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Appellate court hears argument over legality of DUI stop after incomplete BOLO record
Summary
At oral argument in a Williamson County DUI appeal, defense counsel said the state failed to prove who conducted the initial stop, while the prosecutor argued timing and a matching description justified the seizure; the panel questioned whether the suppression record contained specific facts of intoxication.
NASHVILLE — Jonathan Turner, counsel for appellant David Paul, told an appellate panel that the state failed to prove who conducted the initial warrantless seizure in a DUI case originating in Williamson County on July 3, 2022.
“This is a DUI case out of Williamson County,” Turner said, and argued at the suppression hearing the prosecution called only one witness and "they didn't call any of the witnesses that actually had the had the lights on… That evidence is just completely missing," leaving the record incomplete about the circumstances of the stop.
The heart of the appeal is whether the initial seizure was supported by reasonable suspicion. Turner told the panel that while Officer Jared Anderson of the Franklin Police Department testified that a BOLO and dispatches ran, the officers who had lights on and effectuated the seizure did not testify; Turner said the state therefore failed to meet its burden to justify a warrantless stop.
A judge pressed whether the record contained the “specific and articulable facts” necessary to support reasonable suspicion of impaired driving rather than merely facts identifying the vehicle. “If an officer came in and just said, I suspected he was a drunk driver and gave no facts beyond that, I think we would have a hard time sustaining it under current law,” one panel member observed.
Arguing for the state, Ben Ball said the trial court properly denied the motion to suppress because the stop was supported by reasonable suspicion. “There is a 911 call dispatch where a citizen has reported that there is a suspected drunk driver,” Ball said, and the timing and location of subsequent calls and the matching description and license plate made it reasonable to infer the seizing officers had received the dispatch.
Ball acknowledged the record was not “the most fulsome” and that it would have been preferable for the prosecution to call dispatcher or the seizing officers, but maintained the circumstantial proof was sufficient for reasonable suspicion.
Panelists returned repeatedly to the evidentiary gap: the suppression record contained a BOLO and radio traffic but—because parts of that testimony were subject to hearsay objections at trial—it did not clearly memorialize the content of the BOLO or who provided the matching license plate information. The judges emphasized that gaps in the transcript can alter appellate review of Fourth Amendment claims and urged better record-building at suppression hearings.
Turner used his allotted time for rebuttal to reiterate that the trial court itself had said the record did not establish the reliability of the BOLO, and asked the court to grant the appeal. The panel did not announce a ruling during the argument; the case moved on after counsel finished.
The appeal raises recurring appellate questions about whether circumstantial evidence of dispatch and timing can substitute for live testimony from seizing officers or a citizen informant when the contents of a BOLO were not admitted for the truth of the matter asserted at the suppression hearing.
