Pot is legal in RI, but court ruling says odor in car could lead to police search
PROVIDENCE – A week after the state Supreme Court upheld the suppression of evidence in a 2018 police traffic stop case that led to firearms charges, the high court Thursday ruled a lower court judge erred by keeping out evidence gathered at another stop one year later, where police confiscated 94 pounds of marijuana.
In the older case, the court said a Rhode Island state trooper lacked reasonable suspicion of criminal activity when he escalated a routine traffic stop into an unlawful search investigation.
In the 2019, unrelated case, however, the court said another trooper was legally entitled to use his observation of a stopped driver’s nervousness – as well as the smell of marijuana – to further explore possible wrongdoing.
Both cases involved stops made on Interstate 95, known for decades by law enforcement as a corridor for drug movement.
More on this case: Highway stop yields 94 lbs. pot
Traffic stop reveals 94lbs of marijuana
As retold in the ruling, late on the morning of May 29, 2019, Trooper Justin Andreozzi reportedly watched a black Ford Taurus sedan with a New York registration go by his parked location in the median under the Austin Farm Road overpass.
Andreozzi reported noticing that the sleeping passenger wasn’t wearing his seat belt. He pursued and stopped the car, he said, for the seat-belt violation.
The trooper reported that both men appeared nervous, and he detected the smell of marijuana coming from the car. The driver denied that they had any marijuana in the car. Andreozzi called for a backup officer, who arrived with a drug-sniffing dog that allegedly detected drugs in the trunk. A search revealed 94 pounds of pot.
Defense argues pot was decriminalized at the time, therefore not reason for search
At trial, the defense argued that since small amounts of marijuana had been decriminalized at that time, the trooper would have needed good evidence to know the car carried an amount of the drug over that limit to have legal grounds to search the car.
YOU CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE: How Interstate 95 became integral to life in Rhode Island
And the trial judge concluded that nervousness, coupled with the slight odor of marijuana and the location of the traffic stop being in a known drug trafficking corridor was insufficient to establish reasonable suspicion to prolong the stop.
But the high court disagreed.
Supreme Court rules the odor of marijuana is a factor in establishing reasonable suspicion
In its majority ruling, it sided with prosecutors and said “we reject defendants’ position that law enforcement officers may not rely upon the odor of marijuana, with no other facts indicating quantity, to establish reasonable suspicion. Such a standard would be impracticable to impose on law enforcement officers and their K-9 police dogs, who are specifically trained to identify the presence of scheduled narcotics through scent, regardless of quantity.”
“It is our opinion that the odor of raw or fresh marijuana, standing alone, remains a factor to be considered in a totality of the circumstances, reasonable suspicion of criminal activity analysis because possession of marijuana by an individual that exceeds the amounts permitted by statute remains a crime subject to arrest and prosecution.”
In similar case, the RI court sided with defense to suppress evidence
In a decision released last week, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision to suppress evidence stemming from a 2018 traffic stop where two men eventually faced firearms charges.
In that case, the trooper said he stopped the car on I-95 in Warwick after he spotted it abruptly changing lanes.
Their lawyers argued troopers unconstitutionally extended a traffic stop for investigative purposes without reasonable suspicion.
The high court, in a split decision, agreed, finding; “It is clear to us that this traffic stop … was prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete the mission of issuing a warning ticket,” adding a "reasonable suspicion of criminal activity did not exist" and affirming the lower court's decision to grant the defendants' motion to suppress.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI Supreme Court rules pot seized in traffic stop is admissible evidence
