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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF ALASKA
LINDA M. GOODLATAW, )
) Court of Appeals No. A-4541
Appellant, ) Trial Court No. 3GL-92-010 Cr
)
v. )
) O P I N I O N
STATE OF ALASKA, )
)
Appellee. ) [No. 1286 - February 26,
1993]
________________________________)
Appeal from the District Court, Third Judi
cial District, Glennallen, Glen C. Anderson,
Judge.
Appearances: Michael Dieni, Assistant Public
Defender, and John B. Salemi, Public
Defender, Anchorage, for Appellant. David G.
Berry, Assistant District Attorney, Kenneth
J. Goldman, District Attorney, Palmer, and
Charles E. Cole, Attorney General, Juneau,
for Appellee.
Before: Bryner, Chief Judge, and Coats and
Mannheimer, Judges.
MANNHEIMER, Judge.
Linda M. Goodlataw pleaded no contest to driving while
intoxicated, AS 28.35.030(a), after the district court denied her
motion to suppress the evidence against her. When she entered
her plea, Goodlataw reserved the right to appeal the district
court's decision of her suppression motion. See Cooksey v.
State, 524 P.2d 1251 (Alaska 1974). We affirm.
Goodlataw was arrested and charged with driving while
intoxicated after State Trooper Bruce Heck stopped her car and
administered intoxication tests to her. Goodlataw claimed that
Heck had had insufficient basis for stopping her. At the eviden
tiary hearing, Heck testified that he had been on duty at the
Glennallen trooper post in the early morning of February 26,
1992, when he received a telephone call from a woman who told him
that Linda Goodlataw had just left the caller's house in Copper
Center. The caller said that Goodlataw was driving home to
Tazlina, and she told the trooper that Goodlataw had had quite a
bit to drink and was intoxicated. Heck asked the caller for her
name, but she declined to give it.
Heck was acquainted with Goodlataw and knew the car she
drove. Heck asked the caller if Goodlataw was driving her usual
gray Chevrolet sedan; the caller said yes.
Acting upon this information, Heck left the trooper
post and began driving toward Copper Center. As he reached the
highway exit for Copper Center, he saw Goodlataw's car approach
the exit and make a turn toward Tazlina. Heck turned his vehicle
around and followed the car. He tried to observe the way the
driver was handling the car, but heavy snow and blowing wind
hampered his vision and made this impossible. Despite his
inability to observe any instance in which the driver's driving
was noticeably impaired, Heck decided to stop the car. Goodlataw
was in fact the driver. Heck gave her field sobriety tests and,
based on her performance, Heck arrested her.
Judge Glen C. Anderson upheld the trooper's actions,
relying on this court's decision in Effenbeck v. State, 700 P.2d
811 (Alaska App. 1985). In Effenbeck, this court upheld a
traffic stop under similar facts. Kenai had begun a community
program that encouraged people to report drunk drivers. Prompted
by this program, a citizen called the police to report an
intoxicated driver; the citizen described the suspect vehicle and
its location. Under the guidelines of the program, the citizen
was not asked to give his name to the authorities. A police
officer who responded to the citizen's call found the described
vehicle and pulled it over, even though the officer had seen no
impaired driving. Id. at 812.
On appeal, Goodlataw argues that there are "subtle"
differences between the facts of her case and the facts of
Effenbeck. She asserts that there is less reason to believe that
the anonymous informer in her case was a disinterested "citizen
informer", and that therefore, Trooper Heck had not sufficiently
corroborated the caller's reliability when he pulled Goodlataw
over.
These two concepts - the category of "citizen informer"
(as opposed to the traditional "police informer" who comes from
the criminal milieu), and the neccesity for police corroboration
of an informer's tip - come from the law of probable cause as
delineated in Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12
L.Ed.2d 723 (1964), and Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410,
89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969). However, an investigatory
stop need not be supported by probable cause; reasonable
suspicion is sufficient. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct.
1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); Ebona v. State, 577 P.2d 698, 700
(Alaska 1978); Coleman v. State, 553 P.2d 40, 43-47 (Alaska
1976).
Terry, Ebona, and Coleman establish that police
officers have the authority to briefly detain citizens for
investigative purposes even when the police lack probable cause
to make an arrest. Requiring the police to satisfy the
Aguilar/Spinelli test (that is, establish probable cause) to
uphold an investigative stop would be fundamentally inconsistent
with Terry, Ebona, and Coleman. We recognize that the Effenbeck
opinion makes frequent reference to the various aspects of the
Aguilar/Spinelli test when evaluating whether the anonymous
citizen's report of a drunk driver gave the police reasonable
suspicion to stop the described vehicle for further
investigation. While the Aguilar/Spinelli test provides a useful
framework for evaluating the trustworthiness of hearsay reports,
that test cannot be determinative of a police officer's ability
to make an investigative stop.
Judge Anderson decided that the concededly "subtle"
differences between the facts of Effenbeck and the facts of
Goodlataw's case did not invalidate Trooper Heck's decision to
make an investigative stop of Goodlataw's car. This conclusion
was not clearly erroneous.
The judgement of the district court is AFFIRMED.
