State of Minnesota, Appellant,

This opinion will be unpublished and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
A19-0596

State of Minnesota,
Appellant,

vs.

Matthew William Vos,
Respondent.

Filed November 18, 2019
Reversed and remanded
Jesson, Judge

Rice County District Court
File No. 66-CR-18-2264

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

John L. Fossum, Rice County Attorney, Terence Swihart, Assistant Coun ty Attorney,
Faribault, Minnesota (for appellant)

John A. Price III, John A. Price III, P.A., Lakeville, Minnesota (for respondent)

Considered and decided by Bratvold, Presiding Judge; Bjorkman, Judge; and
Jesson, Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
JESSON, Judge
An officer responding to a report of a su spicious vehicle activated his emergency
lights as he pulled in behind the car, which wa s parked along the side of a dark, deserted
rural road with its lights off. The state argues that the district court erred by granting

2
respondent Matthew William Vos’s motion to suppress evidence of impairment on the
basis that Vos was unlawfully seized when the officer activated his emergency lights. We
reverse and remand.
FACTS
On September 20, 2018, Officer Schleicher t of the Lonsdale Police Department
received a report of a suspicious vehicle parked on the side of the road at a rural intersection
in Rice County at approximately 9:10 p.m. When Officer Schleichert arrived at the
location, he saw a car parked on the side of the road, w ith its lights off, at an unlit
intersection. Another officer was also present at the scene. The sky was completely dark.
Officer Schleichert pulled in behind the parked car and activated his emergency lights.
Officer Schleichert approached the car and found respondent Matthew William Vos
in the driver’s seat. Vos was nonresponsive to the officer’s questions and his eyes were
bloodshot and watery. Officer Schleichert asked Vos to step out of the vehicle. When Vos
failed to comply with that request, the officer opened the car door and escorted him out of
the vehicle. The officer obs erved a liquor bottle on the fl oor between Vos’s legs. The
officer administered field-sobriety tests, which indicated that Vos was impaired. Vos was
arrested after failing a preliminary breath te st. After submitting to a breath test which
showed that Vos had an alcoho l concentration of 0.25, Vos was charged with two counts
of second-degree driving while impaired (DWI).
Vos moved to suppress the evidence obtaine d as a result of the allegedly unlawful
seizure and to dismiss the charges against him for lack of probable cause. The district court

3
granted Vos’s motion to suppress a nd dismissed all of the charges, 1 finding that Vos was
illegally seized when Officer Schleichert activated his em ergency lights because “Vos
could not have reasonably concluded that he was at liberty to igno re the police presence
and go about his business.”2 This appeal follows.
D E C I S I O N
Because this is a pretrial prosecution appeal, we first determine whether the district
court’s order suppressing the evidence and di smissing the charges for lack of probable
cause had a critical impact on the outcome of the trial, before turning to the state’s assertion
that the district court’s seizure analysis was erroneous. See State v. Trei, 624 N.W.2d 595,
597 (Minn. App. 2001) (“[A] reviewing court will reverse only if the state demonstrates
clearly and unequivocally that the district court erred in its judgment and, unless reversed,
the error will have a critical impact on the outcome of the trial.”), review dismissed (Minn.
June 22, 2001); see also Minn. R. Crim. P. 28.04, subd. 2(2)(b). “Dismissal of a complaint
based on a question of la w satisfies the critical impact requirement.” State v. Dunson ,
770 N.W.2d 546, 550 (Minn. App. 2009), review denied (Minn. Oct. 20, 2009). Therefore,
the district court’s pretrial dismissal of th e complaint based upon the legal determination
that Vos was unlawfully seized satisfies the appealability threshold.

1 The order granting Vos’s motion to suppress also recites an additional DWI charge and
an open-bottle charge, but an amended complaint is not contained in the record before this
court.
2 The district court quotes from Kaupp v. Texas, 538 U.S. 626, 629, 123 S. Ct. 1843, 1845
(2003).

