State v. Cortez

OPINION1

Brian Quinn, Chief Justice

At the suppression hearing, the trooper was asked: “So you’re telling the Court that because you see a van, it’s clean and it’s got two people in it, that [sic] was *918indicators of potential criminal activity for you?” The trooper answered: “Yes, sir, they are. They — in and of themselves are nothing, but in the total — when you start adding them all together, they can be.” When two people in a clean car indicate criminal activity, then the words of John Lennon have come to fruition: “Strange days indeed — most peculiar, mama.”3

Nonetheless, the foregoing…