State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2016).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A16-1814

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Melissa Ann Donarski,
Appellant

Filed August 21, 2017
Affirmed
Worke, Judge

Polk County District Court
File No. 60-CR-15-1087

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Greg Widseth, Polk County Attorney, Scott A. Buh ler, Assistant County Attorney,
Crookston, Minnesota (for respondent)

Jade M. Rosenfeldt, Vogel Law Firm, Moorhead, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Kirk, Presiding Judge; Worke, Judge; and Smith, John,
Judge.*

* Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, serving by appointment pursuant to
Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10.

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U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
WORKE, Judge
Appellant challenges her second-degree driving-while-impaired (DWI) conviction,
arguing that the district court erred in determining that the stop of her vehicle was supported
by a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity. We affirm.
FACTS
On July 1, 2015 , at approximately 12:32 a.m., O fficer Kenneth Dionne received a
call from dispatch reporting a “suspicious vehicle” that had been “ parked in or near the
complainant’s driveway” for approximately 15 minutes. The vehicle’s headlig hts and
taillights were on, but the complainant did not see anybody in the vehicle. The complainant
provided a license-plate number, which the dispatcher ran and found that the vehicle was
registered to appellant Melissa Ann Donarski.
Officer Dionne knew the complainant’s name and the address. As the office r
approached the area, a rural and lightly traveled region, he observed the vehicle moving
southbound and then turn eastbound onto County Road 23, which go es through Tabor
Township. Officer Dionne observed the vehicle moving very slowly, ten or twenty mil es
an hour. Officer Dionne also saw the vehicle’s brake lights come on several times; the
vehicle appeared to “slow[] down randomly,” and its reverse lights came on one time.
When Officer Dionne reached Tabor, Donarski’s vehicle was no longer on the
county road; rather, the vehicle was traveling on a dike, a grass-covered area that is 3 or 4
feet high and approximately 15 feet wide. The dike is not for public use, it is not paved, it
has no street lights, and it is not marked with any signage. The dike has some vehicle

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tracks from moving farming machinery. The purpose of the dike is to keep water out of
Tabor, which is on the north end of the dike, a “large ditch that is filled with water during
the flooding seas on” is to the south. Officer Dionne has patrolled through Tabor
approximately 500 times and has never seen anyone drive on the dike.
Officer Dionne watched Donarski drive to the east end of the dike, turn around, and
drive back westbound. Officer Dionne watched Donarski dri ve up and down the dike a
couple of times. Officer Dionne drove on County Road 23 parallel to Donarski as she
drove on the dike. When they reached a gravel road, Officer Dionne stopped Donarski.
Donarski told the officer that she had been d rinking earlier. The officer smelled
alcohol and observed that Donarski’s speech was slurred and mumbled. Donarski failed a
preliminary breath test. After her arrest, Donarski was read the implied-consent advisory
and ag reed to take a breath test, which measured Donarski’s alcohol content at 0.17.
Donarski was charged with two counts of second-degree DWI.
Donarski moved to suppress the test results and dismiss the charges , arguing that
Officer Dionne lacked a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity to stop her .
Following a hearing, the district court denied Donarski’s motion, concluding that, while no
single factor provided reasonable suspicion , Officer Dionne had reasonable suspicion to
stop Donarski based on all of the circumstances. Donarski agreed to stipulate to the state’s
evidence, pursuant to Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 4, to preserve appellate review of the
pretrial ruling. The district court found Donars ki guilty of one count of second-degree
DWI. This appeal followed.

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D E C I S I O N
When reviewing a district court’ s pretrial order on a motion to suppress evidence,
this court reviews the district court’ s factual findings for clear error and it s legal
determinations de novo. State v. Gauster, 752 N.W.2d 496, 502 (Minn. 2008). This court
reviews questions of reasonable suspicion de novo, considering the totality of the
circumstances in determining whether a stop is justified. State v. Britton, 604 N.W.2d 84,
87 (Minn. 2000).
Donarski argues that her seizure was unconstitutional because Officer Dionne failed
to state a subjective reasonable suspicion for the seizure. The United States and Minnesota
Constitutions prohibit unreasonable searches and seizu res. U.S. Const. amend. IV; Minn.
Const. art. I, § 10. Subject to limited exceptions, warrantless searches are per se
unreasonable. Katz v. United States , 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S. Ct. 507, 514 (1967). An
investigatory stop is an exception to the warrant requirement. State v. Diede, 795 N.W.2d
836, 842 (Minn. 2011) (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868 (1968)).
An officer may conduct “a brief, investigatory stop when the officer has a
reasonable, articulable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot.” Illinois v. Wardlow, 528
U.S. 119, 123, 120 S. Ct. 673, 675 (2000) (citing Terry, 392 U.S. at 30, 88 S. Ct. at 1884).
The reasonable, articulable suspicion standard is “not high.” State v. Bourke, 718 N.W.2d
922, 927 (Minn. 2006) (quotation o mitted); Magnuson v. Comm’r of Pub. Safety , 703
N.W.2d 557, 560 (Minn. App. 2005) (stating that the factual basis required to justify an
investigatory stop is minimal).

