Panel says officer’s traffic stop unjust

A sick passenger was not cause enough for a Fayetteville police officer to make a traffic stop that resulted in the driver’s 2014 arrest and conviction for drunken driving, a court ruled.

On Wednesday, a threejudge panel of the Court of Appeals voided the search and subsequent evidence collected against William Meeks of Fayetteville when police pulled over the then-22-yearold after witnessing a passenger in Meeks’ car throw up.

In the ruling, Chief Judge Robert Gladwin wrote that the sight of a seemingly sick passenger was not grounds for criminal suspicion or a sign that the officer needed to intervene to help, reversing a lower court’s decision against suppressing the evidence collected after Meeks’ traffic stop in March 2014.

“Whether due to a stomach virus, a gastrointestinal

condition, eating too much, drinking alcohol, or any combination of these things, none of the things is illegal in Arkansas,” Gladwin wrote. “At this point, there existed no fact that could give rise to reasonable suspicion or probable cause of any crime or traffic violation in the mind of an objectively reasonable officer knowing what [the officer] knew at the time.”

Fayetteville police officer Kristin Mercado was on patrol about 1 a.m. the day of the arrest when she spotted Meeks’ SUV parked in the lot of a closed business. Someone was throwing up on the lot from inside the parked vehicle.

The officer pulled into the lot and behind Meeks. The officer saw the passenger close the door and Meeks pull on to the street.

Mercado said she saw nothing criminal and Meeks did not violate any traffic laws, but she flashed her blue lights and pulled him over. She detected alcohol and arrested Meeks. Meeks entered a conditional guilty plea after Washington County Circuit Judge Mark Lindsay denied Meeks’ motion asking that the evidence be suppressed because of an illegal search. Meeks was found guilty in February 2015.

Meeks appealed a month

later, arguing that there was no criminal or traffic violation and that by flashing her blue lights, Mercado initiated an unlawful “seizure” in violation of U.S. and Arkansas constitutional protections for warrantless searches.

State attorneys argued that the officer was exercising a well-established right and role of law enforcement as “community caretaking.”

Gladwin wrote that past cases protecting officers’ proactive actions did not apply to Meeks’ stop and that the officer was not responding to a call, that Mercado never witnessed any sign that Meeks or his passenger needed help, and that there was no “objective basis” to think that a sick passenger was in “immediate need of medical assistance or was in imminent danger.”

“Although the police have the right to respond to emergency situations, the Fourth Amendment [of the U.S. Constitution] bars police from engaging in warrantless

seizure based on an alleged medical condition,” Gladwin wrote. “When viewed objectively, there are no facts that could lead a reasonable person to think that either Meeks or his passenger was in immediate need of medical assistance.”

The case will return to Washington County Circuit Court.