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This opinion will be unpublished and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
A19-0195

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Randall Scott Seelye,
Appellant.

Filed February 3, 2020
Affirmed
Smith, Tracy M., Judge

Cass County District Court
File No. 11-CR-17-2171

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

Benjamin T. Lindstrom, Cass County Attorney, Walker, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Leslie J. Rosenberg, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Hooten, Pres iding Judge; Smith, Tracy M., Judge; and
Smith, John, Judge.
*

* Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Ap peals, 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
SMITH, TRACY M., Judge
On appeal from his conviction for first-degree possession of a controlled substance,
appellant argues that the district court e rred by not suppressing evidence fo und in a
warrantless search of his bag. We affirm.
FACTS1
On November 29, 2017, law enforcement officers pulled over a red Jeep after
noticing that the Jeep did not make a complete stop at a stop sign. After pulling the vehicle
over, the officer asked the driver for his drive r’s license. Neither the driver, nor appellant
Randall Scott Seelye, who was a passenger in the Jeep, had a valid driver’s license. The
officer asked if anyone in the vehicle had a weapon, and both occupants answered in the
negative. While the officer was checking the status of the dr iver’s licenses of the Jeep’s
occupants, however, the officer’s partner noticed a knife on Seelye’s right hip. The partner
told Seelye that he needed to remove the knife for safety reasons, and the partner removed
the knife without incident. Duri ng the traffic stop, a suspicious vehicle drove by twice at
slow speeds, but otherwise no traffic went by.
Because there were no legal drivers for th e car, the officer had both the driver and
Seelye step out of the vehicle. Seelye got out of the car, holding a black bag. The officer
asked him to either let the officers check the bag for weapons or leave the bag in the Jeep.
Seelye chose to leave the bag in the car. The officer then did a pat-down search of Seelye

1 The facts are based on officer testimony taken at a contested omnibus hearing.

3
for any weapons on his person but found only a phone charger and felt what the officer
thought was a large amount of cash. The office r also informed Seelye that he had called
for a tow truck because there were no legal drivers and he was concerned about where the
vehicle was parked.
While the officers and the two men waited fo r the tow truck, according to one of the
officers, Seelye’s phone was ringing nonstop. Seelye eventually answered it and began
walking away while speaking on the phone. The officer assumed that Seelye was speaking
with someone about coming to pick him up. As Seelye was walking away, the officer began
to search the contents of the black bag. Inside the bag, the officer found a digital scale and
other bags that he believed contained drugs. The officer then arrested Seelye and brought
him back to the squad car. When the tow truck arrived, the officer opened the smaller bags
and found that they containe d small plastic bags of a wh ite, crystalline substance. The
officer believed that the substance was me thamphetamine, which was confirmed by field
testing.
The state charged Seelye with first-de gree possession of a controlled substance.
2
Seelye moved the district court to suppress the evidence obtained from the search of his
bag. The district court denied the motion. Seelye then waived his right to a jury trial and
stipulated to the state’s evidence pursuant to Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 4, preserving
his right to appeal the suppression ruling.

2 Other counts, not relevant here, were ultimately dismissed by the state.

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The district court determined that, based upon the stipulated evidence, Seelye was
guilty of first-degree possession of a controlled substance and sentenced him to 90 months’
imprisonment.
This appeal follows.
D E C I S I O N
Seelye argues that the search of his bag was an illegal warrantless search. Both the
United States and Minnesota Constitutions pr ohibit unreasonable searches and seizures.
U.S. Const. amend. IV; Minn. Const. art. I, § 10. “In general, wa rrantless 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). There was no warrant
authorizing the police to search Seelye’s bag. Therefore, unless an exception to the warrant
requirement applies, the search was unconstitutional. State v. Ture, 632 N.W.2d 621, 627
(Minn. 2001). It is the state’s burden to dem onstrate that an exception to the warrant
requirement applies. Id.
Seelye does not claim that the traffic st op was invalid. Instead, he argues that the
state was not authorized to search his bag. Specifically, Seelye argues that an inventory
search was not justified because the impoundment of the Jeep was not warranted and that
no safety rationale justified requiring him to keep his bag in the car and subjecting it to a
search. The state counters that the search of Seelye’s bag was permitted as a valid inventory
search of an impounded vehicle and that office r safety justified not returning the bag to
Seelye unsearched. When eval uating a district court’s pr etrial order on a motion to

