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This opinion will be unpublished and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
A19-0038

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Jennifer Tasha Stiel,
Appellant.

Filed December 16, 2019
Reversed
Jesson, Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-17-29812

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

Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Nicole Cornale, Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Rochelle Winn, Assistant Public
Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Ross, Pr esiding Judge; Rodenberg, Judge; and
Jesson, Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
JESSON, Judge
After appellant Jennifer Tasha Stiel asked an officer to retrieve her purse from a car
being impounded by police, the officer searched Stiel’s purse and found methamphetamine.

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Stiel filed a motion to suppress the drugs, alleging that the officer’s warrantless search of
her purse was unconstitutional. Because we conclude that no exception to the warrant
requirement applies, and as a result, that the district court erroneously denied her motion,
we reverse.
FACTS
While on patrol, an Edina police officer noti ced a car drive by with a crack in the
front windshield. The officer ran the car’s license plate and discovered that the registered
owner had an active misdemeanor warrant. After comparing the owner’s description with
the driver of the car, the officer concluded th at the driver could be the car’s owner. The
officer pulled the car over and asked the driver for her license and proof of insurance. The
driver told the officer that she did not have a driver’s license and gave him her state-issued
identification card, which identified her as appellant Jennifer Tasha Stiel. Stiel explained
to the officer that the car belonged to her friend and gave the officer an expired insurance
card that was in the car.
The officer ran a license check on S tiel and learned that she had an active
misdemeanor warrant in another county related to driving after revocation. According to
the officer, in Edina, a police officer can give someone with an outstanding misdemeanor
warrant the option to pay cash ba il to the officer at the scene rather than being taken into
custody. Pursuant to this policy, the officer testified that he returned to the car, asked Stiel
to step out of the vehicle, and presented her with these options to resolve her warrant. Stiel
elected to pay the cash bail, called her mother to bring her the money, and told the officer
that her mother was on her way.

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During this time, the officer decided to tow the car b ecause the registered owner
was not present, and the car did not have valid insurance. Stiel asked the officer to get her
purse, which was still in the car. The officer re trieved it, but before giving the purse to
Stiel, the officer searched it “incident to arrest.” Accord ing to the officer, Stiel “would
have been, technically under arrest for the warrant and [he] was going to tow the vehicle,”
so he needed to search the purse to check for any weapons. At the bottom of Stiel’s purse,
the officer found a plastic bag containing a “w hite crystalline” substance that the officer
believed was methamphetamine. Subsequently, the officer told Stiel she was under arrest
for possession of a controlled substance, handcuffed her, and asked her to sit on the curb.
Another police officer arrived, and that o fficer watched Stiel while the first officer
completed an inventory search of the car. While monitoring Stiel, the second officer
observed a plastic baggie sticking out of Stiel’s bra, and Stiel told the officer that the bag
contained methamphetamine. The officers called for a female officer, and once she arrived,
she removed the plastic baggie from Stiel’s bra. The substances found in Stiel’s purse and
bra tested positive as methamphetamine, weighing 16.182 grams.
The state charged Stiel with one count of third-degree posse ssion of a controlled
substance. Before trial, Stiel filed a motion to suppress the methamphetamine on the basis
that both the stop and the search of her purse were illegal. At a hearing on the motion, the
state presented testimony from the officer who stopped Stiel and searched her purse. The
officer testified about the stop and search, as described above. In his testimony, the officer
clarified that at the time he searched Stiel’s purse, she had been fully cooperative, and she
had not exhibited any behaviors th at led the officer to believe he was in danger. He also

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explained that he told Stiel that paying th e cash bail would satisfy the warrant and she
would not be transported to jail. The officer testified that “typically they are under arrest
until they are able to obtain bail money” but not ed that after discovering the drugs, Stiel
“was now in custodial arrest.” Further, he st ated that he did not handcuff Stiel until after
he searched her purse.
The district court denied Stiel’s motion to suppress. In doing so, the district court
concluded that the officer had a basis to stop Stiel and that it was reasonable for the officer
to search Stiel’s purse based on officer safety concerns. Alternatively, the district court
determined that impoundment of the vehicle was reasonable because the vehicle did not
have valid insurance, and as a result, could not be driven lawfully. The district court
therefore concluded that the purse would have been searched inevitably as part of the
inventory search.
After the denial of her motio n to suppress, Stiel waived her right to a jury trial and
stipulated to the state’s case pursuant to rule 26.01, subdivision 4 of the Minnesota Rules
of Criminal Procedure, preserving her right to appeal the suppression ruling. The district
court found Stiel guilty of third-degree possession of a controlled substance and sentenced
her to 49 months in prison. Stiel appeals.
D E C I S I O N
Stiel challenges the denial of her mo tion to suppress the methamphetamine.
Specifically, Stiel argues that no exception to the warrant requirement allowed the officer’s
warrantless search of her purs e. When evaluating a district court’s pretrial order on a

