On Point: e. "Identification search"

State v. Heather Van Beek, 2021 WI 51, 2019AP447-CR, on certification from the court of appeals, 6/4/21; case activity (including briefs)

In a splintered opinion, a majority of SCOW holds that an officer does not necessarily “seize” a driver when he takes her license to run a records check. Seizure depends on the totality of the circumstances. In this case, a seizure occured when the officer continued holding a license and questioning the driver until a drug-sniff dog arrived. And the seizure was unlawful because the officer lacked reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was afoot. Roggensack wrote the majority opinion. The liberals joined some parts of it, and the remaining conservatives joined other parts.

State v. Heather Jan VanBeek, 2019AP447, certification granted 9/16/20; District 2; case activity (including briefs)

We wrote about this case less than a month ago, when the court of appeals issued its certification to the supreme court. Now the certification is granted, so SCOW will have a chance to deal with the inconvenient fact that our state’s cases permit police to seize people without reasonable suspicion in order to verify their identities.

State v. Heather Jan VanBeek, 2019AP447, 8/12/20, District 2; certification granted 9/16/2020; case activity (including briefs)

VanBeek was sitting with a companion in her parked truck when an officer approached. There’d been a tip that people were sitting in the truck for an hour and that someone had come to the truck with a backpack, then departed. The officer asked a few questions, got satisfactory answers, and then asked for ID, purportedly for his report of the contact. The truck’s occupants were reluctant to hand over their licenses, but the officer insisted, and they did. He held onto them for more than five minutes and summoned a drug dog, who eventually alerted. At some point in this time frame, reasonable suspicion developed, but it wasn’t present when the officer took the IDs. So, was the encounter, at that point, “consensual” (as the state argues) or were the truck’s occupants seized–which, without reasonable suspicion, would be unconstitutional?

State v. Janaya L. Moss, 2016AP1856-CR, 7/25/17 (1-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity (including briefs)

Moss and another woman had a fight in a bar; responding police found Moss intoxicated to the point of incoherence. They arrested the other woman and frisked her, but could not find any identification (she would give only a first name). One officer noticed a wallet on a nearby table and asked the other woman if it was hers; she did not respond. The officer opened the wallet, revealing Moss’s ID but also cocaine and marijuana.

State v. Bruce E. Black, 2000 WI App 175, 238 Wis.2d 203, 617 N.W.2d 210
For Black: William E. Schmaal, SPD, Madison Appellate

Issue/Holding:

¶1 … When a person provides oral identification to a police officer conducting a Terry stop and request for identification, may the officer perform a limited search for identifying papers when the information provided is not confirmed by police records?