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suppress, appellate courts review the district court’s factual findings for clear error and its
legal determinations de novo. State v. Gauster, 752 N.W.2d 496, 502 (Minn. 2008).
Before evaluating the validity of the impoundment and the inventory search, we first
address the issue of why the bag was in th e Jeep when the car was impounded. Seelye
argues that the officer did not have a lega l basis to demand that he choose between
consenting to a search and l eaving his bag in the Jeep. The state responds that requiring
Seelye to choose was permissible because, if Seelye had kept the bag on his person, the
officer could have searched the bag based on the Terry exception to the warrant
requirement and the reasonable suspicion that Seelye had weapons in his bag.
The Terry exception stems from the United States Supreme Court’s holding in Terry
v. Ohio, which permits police to “stop and frisk a person when (1) they have a reasonable,
articulable suspicion that a suspect might be engaged in criminal activity and (2) the officer
reasonably believes the suspect mi ght be armed and dangerous.” State v. Dickerson, 481
N.W.2d 840, 843 (Minn. 1992) (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1884
(1968)), aff’d, 508 U.S. 366, 113 S. Ct. 2130 (1993). This frisk is a search that does not
require a warrant under the Fourth Amendment. Id. When determining whether reasonable,
articulable suspicion exists, appellate courts 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). “The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness . . . .” State
v. Johnson, 813 N.W.2d 1, 5 (Minn. 2012) (quotation omitted).

6
A stop that is initially valid may become unconstitutional “if it becomes intolerable
in its intensity or scope.” State v. Askerooth, 681 N.W.2d 353, 364 (Minn. 2004) (quotation
omitted). As such, “each incremen tal intrusion during a traffi c stop [must] be tied to and
justified by one of the following: (1) the original legitimate pur pose of the stop,
(2) independent probable cause, or (3) reasonableness, as defined in Terry.” Id. at 365.
“Furthermore, the basis for the intrusion must be individualized to the person toward whom
the intrusion is directed.” Id.
Seelye argues that officers did not have a reasonable suspicion that he was armed
and dangerous. It is true that Seelye was co mpliant with all of the officers’ requests and
that the Jeep was pulled over fo r a nonviolent traffic violati on. Nevertheless, Seelye told
officers that he did not have a weapon, even though he had a knife on his hip. While the
officer’s testimony indicates that Seelye allowed the officer to take the knife when he was
asked to do so, this does not change the fact that one of the officers discovered that Seelye
had a weapon despite saying that he did not.
Seelye’s apparent misrepresentation provided officers with an individualized basis
to suspect that he may have had another weapon in the bag. It was thus reasonable for the
officer to require Seelye to leave his bag in the Jeep as a precautionary measure. Leaving
the bag in the vehicle addressed the officer’s sa fety concerns and, at least for a time, also
allowed Seelye to maintain his privacy interest in the contents of the bag.
The officer also gave Seelye the option of keeping the bag on his person if he
consented to a search of it. The Fourth Amendment permits warrantless searches based on
voluntary consent. Johnson, 813 N.W.2d at 14 (citing Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S.

7
218, 219, 93 S. Ct. 2041, 2043-44 (1973)). This alternative approach would have also
addressed the officer’s safety concerns, and it would have permitted Seelye to keep the bag
on his person if he so chose. Seelye instead chose to put the bag in the vehicle.
We conclude that the officer acted w ithin constitutional bou nds when he gave
Seelye a choice between putting the bag in the vehicle and permitting officers to search the
bag. While the bag was subsequently searched when the vehicle was impounded, that is an
independent step of the analysis, separate from Seelye’s decision to put his bag in the Jeep
rather than permit officers to search his bag.
Turning to the issue of the inventory search , the state justifies the officer’s search
of Seelye’s bag as an inventory search of an impounded vehicle. Law enforcement officers
perform inventory searches on impounded vehicles “to protect an owner’s property while
it is in the custody of the polic e, to insure against claims of lost, stolen, or vandalized
property, and to guard the police from danger.” Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 372,
107 S. Ct. 738, 741 (1987). A warrant is not required to perform an inventory search.
Gauster, 752 N.W.2d at 502. To determine if an inventory search of an impounded vehicle
is reasonable, appellate courts examine “the propriety of the impoundment, since the act of
impoundment gives rise to the need fo r and justification of the inventory.” State v.
Goodrich, 256 N.W.2d 506, 510 (Minn. 1977). If impoundment was unnecessary, then the
resulting inventory search is unreasonable. Id.
For impoundment of a vehicle to be proper, “the [s]tate must have an interest in
impoundment that outweighs the individual’s Fourth Amendment right to be free of
unreasonable searches and seizures.” State v. Rohde, 852 N.W.2d 260, 264 (Minn. 2014)

