State v. Painter

The issues in this case concern the point at which a police-citizen encounter becomes a “stop” within the statutory definitions and the sources of authority to make the stop.

The suppression motion was argued below on the theory that the officer had no justification for the stop. Defendant asserted that the officer had insufficient facts to form a reasonable suspicion of defendant’s involvement in some crime. The state argued that reasonable suspicion in fact existed. The state’s argument assumed, of course, that a stop occurred at the time of the initial encounter. The trial court found…