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This opinion will be unpublished and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
A17-0655

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Sherman Lee Williams,
Appellant.

Filed February 26, 2018
Affirmed
Peterson, Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-16-13794

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

Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Jonathan P. Schmidt, Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)

Mary Moriarty, Fo urth District Public Defender, James A. Kamin, Assistant Public
Defender, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Reyes, Presiding Judge; Peterson, Judge; and Bjorkman,
Judge.

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U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
PETERSON, Judge
In this appeal following his conviction of felon in possession of a firearm, appellant
challenges a pretrial order that denied his motion to suppress evidence seized from him
after the investigatory stop of a car in which he was a passenger. We affirm.
FACTS
On May 23, 2016, at about 3:30 a.m., Officer Dylan Pearson and his partner were
on patrol near Broadway Street in Minneapolis when a car attracted Pearson’s attention ,
and he decided to conduct “a routine registration check” of the car’s license plate. The
check revealed that the registered owner of the car had an outstanding felony arrest warrant
for first -degree aggravated robbery, so Pearson and his partner decided to stop the car.
They did not have a physical description of the car’s owner.
They activated their squad car’s emergency lights, and the car stopped momentarily
at a semaphore and soon after came to a full stop. A passenger in the left rear seat
immediately got out of the car and ran away; Pearson left his squad car and chased the
fleeing person because he thought the person was the driver. But as Pearson ran toward
the car, he saw that the driver and a front-seat passenger were in the car . With his gun
drawn, Pearson ordered the car’s occupants to stop and put their hands up. The driver
ignored the commands and drove off. Multiple squad cars with overhead emergency lights
and sirens activated chased the fleeing car for several minutes through residential streets
and alleys at speeds up to 90 miles per hour . The car finally stopped in an alley, and its
two occupants fled in opposite directions.

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Within 20 seconds of losing sight of the front-seat passenger, Pearson went to the
end of the alley and saw a person who he believed to be the front-seat passenger. The
person, who was later iden tified as appellant Sherman Lee Williams, was walking at a
normal pace as he crossed a street, and he looked like the person that Pearson had just seen
leaving the car and running through yards. Pearson testified that the neighborhood is
“typically fairly quiet” at that time of night, and he “believed that there was a real
possibility that [Williams] was the passenger.” At first, Williams ignored Pearson’s
directives to stop, but Williams then stopped, and he complied when he was ordered to the
ground at gunpoint and handcuffed. Williams “was sweating quite a bit,” and a search
revealed that he possessed a handgun.
Williams was charged with felon in possession of a firearm in violation of Minn.
Stat. § 624.713, subd. 1(2) ( Supp. 2015). The district court denied Williams’s motion to
suppress evidence obtained by the police during the search , ruling that the police “had
articulable suspicion to both detain and frisk [Williams] based on the reasonable prospect
that [Williams] was subject to an active felony arrest warrant, and the fact that [Williams]
had just fled the scene of a felony stop.” The district court denied Williams’s motion for
reconsideration. Following that ruling, Williams stipulated to the state’s case in a trial to
the court in order to obtain appellate review of the pretrial ruling. The district court found
Williams guilty and imposed a 60-month executed sentence, stayed pending this appeal.
D E C I S I O N
When we review a district court’s pretrial order on a motion to suppress evidence,
the district court’s factual findings are reviewed for clear erro r. State v. Eichers , 853

