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State v. Eagle: Blue Lights and Impeded Egress Equal a Fourth Amendment Seizure

The North Carolina Court of Appeals in State v. Eagle, 2022-NCCOA-680, ___ N.C. App. ___, 879 S.E.2d 377 (2022), considered whether the driver of a car that had already stopped when a patrol officer pulled in behind it with blue lights activated was seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The trial court had ruled that the driver was not immediately seized by the officer in this encounter. Instead, the court ruled that a seizure occurred only when the officer took Ms. Eagle’s driver’s license and returned to her patrol car. By this point, the officer had developed reasonable suspicion to believe Ms. Eagle was impaired. The Court of Appeals reversed, determining that Eagle was seized at the outset of this encounter. This post discusses State v. Eagle and its relationship to other recent seizure jurisprudence.

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State v. Wilson: Was the Defendant Seized When He Stopped Upon the Officer’s Signal?

Joshua Wilson had just pulled his truck out of the driveway of a residence in Burlington when he saw a police car parked in the road in front of him. A uniformed officer had gotten out of the car and was walking toward the residence. When the officer saw Wilson, he waived his hands back and forth in the air to tell Wilson to stop his car. Wilson stopped. The officer approached the truck on the driver’s side. The window was down, and he smelled the odor of alcohol. Wilson was arrested shortly thereafter for driving while impaired. The question on appeal was whether he was seized by the officer when he stopped his truck.

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