State v. Jody William Solom, 2024AP691-CR, 3/19/25, District II (recommended for publication), case activity
Solom appeals from a judgment convicting him of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated (OWI), sixth offense. He asserts the investigative stop was unlawful and should have been suppression. COA disagrees and affirms.
Police received a dispatch relaying the report of a witness who had observed a red Honda Civic “go through a stop sign and hit a snowbank,” and reported that the car was drove away, damaged. Two to three minutes later, the officer saw a vehicle matching the description, and followed the car. He then saw the car “varying speeds, increasing speed, decreasing speed, as well as weaving within its own lane” and believed the driver might be intoxicated. The officer did not see the front of the car prior to stopping it. The circuit court denied Solom’s suppression motion, concluding that the officer had lawfully stopped him. (¶¶3-7).
Solom again contends that the officer lacked reasonable suspicion to stop him “because he lacked particularized reasons to believe [Solom’s red Honda Civic] was the same vehicle that had crashed into a snowbank.” COA cites to State v. Richey, 2022 WI 106, 405 Wis. 2d 132, 983 N.W.2d 617, a case in which the officer received a report of erratic driving and saw a motorcycle that matched the description given, but did not personally observe any erratic driving or any other traffic violation despite following for several blocks. The court in Richey concluded that although it was “a close question” the officer did not have reasonable suspicion to stop the motorcycle because, “[t]o clear the reasonable-suspicion threshold, [the officer’s] suspicions had to be particularized.” The Richey court also pointed to a handful of reasons why the motorcycle in question might not have been the one from the report.
Here, on the other hand, when the officer saw the Civic, the facts and circumstances corresponded with the information from the report. (¶15). The officer also observed a “control issue” with the car, that was consistent with having control issues causing a collision. (¶16). The court rejects Solom’s argument that particularized reason to believe he was driving the car in question required the officer to see the damage on the vehicle before the stop.
COA concludes that under the totality of the circumstances here, the officer had reasonable suspicion as it is “much closer to a slam dunk” than Richey.
