State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2018).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A19-0016

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Keith Ward Hohlen,
Appellant.

Filed January 6, 2020
Affirmed
Worke, Judge

Stearns County District Court
File No. 73-CR-16-10701

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Janelle P. Kendall, Stearns County Attorney, Kyle R. Triggs, Assistant County Attorney,
St. Cloud, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Jenna Yauch-Erickson, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Worke, Presiding Judge; Connolly , Judge; and Jesson,
Judge.
2
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
WORKE, Judge
Appellant argues that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress drug
evidence because the police did not possess a reasonable articulable suspicion to seize him.
We affirm.
FACTS
On October 12, 2016, Officer Merkling of the St. Cloud Police Department was
performing traffic duty when he ran appellant Keith Ward Hohlen’s license plate through
the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. The tags on Hohlen’s license
plate indicated a valid registration, but the NCIC database indicated that the truck was
registered to a dealership in Farming, and that the registration had expired in November
2015. Suspecting that Hohlen’s registration tags were stolen, Officer Merkling stopped
Hohlen’s truck.
Officer Merkling provided Hohlen’s registration information to dispatch, but did
not receive their response because he was speaking with Hohlen at the time. During his
conversation with Hohlen, Officer Merkling observed a strong odor of unburnt marijuana
coming from the truck. In response to Officer Merkling’s questioning regarding whether
he had any marijuana in his truck or on him , Hohlen turned over a small amount of
marijuana and a pipe. 1 During a search incident to arrest, Officer Merkling discovered a
plastic sandwich bag in Hohlen’s pocket that also contained marijuana which, when

1 Hohlen does not challenge his arrest. He only challenges the basis for the seizure.
3
combined with the amount he initially turned over, weighed 63 grams. Hohlen was charged
with fifth-degree drug possession.
Hohlen moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that Officer Merkling lacked a
reasonable articulable suspicion to justify the initial traffic stop. The district court denied
the suppression motion, and the matter was submitted to the district court on stipulated
evidence pursuant to Minn. R. Civ. P. 26.01, subd. 4. The district court found Hohlen
guilty and sentenced him to a year-and-a -day stayed sentence, with 34 days in jail. This
appeal followed.
D E C I S I O N
Hohlen argues that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress because
Officer Merkling’s suspicion that his registration tags were stolen was not reasonable.
“When reviewing a district court’s pretrial order on a motion to suppress evidence, we
review the district court’s factual findings under a clearly erroneous standard and the
district court’s legal determinations de novo.” State v. Gauster, 752 N.W.2d 496, 502
(Minn. 2008) (quotation omitted).
Officer Merkling pulled Hohlen over because he suspected that the registration tags
on Hohlen’s vehicle were stolen. 2 Police officers can conduct limited traffic stops to
investigate suspected criminal activity when they can “point to specific and articulable

2 Hohlen asserts that Officer Merkling provided no explanation for stopping his truck, but
this assertion is not supported by the record. Officer Merkling was asked what concerns
he had regarding the registration tags, to which he responded that in previous cases people
“will try to take a registration sticker off of a different vehicle or put it on another vehicle,
or sometimes they are stolen from a vehicle and placed on a different vehicle[,]” and then
testified that he pulled the vehicle over and inspected the tags.
4
facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant
that intrusion.” State v. Britton, 604 N.W.2d 84, 87 (Minn. 2000) (quoting Terry v. Ohio ,
392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1880 (1968)). This court has noted two requirements for a
constitutional investigatory stop of a motor vehicle: the suspicion must be particularized to
the individual vehicle, and the stop must be objectively reasonable. State v. Cox, 807
N.W.2d 447, 450-51 (Minn. App. 2011).
Hohlen argues that Officer Merkling’s suspicion that his registration tags were
stolen was not objectively reasonable and was not particularized to his truck. Hohlen
asserts that Officer Merkling’s sus picion was not objectively reasonable because Officer
Merkling testified that he was aware that the NCIC database could be wrong. However,
Hohlen’s characterization of Officer Merkling’s testimony is not supported by the record.
Officer Merkling acknowledged that “[t]here are things that could be incorrect” in
the NCIC database, but the surrounding context of that statement makes Officer Merkling’s
reliance on the database objectively reasonable. In full, Officer Merkling stated: “Every
time I’ve used [the NCIC database] it’s been accurate or up to date. There are things that
could be incorrect in there but I’ve never really encountered anything that’s been out of the
ordinary or incorrect.” Similarly, Officer Merkling stated that he has experienced delays
in the system where “it comes back registered to a dealership.” However, Officer Merkling
went on to explain that “usually, the driver . . . is able to provide me with some different
paperwork that I visually confirm but that – it never comes back delayed through the system
like that. I’ve never seen it.”
5
In similar circumstances, this court held that “[w]hen a license plate displays 2010
tabs, but a computer check indicates that the vehicle’s registration expired in 2008, it is
objectively reasonable for an officer to infer that the 2010 tabs may have been stolen.” Id.
at 451. Here, Officer Merkling’s search of the NCIC database indicated that Hohlen’s
registration expired in November 2015, despite the valid November 2016 tag on the plates.
While Officer Merkling indicated that he was aware of delays in the NCIC database,
nothing in his testimony either undermined the reasonableness of his reliance on the
database, or provided an explanation for the one- year discrepancy3 between the reported
expiration of Hohlen’s registration and the tags displayed on his truck. Therefore, in
accordance with Cox, Officer Merkling possessed an objectively reasonable articulable
suspicion that Hohlen’s tags were stolen.
Hohlen next argues that Officer Merkling’s suspicion was not particularized to his
truck, because the state only presented evidence that Hohlen’s tags did not match the
database. Hohlen argues that the stop of his truck is analogous to the stop in Britton, where
the supreme court stated that the mere presence of a broken car window, standing alone, is
insufficient to support a reasonable suspicion that the vehicle had been stolen. 604 N.W.2d
at 88. The supreme court reversed the district court’s decision denying Britton’s
suppression motion because “the officer’s stated rationale for stopping this car would
support stopping any car at all with a broken window.” Id. at 89.

3 An employee of the Stearns County License Center testified that a three- month delay is
normal, but no evidence was presented which would explain a one-year delay.
6
Here, however, Officer Merkling could point to facts about this specific vehicle that
made him suspect it was displaying stolen registration tags, namely, that the NCIC database
indicated that the registration had been expired for nearly a year, even though the vehicle
displayed valid registration tags. As stated in Cox, this mis- match provided Officer
Merkling with an objectively reasonable basis to suspect that Hohlen’s tags had been
stolen. 807 N.W.2d at 451. Because Officer Merkling possessed an objectively reasonable
suspicion of theft particularized to Hohlen’s truck, the district court did not err by denying
his suppression motion.
Finally, Hohlen asserts a number of violations of his constitutional rights in his pro
se brief and claims that the district court judge should have been disqualified. Because
Hohlen does not support his assertions with either argument or authority, they are forfeited.
State v. Anderson, 871 N.W.2d 910, 915 (Minn. 2015) (“An assignment of error based on
mere assertion and not supported by any argument or authorities in appellant’s brief is
waived and will not be considered on appeal unless prejudicial error is obvious on mere
inspection.” (quotation omitted)).
Affirmed.