High Court Upholds Traffic Stop

The Idaho Supreme Court has upheld the drunken driving arrest of a Nez Perce County man that was initiated by a Bureau of Indian Affairs officer outside of the Nez Perce Reservation and concluded by an Idaho State Police trooper.

The high court held that Gary Benefiel’s constitutional rights were not violated when BIA officer Ed Crowe pulled him over outside his reservation jurisdiction in 1993 or when the state trooper arrived later to confirm Crowe’s drunken driving suspicion and formally arrest Crowe.

The unanimous ruling upholds a decision nearly a year ago by the Court of Appeals, which had overturned 2nd District Judge Ida Leggett’s ruling that the evidence against Benefiel could not be used.

Benefiel claimed that Crowe had no authority to pull him over after seeing him driving erratically because Crowe had no authority off the reservation. Since Crowe had detained him following a field sobriety test, Benefiel claimed he was already under arrest when the trooper arrived and all evidence gathered by the trooper was illegal since he was not read his rights until afterward.

The high court held that Crowe was acting as a law enforcement officer when he used his flashing lights to pull Benefiel over for what it termed an investigatory stop.

Merely detaining Benefiel until the trooper arrived did not rise to the level of an arrest under earlier court rulings, Chief Justice Linda Copple Trout wrote for the majority, so the sobriety test conducted by the trooper later did not require Benefiel to be read his rights first.

The only dissenting comments came from Justice Gerald Schroeder. He did not dispute the conclusion of his colleagues but disagreed that Crowe was acting as a law enforcement officer.

Schroeder maintained that Crowe’s actions were illegal because he had no authority off the reservation. But he said the way he conducted the stop did not violate Benefiel’s constitutional rights, so the evidence generated by the stop does not have to be thrown out.