Donald Charles Ancke, III, petitioner, Appellant,

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by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
A25-1628

Donald Charles Ancke, III, petitioner,
Appellant,

vs.

State of Minnesota,
Respondent.

Filed May 11, 2026
Affirmed
Connolly, Judge

Chippewa County District Court
File No. 12-CR-22-623

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Julie Loftus Nelson, Benjamin
Butler, Assistant Public Defender s, Noah Miller (certified law student practitioner), St.
Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, Jacob Campion, Assistant Attorney General, St. Paul,
Minnesota; and

Matthew Haugen, Chippewa County Attorney, Montevideo, Minnesota (for respondent)

Considered and decided by Wheelock, Presiding Judge; Connolly, Judge; and
Smith, Tracy M., Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
CONNOLLY, Judge
Appellant challenges the denial of his petition for postconviction relief, arguing that
the district court abused its discretion by denying the petition because law enforcement
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lacked both reasonable, articulable suspicion to expand the scope of appellant’s traffic stop
and probable cause to conduct a warrantless search of appellant’s vehicle. We affirm.
FACTS
On November 12, 202 2, a sheriff’s deputy stopped appellant Donald Ancke for
speeding. The deputy approached the passenger side of appellant’s vehicle and, as soon as
the window went down, he smelled marijuana. Appellant was the only person in the
vehicle. The deputy testified that t he odor “wasn’t overwhelming, but it was definitely
noticeable.” The deputy testified that appellant handed him an ID card that said “ID only,”
he asked appellant if his license would be suspended or revoked, and appellant said it would
be revoked. He then asked appellant for proof of his insurance and appellant said it was
on his phone and began looking for his phone, which the deputy saw lying in appellant’s
lap; he then told appellant where the phone was. While appellant looked for his proof of
insurance on the phone, the deputy returned to his squad car, where he learned that
appellant’s driver’s license had been revoked and that there had been “prior contacts [with
law enforcement] for driving after revocation.”
The deputy testified further that, when he returned to appellant’s vehicle, appellant
was “nervous, jittery” and “seemed shaken about . . . the stop.” He provided the deputy
with an expired insurance card with the prior owner’s name . The deputy asked about the
marijuana odor, and appellant said he had been smoking marijuana in the vehicle earlier
that day.
The deputy then expanded the traffic stop by asking if there was marijuana in the
vehicle. Appellant said the only marijuana in the vehicle was in the “kick panel,” between
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the driver’s seat and the passenger seat. The deputy searched that area and found a “user
amount” of marijuana. He then saw a backpack on the front passenger seat, and appellant
said there was more marijuana in the backpack. The deputy found two packages of
marijuana in the backpack. The deputy then noticed that the infotainment center had been
tampered with and had broken screws, pulled it back, and found a firearm. He stopped the
search and asked appellant if he was a felon; appellant said that he was and that the firearm
was not his. The deputy then arrested appellant . Later, after the deputy had booked
appellant, he resumed the search of the vehicle. Under the place where the firearm had
been, the deputy found about 125 grams of methamphetamine.
Appellant was charged with two counts of first -degree controlled substance sale,
two counts of first -degree controlled substance possession, and unlawful possession of a
firearm. He moved to suppress the evidence found in the vehicle. After a hearing, his
motion was denied. A jury found appellant guilty on all counts, and he was sentenced to
210 months in prison for aggravated first-degree controlled substance sale.
Appellant moved for postconviction relief, arguing–as he did in his pretrial motion
to suppress the evidence found in his vehicle –that the deputy had neither reasonable
articulable suspicion to expand the traffic stop to ask appellant if there was marijuana in
the vehicle nor probable cause to search appellant’s vehicle. Appellant challenges the
district court’s denial of his postconviction petition.

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DECISION
I. Expansion of the Traffic Stop
“When facts are not in dispute, as here, we review a pretrial order on a motion to
suppress de novo and determine whether the police articulated an adequate basis for the
search or seizure at issue.” State v. Williams , 794 N.W.2d 867, 871 (Minn. 2011)
(quotation omitted). An officer who stops a vehicle for violation of a traffic law and “has
reasonable, articulable suspicion of other . . . illegal activity” may expand the scope of the
traffic stop to investigate that other activity. State v. Smith, 814 N.W.2d 346, 351 (Minn.
2012).
Reasonable suspicion must be particularized and based on
specific and articulable facts which, taken together with
rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that
intrusion. In determining whether the reasonable suspicion
standard is met, we consider the totality of the circumstances.
. . . [A]n analysis of reasonable suspicion is a common -sense
and nontechnical approach that considers the factual and
practical considerations of everyday life; this standard is not
readily, or even usefully, reduced to a neat set of legal rules.
Under this standard, trained police officers may draw
inferences and deductions that might well elude an untrained
person. Reasonable suspicion requires more than a mere hunch
but is considerably less than proof of w rongdoing by a
preponderance of the evidence, and obviously less than is
necessary for probable cause.

