Recently, the US Supreme Court declined to review a DUI / Drunk Driving Virginia case where the police stopped a suspected drunk driver based on a tipster call to police but the Virginia Supreme Court threw out the driver’s conviction. The reason why the conviction was tossed was because after receiving the tip, the police followed the car and observed no traffic violations but stopped the driver anyway and arrested the driver for drunk driving. The Virginia courts held there was no resonable suspicion (probable cause) of criminal activity to justify the stop. Some people argue that this is a good decision because the police shouldn’t be able to stop someone based on an unsubstantiated tip. Otherwise, any tipster can just call the police and complain about another driver for no reason other than the tipster doesn’t like or wants to get even with another driver.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 10:01 am and is filed under Myles Berman DUI / Drunk Driving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.