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Contrary to Donarski’s assertion, an officer’s suspicion must satisfy an objective
test, rather than a subjective test. See State v. Smith, 814 N.W.2d 346, 351 (Minn. 2012)
(“To be reasonable, the basis of the officer’s suspicion must satisfy an objective, totality -
of-the-circumstances test.”). This objective test requires consideration of whether “‘the
facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure [would] warrant a man of
reasonable caution in the belief that the action taken was appropriate.’”
State v. Askerooth, 681 N.W.2d 353, 364 (Minn. 2004) (quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 21-22,
88 S. Ct. 1880).
Further, Officer Dionne articulated a subjective belief of reasonable suspicion. At
the hearing on Donarski’s motion, Officer Dionne testified that, after considering the
information he received fro m dispatch and his observations , he “didn’t know if it was
somebody looking for some place to break into. . . . [I]f there was some kind of a medical
situation. . . . [Or] if it was a drunk driver.” Officer Dionne stated that his “first inclination
was that it might be somebody looking to break into something.” He testified that he
“didn’t know if the person who had been in the vehicle had gotten out and . . . went over
to the reporting party’s house or garage or broke into something.” Thus, Officer Dionne
indicated a subjective basis for developing “ a reasonable, articulable suspicion tha t
criminal activity [was] afoot.” See Wardlow, 528 U.S. at 123, 120 S. Ct. at 675.
Donarski asserts that even if an objective basis is required, the distr ict court still
erred in finding that Offic er Dionne possessed reasonable suspicion to seize her because
the totality of the circumstances did not create reasonable suspicion.

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An investigatory stop is justified if it “was not the product of mere whim, caprice or
idle curiosity, but was based upon specific and articulable facts which, taken together with
rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.” State v. Anderson,
683 N.W.2d 818, 823 (Minn. 2004) (quotations omitted); State v. Cripps, 533 N.W.2d 388,
391 (Minn. 1995) (stating that reasonable suspicion must be based on “specific, articulable
facts” that permit the officer to articulate his “particularized and objective basis for
suspecting the seized person of criminal activi ty”). Appellate courts consider the totality
of the circumstances, recognizing that the “special training of police officers may lead them
to arrive at inferences and deductions that might we ll elude an untrained person.”
Askerooth, 681 N.W.2d at 369 (quotations omitted); see State v. Morse, 878 N.W.2d 499,
502 (Minn. 2016) (stating that an officer’s reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal
activity to conduct a stop is based on the totality of the circumstances).
Here, a citizen called 911 to report a suspicious vehicle parked in or near his
driveway. An investigatory stop “need not arise from the personal observations of the
police officer but may be derived from information acquired from another person.”
Magnuson, 703 N.W.2d at 560. An informant’s tip may justify an investigatory stop if it
has “sufficient indicia of reliability.” Id. “Identified citizen informants are presumed to
be reliable,” id., and officers may rely on an informant if he “provides suffic ient
[identifying] information so that he may be located and held accountable for providing
false information.” Playle v. Comm’r of Pub. Safety , 439 N.W.2d 747, 748 (Minn. App.
1989). Use of a 911 call system is an “indicator of veracity,” because a 911 call system
has “features that allow for identifying and tracing callers,” which provides “safeguards

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against making false reports with immunity.” Navarette v. California , 134 S. Ct. 1683,
1689 (2014).
The citizen ide ntified himself to the dispatcher . He described the vehicle and
provided the license -plate number. He reported that the vehicle had been parked for
approximately 15 minutes with its headlights and taillight s on. In addition to this
information from dispatch, Officer Dionne observed the veh icle drive very slowly; brake
sporadically; shift into reverse (as indicated by the reverse lights); and drive on a dike,
which in his 15 years of patrolling the area at least 500 times he had never observed. See
State v. Richardson, 622 N.W.2d 823, 825 (Minn. 2001) (stating that an officer’s personal
observations, coupled with police dispatch information, may provide a sufficient
particularized and objective basis to suspect the driver is engaged in criminal activity). As
the district court found, much o f this conduct is “highly unusual.” See In re Welfare of
G.M., 560 N.W.2d 687, 691 (Minn. 1997) (stating that the reasonable-articulable-suspicion
standard may be met when an officer “observes unusual conduct that leads the officer to
reasonably conclude in light of his or her experience that criminal activity may be afoot”).
The district court determined that no single factor provided reasonable suspicion to
conduct a stop. But an officer may have reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigatory
stop based on a combination of factors even when no single factor alone would justify a
stop. Terry, 392 U.S. at 22, 88 S. Ct. at 1880-81. The district court here “correctly assessed
the totality of the circumstances” in concluding that, when combined, the facts sufficiently
supported an objective determination of reasonable suspicion. See Morse, 878 N.W.2d at
502 (stating that Morse’s argument relied “on the contention that neither the wide right

8
turn nor the single weave alone would have justified the stop, but the district court did not
rely on any single factor”; instead, it correctly assessed the totality of the circumstances).
Affirmed.