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motion to suppress, we review factual findi ngs for clear error and legal determinations
de novo. State v. Gauster, 752 N.W.2d 496, 502 (Minn. 2008).
Both the United States and Minnesota Co nstitutions prohibit unreasonable searches
and seizures. U.S. Const. ame nd. IV; Minn. Const. art. I, § 10. “In general, warrantless
searches and seizures are unreasonable in the absence of a legally recognized exception to
the warrant requirement.” State v. Horst, 880 N.W.2d 24, 33 (Minn. 2016). Here, police
did not have a warrant authorizing the search of Stiel’s purse. Therefore, unless an
exception to the warrant requirement app lies, the search of Stiel’s purse was
unconstitutional. State v. Ture, 632 N.W.2d 621, 62 7 (Minn. 2001). And it is the state’s
burden to demonstrate that an exception to the warrant requirement applies in a particular
case. Id.
Here, the state contends that three excep tions to the warrant requirement justified
the officer’s search of Stiel’s purse: (1) the “stop-and-frisk” exception stemming from
Terry v. Ohio , 392 U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868 (1968), (2) the se arch-incident-to-arrest
exception, and (3) the doctrine of inevitable discovery. We review each exception in turn.
The Terry Exception
The state first argues that the Terry exception to the warrant requirement applies
here. The Terry exception permits police to “stop and frisk a person when (1) they have a
reasonable, articulable suspicion that a suspec t might be engaged in criminal activity and
(2) the officer reasonably believes the suspect might be armed and dangerous.”
State v. Dickerson, 481 N.W.2d 840, 843 (1992) (citing Terry, 392 U.S. at 30, 88 S. Ct. at
1884), aff’d, 508 U.S. 366, 113 S. Ct. 2130 (1993). When determining whether reasonable,

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articulable suspicion exists, we consider the totality of the circumstances, including that
police officers’ specialized training may allow them to make inferences or deductions that
might elude an untrained person. State v. Flowers, 734 N.W.2d 239, 251-52 (Minn. 2007).
Here, the district court concluded that th e search of Stiel’s purse was reasonable
based on officer safety concerns. In reaching this conclusion, the district court stated that
“[e]ven during a routine stop, it is not reasonable that an officer would provide a detained
person with a purse without searching it first for weapons and contraband.”
But the district court did not point to any specific facts that would provide the officer
with reasonable, articulable suspicion that Stiel was armed or dangerous. Nothing in the
officer’s testimony indicates that he had a par ticularized basis to suspect that Stiel may
have weapons warranting a search of her purse. In fact, the officer acknowledged that she
was cooperative and provided him with the info rmation that he requested. Further, when
asked on cross-examination if he had any reas on to consider Stiel a danger to his safety,
the officer indicated that Stie l “had not exhibited any behaviors.” Finally, the officer
stopped Stiel for an equipment violation and then learned she had a warrant for driving
after license revocation—both of which are nonviolent offenses. None of these facts give
rise to the reasonable, articulable suspicion required for the Terry exception to apply.
Our analysis is bolstered by State v. Varnado, 582 N.W.2d 886 (Minn. 1998). In
Varnado, officers stopped a driver for a cracked windshield and asked for her driver’s
license. 582 N.W.2d at 888. The driver said she did not have it, and officers frisked her
and placed her in the back of a police car. Id. During the frisk, officers discovered drugs.
Id. at 889. The Minnesota Supreme Court concluded that officers had no reason to believe

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that the driver was armed or dangerous, noting the “innocuous nature” of the stop, that the
driver cooperated with officers and “did not make any furtive or evasive movements,” and
that officers had no reason to believe the driver had a criminal history. Id. at 890.
Several similarities are present here. The officer stopped Stiel for a cracked
windshield and the car owner’s outstanding mi sdemeanor warrant. Stiel cooperated with
the officer, and the officer testified that Stiel did not behave in a way that made him believe
he was in danger. Although the state points to some factual differences—including that
Stiel did have a criminal history, an outstan ding warrant, and that the officer was alone
with Stiel—none of these factors gave the officer a particularized basis to suspect Stiel was
armed or dangerous. Accordingly, the Terry exception to the warrant requirement does not
provide a basis for the search of Stiel’s purse.
Search Incident to Arrest
Next the state argues that the search of S tiel’s purse was a valid search incident to
arrest. “A search incident to a lawful arre st is a well-recognized exception to the warrant
requirement under the Fourth Amendment.” State v. Bernard , 859 N.W.2d 762,
766 (Minn. 2015), aff’d sub nom. Birchfield v. North Dakota, 136 S. Ct. 2160 (2016). The
purpose of the exception is twofold: to prevent the destruction of evidence and to remove
“any weapons the arrestee might use to resist arrest or flee.” Ture, 632 N.W.2d at 628.
Under this exception, an arres ting officer may search both “( 1) the arrestee’s person, and
(2) the area within the arre stee’s immediate control.” State v. Bradley, 908 N.W.2d 366,
369 (Minn. App. 2018). And the scope of a se arch incident to arrest is very broad,