4
Turning to the merits of the appeal, th e state argues that the district court’s
determination that Vos was unlawfully seized when the officer ac tivated his emergency
lights was erroneous. 3 “Seizure occurs when the office r, by means of physical force or
show of authority, has in some way re strained the liberty of a citizen.” State v. Harris,
590 N.W.2d 90, 98 (Minn. 1999) (quotation omitted). Whether a seizure has occurred is
analyzed from the objective pe rspective of the person alle ged to have been seized. 4 Id.
(“Under the Minnesota Constitution, a person ha s been seized if in view of all the
circumstances surrounding the incident, a re asonable person would have believed that he
or she was [not] free to . . . terminate the encounter.” (quotation omitted)). We review the
district court’s factual findings under a clearly erroneous standard, and the district court’s
legal determinations de novo when revi ewing a pretrial suppression order.
State v. Gauster, 752 N.W.2d 496, 502 (Minn. 2008).
With this standard of review in mind, we address the circumstances of Vos’s arrest.
When Officer Schleichert pulle d in behind Vos’s car and ac tivated his emergency lights,
Vos was already parked along the side of the road. In general, it does not (in and of itself)
constitute a seizure for an officer to simply walk up and talk to a driver sitting in an already
stopped car. State v. Vohnoutka , 292 N.W.2d 756, 757 (Minn. 1980). Therefore, the

3 The district court’s order granting Vos’ s motion to suppress was limited to the finding
that Vos was seized when th e officer activated his emerge ncy lights, and thus did not
address any alternative instances of seizure that may have occurred.
4 We note that Officer Schleichert testified that he felt that Vos was not free to leave once
he activated his emergency lights, but beca use seizure is analyzed from the objective
perspective of the person seized, this testimony is not relevant to our analysis.

5
question before us is whether the activation of the officer’s emergency lights transformed
the interaction into a seizure.
The Minnesota Supreme Court addr essed this very question in State v. Hanson ,
504 N.W.2d 219 (Minn. 1993). There the court declined to hold that a police officer’s use
of their emergency lights when parked behind an already stopped car is per se a seizure,
and instead adopted a f act-specific approach. Id. at 220. The supreme court noted that
“[i]t may be that in many fact situations the officer’s use of the flashing lights likely would
signal to a reasonable person that the offi cer is attempting to seize the person for
investigative purposes,” but declined to find so where “[i]t was dark out and the cars were
on the shoulder of the highway far from any town.” Id. Under the circumstances of the
encounter in Hanson, the supreme court determined that a reasonable person would know
that the emergency lights were used to alert oncoming motorists to be careful due to the
officer’s presence along the shoulder of a dark road at night. Id.
The facts of Hanson are strikingly similar to those be fore us. Officer Schleichert
activated his emergency lights while parked along the side of a completely-dark rural road
at night, and made no other sh ow of authority until after his attempt to see if Vos was in
need of assistance. While Vos urges this court to determine that in these circumstances a
reasonable person in Vos’s shoe s would not have felt free to leave, the supreme court
already made that assessment to the contrary. It is not for us to second guess the Hanson
court here.
Still, Vos argues that State v. Lopez, 698 N.W.2d 18 (Minn. App. 2005) should lead
us to conclude that Officer Schleichert’s use of his emergency lights constituted a seizure.

6
Lopez is distinguishable. In Lopez, an officer responding to a report of a suspicious person
in a car parked in a department store park ing lot activated her emergency lights before
entering the parking lot, and pa rtially blocked the suspicious vehicle with her squad car.
698 N.W.2d at 20-21. This court distinguished Hanson and held that the officer’s actions
constituted a seizure because the officer “activated the squad car’s lights and pulled into a
parking lot, and not a busy highway, where she did not need to warn oncoming traffic[,]”
and on the basis that “the officer also partia lly blocked forward movement of appellant’s
vehicle, pounded on the driver’s window, and opened the driver’s door.” Id. at 22.
Unlike in Lopez, Officer Schleichert did not block Vos’s vehicle and the interaction
took place along the side of a dark, rural road at night, not in a parking lot. Further, Officer
Schleichert made no other show of authorit y until after attempting to engage Vos in
conversation to see if he was in need of assistance, which is a necessary component of an
officer’s duties. See Kozak v. Comm’r of Pub. Safety , 359 N.W.2d 625, 628 (Minn.
App. 1984) (“In the proper performance of his duties, an officer has not only the right but
a duty to make a reasonable investigation of vehicles parked along roadways to offer such
assistance as might be needed and to inquire into the phys ical condition of persons in
vehicles.”). Therefore, the district court erred in determining that Vos was unlawfully
seized when the officer pulled in behind Vos’s already parked car and activated his
emergency lights. Further findings are ther efore necessary to determine when Vos was
seized and, if so, whether it was based upon reasonable suspicion.
Reversed and remanded.