaluating the facts and inferences requires the court to consider the totality of the surrounding circumstances. State v. Freeman (1980), 64 Ohio St.2d 291 paragraph one of syllabus.

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