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LA1: Anonymous tip of DWI justifies stop without corroboration

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Louisiana's First Circuit follows other states and concludes that an anonymous tip of DWI is enough to stop a car because of the inherent danger in DWIs. State v. Barras, 2009 La. App. LEXIS 1154 (La. App. 1st Cir. June 19, 2009): We find that the strong interest in public safety supersedes any expectation of privacy and justifies an investigatory stop of a vehicle based solely on an anonymous tip that the driver may be driving under the influence. Despite the concerns over a lack of reliability of an anonymous tip, we note that in the present scenario, a call placed from a cellular phone to the police reporting the in-time movement of the suspected driver which also included identification of the vehicle being driven by make, model, color, and license plate number, carried an enhanced reliability based on the police officer's ability to locate the driver based on this information...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on June 24, 2009 (boomark / email).