The Associated Press | Posted: Friday, July 29, 2005 12:00 am
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - The Wyoming Supreme Court ruled that a California man's rights were violated when a state trooper asked him 30 questions about his personal life, including the name of the mascot of his son's college, during a traffic stop that led to a drug charge.
Trooper Ben Peech later found 5 pounds of marijuana in Kevin Francis O'Boyle's car after the traffic stop on Interstate 80 in February 2003. O'Boyle later pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance.
Peech crossed the line during his questioning, the justices said Thursday. The ruling allows O'Boyle to withdraw his guilty plea.
In the patrol car, Peech questioned O'Boyle extensively, Justice Marilyn Kite wrote for court, "asking him where he was headed, how long he planned to stay, where he was coming from, what he did for a living, how long he had been doing it, who was filling in for him while he was gone, how long his son had been in Boston, what college his son attended, what courses his son was taking … . "
Other questions included whether his son was living on campus, where O'Boyle would stay while visiting his son, why he was driving rather than flying, how many daughters he had, and the price of airfare from San Francisco to Boston.
"We hold that under all of the circumstances the questioning inside the patrol car was unreasonable and unconstitutional," Kite wrote. "We further hold that Mr. O'Boyle's consent to additional questioning outside the patrol car and his consent to the search were not voluntary under (the Wyoming Constitution)."
Justice Barton Voigt offered a specially concurring opinion.
"It is simply not reasonable to ask a motorist who had the misfortune of going 79 in a 75 mph zone in Wyoming the name of his son's college mascot, because the answer to that question is simply not related to the four mph excess," he wrote.
Voigt said the issue centered on how much leeway officers should be given to interrogate motorists to uncover information that might justify a search for controlled substances.
"The real question should be, given the major drug problem facing this country and the huge amount of drugs being transported on our nations highways, what investigatory steps directed at drug interdiction are constitutionally reasonable in a traffic stop situation," he wrote. "Would that not be better than pretending that the name of the motorist's son's college mascot is somehow relevant to a speeding violation?"
The case is O'Boyle vs. State of Wyoming, 2005 WY 83.
On the Net: http://courts.state.wy.us/2005opn/2005WY83.pdf
Information from: Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, http://www.wyomingnews.com