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N.W.2d 114, 118 (Minn. 2014) (citation omitted) . “But legal determinations, such as
whether there was a seizure and, if so, whether that seizure was unreasonable, are reviewed
de novo.” Id.
Legality of the Vehicle Stop
Individuals are guaranteed the right to be free from unreasonable searches and
seizures. U.S. Const. amend. IV; Minn. C onst. art. 1, § 10. In Minnesota, this right
“requires application of Terry[1] principles to traffic stops.” State v. Askerooth , 681
N.W.2d 353, 364 (Minn. 2004). “A Terry analysis involves [the] dual inquiry” of “whether
the stop was justified” and “wh ether the actions of the police . . . were reasonably related
to and justified by the circumstances that gave rise to the stop.” Id. Demonstration of
“reasonable suspicion” is not demanding, but requires more than an “unarticulated hunch”
without additio nal objectively articulable facts. State v. Davis, 732 N.W.2d 173, 182
(Minn. 2007) (quotation omitted); see State v. Waddell, 655 N.W.2d 803, 809 (Minn. 2003)
(requiring investigatory stop to be based on more than “mere whim, caprice, or idle
curiosity” (quotation omitted)).
Pearson testified at the suppression hearing that (1) the car initially attracted his
attention because of its location and the time of day; (2) he and his partner initially
attempted to stop the car because the registered owner was subject to a felony arrest

1 In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1884 (1968) , the Supreme Court ruled
that police may stop and conduct a weapons frisk of a suspect if they observe “unusual
conduct” and reasonably conclude “that criminal activity may be afoot” and the suspect
“may be armed and presently dangerous.”

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warrant; (3) their interest intensified when the first passenger fled the car; and (4) it was
Williams’s act of fleeing from the car that caused police to pursue and seize him.
Williams does not contest the legality of the warrantless registration check of the
car’s license plate. “A driver does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a license
plate number which is required to be openly displayed.” State v. Setinich, 822 N.W.2d 9,
12 (Minn. App. 2012); see New York v. Class , 475 U.S. 106, 114, 106 S. Ct. 960, 966
(1986) (stating that “it is unreasonable to have an expectation of privacy in an object
required by law to be located in a place ordinarily in plain view from the exterior of the
automobile”). Because police could investigate the car’s license plate for any reason, they
were not subject to Terry requirements when they decided to run the plates on the car.
Williams argues, however, that, after running the pla tes, police lacked reasonable
suspicion to stop the car because they had not observed any violation of the law and they
chose not to use their squad -car computer to acquire a physical description of the subject
of the warrant . We disagree. In State v. Pi ke, 551 N.W.2d 919, 922 (Minn. 1996), the
supreme court considered the validity of an investigatory stop of a vehicle that was based
on an officer’s knowledge that the owner of the vehicle had a revoked driver’s license.
Citing State v. Duesterhoeft, 311 N.W.2d 866 (Minn. 1981), t he supreme court explained
that, “[w]hen an officer observes a vehicle being driven, it is rational for him or her to infer
that the owner of the vehicle is the current operator.” Pike, 551 N.W.2d at 922. Then,
based on this inference, the supreme court held
that it is not unconstitutional for an officer to make a brief,
investigatory, Terry-type stop of a vehicle if the officer knows
that the owner of the vehicle has a revoked license so long as

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the officer remains unaware of any facts which would render
unreasonable an assumption that the owner is driving the
vehicle.

Id. (emphasis added).
Williams argues that, when the supreme court said “so long as the officer remains
unaware,” it did not mean so long as the officer “remains deliberately unaware.” Williams
contends that the holding of Pike, which allows a stop so long as the officer remains
unaware, means that the officer remains unaware after a good -faith effort to acquire
additional information. But nothing in Pike suggests that the supreme court intended to
require that police make a good -faith effort to acquire additional information about the
owner of a vehicle before inferring that the owner is the current operator. Instead, the
supreme court noted that it found in Duesterhoeft that the officer who stopped a truck
reasonably suspected that the owner of the truck was the person driving the truck even
“though it was not evident from the facts that the officer had any reason to believe that the
owner was driving.” Pike, 551 N.W.2d at 922. Pike does not require police to make an
effort to acquire information about a vehicle’s owner before inferring that the vehicle’s
owner is its operator.
Legality of Williams’s Seizure
Williams argues that police lacked a reasonable suspicion to seize him after he ran
from the car. He contends that, (1) “[e]ven if, under Pike, the police officers in this case
could initiate a car stop, there is absolutely nothing in Pike that would allow an inference
that anyone other than the driver was the registered owner ”; and (2) expanding the
inference in Pike to anyone found within the vehicle undercuts Minnesota’s longstanding

