Michigan Supreme Court sets standard for when police can treat a person as a suspect

A Michigan Supreme Court ruling Friday sets clear rules for police’s authority to stop and detain people who do not consent to questioning. In a 5-2 ruling, the court overturned guilty verdicts and set a new standard for when police can treat a person as a suspect.

There is no doubt that Douglas Prude fled from two Kalamazoo police officers and was pursued after being told he was going to be arrested. He was charged and convicted of fleeing and resisting police. The question was whether the police officers should have pursued him at all.

Prude was questioned by two uniformed officers on May 30, 2019, in the parking lot of an apartment complex that was the focus of law enforcement after a series of crimes. At one point, he asked if he was being arrested. An officer said he was. At that moment, Prude rolled up the window of his car and sped away.

Prude defended himself by saying that when officers attempted to arrest him, they had no reasonable suspicion that he had committed a crime and that he was therefore free to go.

The majority of the Supreme Court held that officers had no legal grounds to arrest Prude and that he had therefore not broken the laws he was charged with.

“Even the most cursory warrantless seizure must be justified by an objectively reasonable, specific suspicion of criminal activity,” Justice Megan Cavanagh wrote in the majority opinion. The majority held that this is true even under the legal standard applied in cases like this one, which tends to favor the prosecution.

“Without further information, it is not suspicious for a citizen to sit in a parked car in the parking lot of an apartment complex while visiting a resident of that complex,” Cavanagh wrote. “Furthermore, a citizen’s mere presence in an area of ​​frequent criminal activity does not constitute a specific suspicion that he or she has been involved in criminal activity, and an officer may not arrest a citizen simply for refusing to identify himself or herself.”

Defense attorney Michael Nichols, who was not involved in the case, said the decision draws clearer boundaries on the powers of police in Michigan.

“What makes this so significant is that you can’t just come to me and say, ‘High crime area, the person didn’t respond to me and then ran away when I told them to stop,'” he told Michigan Public Radio. “This is not an isolated incident. This kind of thing happens quite a lot in the state of Michigan and, I’m sure, across the country.”

Two of the court’s more conservative justices disagreed, agreeing with the prosecution that the arrest and convictions were constitutional under the circumstances.

Judge David Viviano disagreed, writing that the lower courts correctly found that officers had “reasonable suspicion that the defendant was trespassing” and that they were able to act accordingly.

“The officers in this case were very familiar with this particular apartment complex and had been there over 100 times, including in the past week, to investigate the full spectrum of criminal activity,” he said.

The case now goes back to Kalamazoo County District Court, where a verdict consistent with the Michigan Supreme Court’s ruling is expected. Attorneys for the defendant and Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeffrey Getting did not respond to a request for comment Friday.