California Criminal Lawyers Blog

The great thing about the Fourth Amendment, Santa Ana Defense Attorney Vincent Howard believes, is that police can't just pull you over or knock on your door without a reason.

This protects the average citizen from Santa Ana drug charges or an arrest for murder or even DUI in Santa Ana if police don't have any good reason to investigate.

In State of South Dakota v. Shanna C. Starkey, the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled that when police pulled her over for allegedly evading police, they didn't have probable cause. So, even though she was charged with DUI, the charges were dropped when evidence they collected was suppressed.

In any criminal case, police must have what's called probable cause in order to even begin an investigation. This is a reasonable suspicion to believe someone is committing a crime. For drivers, it means an officer must have a good excuse to pull a vehicle over in the first place. From Santa Ana Defense Attorney Vincent Howard's experience, in DUI cases this typically means if a person is speeding, swerving, runs a red light or stop sign or otherwise drives erratically, they get pulled over.

For other types of crimes, this could boil down to officers busting into a person's house or business in search of evidence of a crime. Typically, this requires a search warrant that is signed by a judge, but in some cases even the affidavit in support of a search warrant is flawed, giving police access to a place on bad terms.

In this case, according to court records, police pulled over Shanna Starkey last July because they believed she was trying to evade them. An officer was on patrol when he stopped at a red light. A vehicle behind him left a parking place and pulled behind him, stopping four to five car lengths behind his cruiser, though there were no cars and no traffic in between them.

When the light turned green, the officer drove straight, but the woman turned left. The officer decided to follow the vehicle, turning left at the next two intersections to try to find the woman. Stopped at a stoplight, he found the woman and followed. She drove into a church parking lot, through an alley and down several streets until she came back in front of the bar where she started.

The officer followed and pulled the woman over, saying, "Looks like you're doing a lot of work trying to avoid me," and he arrested her for driving under the influence.

This is where Santa Ana Criminal Defense Attorney Vincent Howard would file a motion to suppress evidence and that's exactly what the woman's defense lawyer did. The court ruled in favor of the woman, stating that there were no traffic violations that should have prompted the pursuit. Simply being suspicious doesn't justify a police officer's stop.

In this case, however, the state's high court overturned the decision, writing that by attempting to evade police, the woman opened up herself to possible investigation and that the evasive driving created reasonable suspicion that "criminal activity was afoot."