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requirement of individualized articulable suspicion. But Williams’s seizure after he ran
from the car was not based on an inference that Williams was the registered owner.
The justification for the initial vehicle stop was that police learned that the registered
owner of the car had a current felony arrest warrant for first -degree aggravated robbery,
and they inferred that the owner was driving the car. As a passenger, the initial vehicle
stop included Williams, but it was not based on an individualized suspicion about Williams.
Unlike the initial vehicle stop, however, Williams’s seizure after he ran did not occur until
after the following events occurred: (1) a passenger immediately fled from the car when it
briefly stopped, ( 2) the driver ignor ed police commands during the in itial stop , ( 3) the
driver engaged in a high-speed chase in a residential neighborhood, and (4) the driver and
Williams fled when the car stopped a second time.
Because Williams was not the driver, his fleeing from the car after it stopped is the
only act of fleeing that can be directly attributed to him; as a pass enger, he may not have
chosen to engage in the high -speed chase. But when the car stopped, he fle d on foot. In
State v. Houston, this court recognized that “[h]eadlong flight—wherever it occurs—is the
consummate act of evasion: It is not necessarily ind icative of wrongdoing, but it is
certainly suggestive of such.” 654 N.W.2d 727, 733 (Minn. App. 2003) (quoting Illinois
v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 12 4, 120 S. Ct. 673, 676 (2000)), review denied (Minn. Mar.
26, 2003).
In light of the information about th e outstanding warrant and the high-speed chase
that had just occurred, it was reasonable for Pearson to suspect that criminal activity might
be afoot and that the driver and any passenger in the car could be armed and dangerous.

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State v. Dickerson, 481 N.W.2d 840, 843 (Minn. 1992) (during valid Terry stop, permitting
frisk of a defendant if police reasonably suspect that the defendant could be armed and
dangerous), aff’d, 508 U.S. 366, 113 S. Ct. 2130 (1993). The initial attempt to stop the car
and the ch ase that followed , together with Williams’s fleeing, created a reasonable
suspicion of criminal activity that justified Williams’s seizure. We therefore reject
Williams’s assertion that “there are no logical inferences of wrongdoing that may be
inferred from the flight of the passenger under all the circumstances of this case.”
Police concern for their own safety also justified seizing Williams at gunpoint .
Concern for police safety is the touchstone of a Terry stop. Terry, 392 U.S. at 30 -31, 88
S. Ct. at 1884-85. Under the facts presented, i t was reasonable for police to suspect that
any of the car’s occupants could be armed. “An officer is justified in proceeding cautiously
with weapons ready if he is making a reasonable investigatory stop and has cause to believe
an individual may be armed.” State v. Ailport, 413 N.W.2d 140, 144 (Minn. App. 1987).
At 3:30 a.m., each of the occupants was in a car connected to a felony that involved the use
of a dangerous weapon or the infliction of bodily harm. See Minn. Stat. § 609.245, subd. 1
(2014) (stating that, “[w]hoever, while committing a robbery, is armed with a dangerous
weapon or any article used or fashioned in a manner to lead the victim to reasonably believe
it to be a dangerous weapon, or inflicts b odily harm upon another, is guilty of aggravated
robbery in the first degree ”). When the car was finally stopped, Williams ran. At that
point, Pearson had reason to believe that anyone in the car may be armed.
Finally, although Williams makes a plausib le argument that he fled because he
feared what the police would do to him, t he legality of a Terry stop depends on the

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reasonableness of police suspicions about the suspect’s participation in criminal activity,
not on the subjective beliefs of the defenda nt. See Davis, 732 N.W.2d at 182. Under all
of the circumstances of this case, p olice suspicions that criminal activity was afoot were
reasonable.
Affirmed.