State v. Taylor, 965 N.W.2d 747, 752 (Minn. 2021) (quotations and citations omitted).
“[E]ven lawful activity can serve as the basis for reasonable suspicion.” Id. at 754.
In November 2022, when the stop occurred, only 1.4 grams of marijuana could be
in a vehicle legally. Minn. Stat. § 152.027, subd. 3 (2022). The combination of the odor
of marijuana when the passenger -side window was opened, appellant’s agitation, his
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admission that he had smoked marijuana in the vehicle earlier in the day, his record of
driving after revocation, and his speeding, taken together, provided a totality of
circumstances that supported a reasonable, articulable suspicion that there was more than
1.4 grams of marijuana in the vehicle or that some other illegal activity was occurring.
Appellant relies on State v. Babineau , 23 N.W.3d 396, 40 2 (Minn. App. 2025)
(holding that “the odor of marijuana, by itself, does not constitute reasonable, articulable
suspicion of criminal activity sufficient to constitutionally justify expanding the scope of
an equipment-violation vehicle stop”). But Babineau is distinguishable. It involved a n
inexperienced deputy telling his training officer “that he thought he may have smelled
marijuana” but could not provide “a definite yes or no.” Id. at 405. In that case the driver
had not been speeding or driving erratically. Id. at 409. There was also a passenger in the
car. Id. at 403. Here, the driver, who was alone, had been speeding; the deputy was certain
that he smelled the odor of marijuana as soon as the driver opened the vehicle ’s window;
the driver admitted smoking marijuana in the vehicle earlier in the day; and the legal limit
of marijuana in a vehicle at the time was 1.4 grams. In addition, the driver appeared
nervous, jittery and shaken. Finally, the driver did not seem to know that his cell phone
was in his lap.
Accordingly, the district court did not err in determining that “the totality of the
circumstances give[s] reasonable, articulable suspicion and justif[ies] the expansion of the
stop in this case.”

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II. Search of the Vehicle
[P]olice may search a car without a warrant . . . if there is
probable cause to believe the search will result in a discovery
of evidence or contraband. Probable cause exists when there
are facts and circumstances sufficient to warrant a reasonably
prudent person to believe that the vehicle contains contraband.
Probable cause is an objective inquiry that depends on
the totality of the circumstances in each case. . . . [T]he totality
of the circumstances includes reasonable inferences that police
officers draw from facts, based on their training and
experience, because police officers may interpret
circumstances differently than untrained persons. Therefore,
an appellate court must give due weight to reasonable
inferences drawn by police officers and to a district c ourt’s
finding that the officer was credible and the inference was
reasonable.

State v. Lester, 874 N.W.2d 768, 771 (Minn. 2016) (quotations and citations omitted).
Appellant argues that the deputy “did not have probable cause to conduct a
warrantless search of [appellant’s] entire vehicle.” He gives four reasons for this . T he
first, discussed above, was that the deputy lacked reasonable suspicion to suspect illegal
activity.
Second, appellant argues that , since the marijuana in the vehicle could have been
hemp, medical cannabis, or a “small amount” of marijuana , all of which were legal, the
deputy had no reason to suspect there was more than the permitted 1.4 grams of marijuana
in the car. But appellant had said that he smoked marijuana (not hemp) earlier that day in
the vehicle. These facts, when added to the odor itself, and appellant’s failure to indicate
that the substance in the car was either medical cannabis or hemp and therefore legal,
supported the deputy’s reasonable suspicion that the vehicle contained more than 1.4 grams
of marijuana.
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Third, appellant relies on State v. Schinzing, 342 N.W.2d 105 (Minn. 1983), to argue
that the deputy’s search should not have gone f urther than the kick panel area, where he
found a noncriminal amount of marijuana . But appellant misreads Schinzing, which
actually holds that “ discovery of some marijuana in a car gives probable cause to search
for more.” Schinzing, 342 N.W.2d at 110 ; see also State v. Armstrong, 291 N.W.2d 918,
919 (Minn. 1980) (holding that search of a vehicle “was justified by the motor vehicle
exception to the warrant requirement”) ; State v. Johnson , 277 N.W.2d 346, 349 (Minn.
1979) (holding that deputy who saw marijuana plants in the trunk of a car had sufficient
facts to “reasonably believe that there might be additional marijuana located in other areas
of [the] car”); State v. Schultz, 271 N.W.2d 836, 837 (Minn. 1978) (noting that officer who
“smelled the odor of marijuana emanating from the passenger compartment . . . properly
conducted a warrantless search of the passenger compartment for marijuana pursuant to
the so-called motor vehicle exception to the warrant requirement”).
Fourth, appellant argues that the deputy exceeded the permissible scope of his
search by dismantling the infotainment center, due to his knowledge that people often used
the space behind an infotainment to hide contraband . Appellant argues that this was not
sufficient to justify searching it “without other indicia of criminal activity.” But the deputy
did not rely solely on that knowledge; he also knew that there was marijuana in the vehicle,
that appellant had initially lied about the amount of marijuan a in the vehicle, that the two
packages of marijuana he had found in the backpack were significantly in excess of the
allowed 1.4 grams; and that the infotainment center in the vehicle had been tampered with.
Appellant has not shown that the deputy exceeded the permissible scope of his search.
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Therefore, the deputy had a reasonable, articulable suspicion to expand the traffic
stop and probable cause to search appellant’s vehicle.
Affirmed.