State v. Chicoine

V 1. Defendant Philip Chicoine entered a conditional guilty plea to one count of felony possession of cocaine, 18 V.S.A. § 4231(a)(2), after the district court denied his motion to suppress evidence discovered in the course of a police officer’s pat-down following a traffic stop. On appeal, the State did not seek to justify the warrantless search as a frisk for weapons, but defended the court’s conclusion that the pat-down was reasonable as incident to a valid arrest for drug possession. We find, however, that the investigating officer lacked probable cause to arrest, so the war-rantless…