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permissibly including “pockets, containers , and even the passenger compartment of
automobiles.” Varnado, 582 N.W.2d at 893.
The essential question for our search-inciden t-to-arrest analysis is at what point was
Stiel arrested. “[T]here is a fine line between an arrest a nd an investigatory detention.”
State v. O’Neill, 216 N.W.2d 822, 827 (Minn. 1974). And it is not always clear exactly
when an arrest occurs. Id. “The ultimate test to be used in determining whether a suspect
was under arrest is whether a reasonable person would have c oncluded, under the
circumstances, that he was under arrest and not free to go.” State v. Beckman ,
354 N.W.2d 432, 436 (Minn. 1984).
Here, the officer discovered that Stiel had an active warrant for driving after
revocation. He informed Stiel about the warrant and asked her to step out of the vehicle.
At that point, the officer informed Stiel of the policy allowing her to pay cash bail to satisfy
the warrant. He permitted Stiel to call her mo ther, and Stiel informed the officer that her
mother was on the way. Although the offi cer testified that Stiel “would have been,
technically under arrest” based on the warrant, nothing in the record indicates that the
officer told Stiel she was under arrest, handcuffed her, or placed her in the squad car before
finding the drugs in her purse. See State v. Lohnes, 344 N.W.2d 605, 610 (Minn. 1984)
(concluding that suspect was arrested when pla ced into squad car, le ft there for three to
four hours, handcuffed, and accompanied by police in all of his movements). Based on
these facts, a reasonable person in Stiel’s position would not believe they were under arrest
until she failed to pay the ca sh bail to the officer. See Vivier v. Comm’r of Public Safety,
406 N.W.2d 587, 589 (Minn. App. 1987) (opening a car door did not constitute an arrest).

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Accordingly, we conclude that Stiel was not arrested until after the officer found the drugs
in her purse, handcuffed her, and told her she was under arrest.
Still, the state contends that Stiel was u nder arrest until the warrant was sufficiently
addressed, either by posting cas h bail or by booking her in jail. But in the officer’s
testimony, he acknowledged that the discovery of the drugs “technically changed the status
of her arrest situation,” meaning that “she was no longer able to post bail on the side of the
road . . . she was now in custodial arrest.” This testimony suggests that before the discovery
of the drugs, Stiel was not yet arrested. Further, the officer never testified that he indicated
to Stiel that she was under arrest until the warrant was satisfied. Regardless of whether the
officer knew or thought that Stiel “would have been, technically under arrest,” the test for
whether an individual is arrested involves “whether a reasonable person would have
concluded, under the circumstances, that he was under arrest and not free to go.” Beckman,
354 N.W.2d at 436 (emphasis added). And it is not clear that a reasonable person in Stiel’s
position would ha ve believed they were under arrest when the officer searched Stiel’s
purse. Further, it is the state’s burden to es tablish that this exception to the warrant
requirement applies. Ture, 632 N.W.2d at 627. And here , the state failed to demonstrate
that Stiel was under arrest before the offi cer searched her purse . Accordingly, the
search-incident-to-arrest exception does not apply.
Inevitable Discovery
Finally, the state contends that if we conclude that neither Terry nor the
search-incident-to-arrest exception permitted the officer’s search of Stiel’s purse, the
methamphetamine is still admissible under the doctrine of inevitable discovery. According

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to the state, if the officer did not give Stie l her purse, it would have been in the car and
subject to the inventory search conducted before the car was impounded.
In cases where a search violated the warra nt requirement, seized evidence can still
be admissible “[i]f the state can establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the fruits
of a challenged search ultimat ely or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful
means . . . .” State v. Licari, 659 N.W.2d 243, 254 (Minn. 2003) (quotation omitted). And
the doctrine of inevitable discovery does not involve “speculative elements” but instead
“focuses on demonstrated historical facts capable of ready ve rification or impeachment.”
Id.
Here, discovery of the drugs was not inevitable because leaving the purse in the car
was not inevitable. The facts here refute the state’s argument to the contrary. Stiel asked
the officer to retrieve her purse. And the officer gave it to her. For this reason, we conclude
that the state failed to demonstrate that Stiel’s purse would have been searched inevitably
pursuant to an inventory search.
In sum, the state has not met its burden of demonstrating that an exception to the
warrant requirement justified the office r’s warrantless search of Stiel’s purse. T u r e,
632 N.W.2d at 627. As a re sult, the officer’s search of Stiel’s purse was illegal.
Accordingly, the district court erred in denying Stiel’s motion to suppress.
Reversed.