8
(quotation omitted). Under this test, impoundm ent is appropriate to “remove from the
streets vehicles impeding traffic or thre atening public safety and convenience.” Id.
(quotation omitted).
The district court concluded that the offi cers reasonably believed that the vehicle,
as parked, was a safety risk because “it wa s nighttime, the vehicle was parked on a sharp
curve, and [Seelye’s] vehicle was taking up most of the traffic lane.” Seelye argues that the
district court’s factual findings were not sup ported by the record and that there was not a
reasonable belief in a safety hazard warranting impoundment.
Regarding the district court’s factual fi ndings, Seelye argues that testimony from
one of the officers stated that the vehicle was parked “near” a curve, not “on” it; that it was
only 5:30 p.m. so it was not nighttime; and that there was no testimony about the density
of traffic in the area or whether there was insufficient room to pass the stopped Jeep. Seelye
also argues that he should have been permitted to get his sister or his own tow company to
move the vehicle.
Based on the record evidence, the district court’s factual findings are not clearly
erroneous. The record shows that the stopped Jeep was in the path of potential traffic, as
the testimony established that there was no shou lder on the road and the squad car video
showed the stopped Jeep taking up most of th e traffic lane. The evidence also established
that it was already dark and there was a sharp curve in the road near where the vehicle was
stopped, so the vehicle also would have been difficult for other drivers to see. While it was
perhaps evening instead of nighttime, and the vehicle was “near” the curve instead of “on”

9
the curve, these minor inconsis tencies do not render the district court’s factual findings
clearly erroneous.
And these factual findings support the conc lusion that a reasonable concern of a
safety hazard justified impoundment. The fact that it was dark and the vehicle was taking
up most of the traffic lane make this case distinguishable from other inventory-search cases
where the Minnesota Supreme Court conclu ded that impoundment was not warranted
because there was no safety hazard. See Rohde, 852 N.W.2d at 262, 265 (holding that there
was nothing in the record that showed that a vehicle pulled over on a residential street was
interfering with traffic, blocking access to an y property, or otherwise causing a threat to
public safety); Gauster, 752 N.W.2d at 504 (holding that it was not clearly erroneous for
the district court to determine that leaving a vehicle on the sh oulder of a rural road in the
middle of the afternoon was not a safety haza rd). While Seelye points out that the record
does not show that there was a high density of traffic on the road in question, the density
of traffic is not the only consideration when evaluating if a stopped vehicle poses a safety
hazard.
The officers’ reasonable determination that the stopped Jeep was a safety hazard
also justifies their decision to immediately impound the vehicle rather than let Seelye call
his sister or his own tow company to move the vehicle. It is true that, when the driver has
not been arrested, law enforcement cannot generally take responsibility for a vehicle under
its caretaking function and impound it withou t allowing the driver to make their own
arrangements. See Rohde, 852 N.W.2d at 266. Here, however, officers did not impound the
vehicle as part of law enforc ement’s caretaking function, but instead did so because they

10
determined the vehicle was a safety hazard. It was not unreasonable for the officers to
immediately impound an unattended vehicle once they determined that the vehicle was a
safety hazard.
In sum, the officers’ decision to impound the Jeep was reasonable under the Fourth
Amendment because the car presented a safe ty hazard. Because the impoundment was
reasonable, the subsequent inventory search of Seelye’s bag was valid. The district court
did not err by not suppressing evidence resulting from the search.
Affirmed.