State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by
Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A21-0231

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Mandy Marie Brown,
Appellant.

Filed January 24, 2022
Affirmed
Reilly, Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-19-11564

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

James R. Rowader, Jr., Minneapolis City Atto rney, Amy J. Tripp-Steiner, Assistant City
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Adam G. Chandler, Brayanna J. Bergstrom, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, LLP, Special
Assistant Public Defenders, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Reilly, Presid ing Judge; Johnson, Judge; and Jesson,
Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
REILLY, Judge
In this direct appeal from a final judgment of conviction for driving while impaired,
appellant challenges the district court’s denial of her pretrial motion to suppress evidence.
2
She argues that the officer lack ed reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity to
initiate the traffic stop that led to her arre st. Because we conclude that the stop was
supported by reasonable suspicion, we affirm.
FACTS
In the early morning hours of May 6, 2019, appellant Mandy Marie Brown was
driving in Minneapolis when she was stopped by a Hennepin County sheriff’s deputy. As
the deputy spoke with Brown, he noticed signs of impairment, administered field sobriety
tests, and arrested her on suspicion of driving while impaired (DWI). Respondent State of
Minnesota later charged Brown with three counts: DWI—operating a motor vehicle while
under the influence of alco hol, DWI—operating a motor vehicle with an alcohol
concentration of 0.08 within two hours, and careless driving.
Brown moved to suppress all evidence obtained during the traffic stop, arguing that
the stop violated her constitutional right agai nst unreasonable search es and seizures.
Following an evidentiary hearing, the district court deni ed Brown’s motion to suppress.
Brown stipulated to the state’ s case, and the district court found her guilty on all three
counts. The district court se ntenced Brown on the first count for driving while impaired.
This appeal follows.
DECISION
Brown challenges the district court’s order denying her motion to suppress
evidence. When reviewing a pretrial order on a motion to suppress, we review the district
court’s factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo. State v. Gauster,
752 N.W.2d 496, 502 (Minn. 20 08). We independently revi ew the facts to determine
3
whether the district court erred as a matt er of law by not supp ressing the evidence. State
v. Askerooth, 681 N.W.2d 353, 359 (Minn. 2004).
The United States and Minnesota Constitutions protect an individual’s right against
unreasonable searches and seizures. U.S. Const. amend. IV; Minn. Const. art. I, § 10. A
traffic stop is considered a seizure like a Terry investigatory stop. Askerooth, 681 N.W.2d
at 359 (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)). Under the principles of Terry, an officer
may “stop and temporarily seize a person to investigate that person for criminal
wrongdoing if the officer reasonably suspec ts that person of criminal activity.” State v.
Diede, 795 N.W.2d 836, 842 (Minn. 2011) (quotation omitted).
For a stop to be supported by reasonable su spicion, there must be “specific,
articulable facts” showing that the officer “had a particular ized and objective basis for
suspecting the seized person of criminal activity.” Id. at 842-43 (quotations omitted). This
court considers the totality of the circumst ances when determinin g whether police had
reasonable suspicion. State v. Britton, 604 N.W.2d 84, 87 (Minn. 2000). The standard for
reasonable suspicion is “not high,” but it requires more than “an inchoate and
unparticularized suspicion or hunch.” State v. Timberlake, 744 N.W.2d 390, 393 (Minn.
2008) (quotations omitted). This standard is satisfied when the officer “observes unusual
conduct that leads the officer to reasonably conclude in light of his or her experience that
criminal activity may be afoot.” Id. (quotation omitted). If a se izure is not supported by
reasonable suspicion, all evidence obtained be cause of the seizure must be suppressed.
Diede, 795 N.W.2d at 842.
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Here, the district court determined that the deputy had reasonable, articulable
suspicion that Brown may have been involved in criminal activity, based on the deputy’s
testimony at the hearing about the following circumstances. At 2:46 a.m., the deputy was
on routine patrol, driving along Washington Avenue in Minneapolis, when he saw Brown’s
car pull onto the road in front of him. The car was somewhere between 50 and 150 feet in
front of the deputy’s squad car, and there we re other cars between the two vehicles. The
car “turned immediately right at the next available opportun ity in between a couple of
buildings that appeared closed for the day.” The deputy then observed the car turn left into
an area behind a warehouse. The deputy knew that there were not many connecting streets
behind the warehouse and there were no normal businesses open at that time of night.
After seeing the car go behind the warehous e, the deputy turned right at the next
available street and waited to see if the car would keep driving and reappear on the other
side of the warehouse. When the car di d not reappear, the deputy drove behind the
warehouse and spotted the car there. The car was parked behind the warehouse “in an odd
manner”—“in the middle of an open area by a loading dock and not lined up with anything
else.” The warehouse was closed, and th e area was dark; the deputy did not see any
apparent “legitimate business needs” there. The deputy saw Brown sitting in the car and
looking at her phone. At that point, the deputy activated his emergency lights and
approached the car.1

1 The district court determined, and the pa rties agree, that Brown was seized for
investigatory purposes when th e deputy activated his lights before approaching the car.
We agree that the seizure occurred at that moment. See State v. Harris, 590 N.W.2d 90,
98 (Minn. 1999) (recognizing that “a person ha s been seized if in view of all the
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We conclude that these circumstances provided reasonable, articulable suspicion for
the deputy to seize Brown for purposes of an investigatory stop. Brown’s behavior in
driving off the main road, going behind a closed warehouse, and remaining parked there in
the middle of the night, with no apparent le gitimate purpose for being there, reasonably
gave rise to the inference that she may have been involved in some sort of criminal activity.
Two cases from this court shed light on this issue. In Thomeczek v. Commissioner
of Public Safety, the officer observed the defendant parked in an empty lot after 11:00 p.m.,
with the car running and the headlights on, “in an area undergoing construction, where a
burglary, vandalism or theft might occur.” 364 N.W.2d 471, 472 (Minn. App. 1985). This
court determined that the officer had reason able suspicion that the defendant may have
been involved in unlawful activity and that the stop was therefore legal. Id. Similarly, in
Olmscheid v. Commissioner of Public Safety , the officer stopped the defendant, who was
driving along a dead-end road at 1:30 a.m., be hind a car dealership that had a history of
property theft. 412 N.W.2d 41, 42 (Minn. App. 1987), rev. denied (Minn. Nov. 6, 1987).
This court reasoned that “[t]he officer’s k nowledge of previous theft from [the car
dealership] and the presence of the vehicle in the early morning hours in a commercial area
with no residences on a road that does not connect to another roadway provide an objective

circumstances surrounding the incident, a re asonable person would have believed that he
or she was neither free to disregard the police questions nor free to terminate the
encounter”); State v. Lopez, 698 N.W.2d 18, 22 (Minn. App. 2005) (holding that defendant
was seized when officer activ ated squad car’s lights and pulled into parking lot where
defendant was parked in car).
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and particularized basis” for the officer to suspect that criminal activity was afoot. Id. at
43.
The facts here are like those in Thomeczek and Olmscheid. It was the middle of the
night, and the deputy saw Brown drive behi nd a warehouse to an empty area where all
lights were off and no businesses were open. The deputy did not start the traffic stop when
Brown turned behind the warehouse but investigated further only after she did not reappear
within a few minutes. Based on the time of night, the lack of any open businesses, and the
unusual manner in which Brown was parked , the deputy had an objective basis to
reasonably believe that Brown had no legitimate purpose for being there. Like the behavior
of the drivers in Thomeczek and Olmscheid, Brown’s parking behind a closed business in
the middle of the night reasonably caused the de puty to believe that she could be there to
engage in criminal activity.2

2 The state also argues that reasonable suspicion was supported based on Brown’s “evasive
behavior.” The supreme court has held that an officer may have reasonable suspicion to
stop a driver “if the driver’s conduct is such that the officer reasonably infers that the driver
is deliberately trying to evade the officer.” State v. Johnson, 444 N.W.2d 824, 827 (Minn.
1989). We agree with Brown that her driving conduct did not rise to the level of evasive
behavior. In Johnson, the supreme court held that the officer had reasonable suspicion to
stop the defendant when the defendant made eye contact with the officer, immediately
turned onto a side road and seemed to disappear, and then emerged from the same road less
than a minute later. Id. at 825, 827. Similarly, the s upreme court held that there was
reasonable suspicion based on evasive conduct in State v. Petrick , 527 N.W.2d 87, 89
(Minn. 1995). In that case, just after 1:00 a.m., the officer observed the defendant pass him
in the opposite direction, and as the officer made a U-turn, the defendant turned into the
driveway of the first house available, shut off the car’s lights, and continued to drive up the
driveway. Petrick, 527 N.W.2d at 87. In both cases, there was an objective reason to
suspect that the defendant had seen the officer and was trying to avoid him—in Johnson,
based on the defendant making eye contact w ith the officer, 444 N.W.2d at 827, and in
Petrick, based on the defendant immediately turning off the car’s headlights as soon as he
drove onto a driveway, 527 N.W.2d at 87-88.
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Brown’s arguments do not convince us othe rwise. Brown points to the deputy’s
testimony that there were apartment buildings nearby and argues that she could have been
parking to go into an apartment building. But the deputy testified that Brown was parked
in the middle of the lot and not lined up with anything, rather than in a parking space or
alongside the building. The way Brown was pa rked did not suggest that she was there to
lawfully enter an apartment complex.
Brown also maintains that there was no evidence of specific concerns of burglaries
or recent crimes committed in the area. Bu t the reasonable-suspicion standard does not
necessarily require that the driver be in an area where crimes have occurred. In Thomeczek,
this court determined that there was reasonable suspicion when the defendant was parked
in an empty lot in an area “where a burglary, vandalism or theft might occur.” 364 N.W.2d
at 472 (emphasis added). Similarly, an em pty parking lot behind closed businesses is
generally vulnerable to crimin al activity, especially at nigh t. And reasonable suspicion
may be based on conduct consistent with innocent activity. State v. Martinson, 581 N.W.2d
846, 852 (Minn. 1998).

Here, the supposedly evasive behavior was that Brown pulled onto the main road in
front of the deputy, turned onto the nearest side road, and drove behind a closed warehouse.
Unlike Johnson and Petrick, there is no evidence in the record suggesting that Brown might
have known that the squad car was following behind her. It was dark outside, and the
deputy testified that there were other cars between the squad car and Brown’s car. The
circumstances do not give rise to the reasonable inference that Brown was trying to evade
the deputy.
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For these reasons, we conclude that the deputy had reasonable, articulable suspicion
to initiate the traffic stop. The district court did not err by denyi ng Brown’s motion to
suppress.
Affirmed.