State v. Stout, 2021 Ohio 1125

On Nov. 30, 2019 at ~9:00 p.m., Officer Kettman saw Joseph Stout riding a bicycle on the Franklin Street sidewalk at night doing "wheelies" without a mounted front light. It was dark and raining.
The officer drove past, turned around, and caught up to Stout two intersections away; the officer testified only seconds (under a minute) elapsed between observations. The officer did not continuously observe Stout on the street.
After stopping Stout for the no-headlight violation, the officer asked about contraband; Stout said he had "a knife." A pat-down recovered a knife. The officer then learned Stout had an outstanding municipal bench warrant; Stout was arrested and voluntarily admitted he had drugs, and methamphetamine was recovered from his pocket.
Stout was indicted for aggravated possession of drugs and moved to suppress the meth, arguing the bicycle stop lacked reasonable articulable suspicion/probable cause and any derivative evidence must be suppressed.
The trial court denied the motion, finding the stop was a valid investigatory stop (or, alternatively, that the attenuation doctrine applied because of the preexisting arrest warrant). Stout pleaded no contest, was sentenced, and appealed solely challenging the suppression ruling.

Issue	State's Argument	Stout's Argument	Held
Whether the stop of Stout's bicycle was supported by probable cause / reasonable suspicion	Officer reasonably inferred Stout must have ridden on the street (without a light) to cross two intersections in the short time; municipal code requires lights at night so probable cause existed	Officer lacked reasonable, articulable suspicion because he only observed Stout on the sidewalk and could not rule out that Stout walked the bike across intersections	Court found officer's observations gave probable cause / reasonable suspicion to stop the bicycle for the city light ordinance; stop lawful
Whether drugs found after the stop must be suppressed as fruit of an unlawful stop or are admissible under the attenuation doctrine	Discovery of a preexisting arrest warrant was an independent intervening circumstance; after arrest a search incident to arrest was lawful so the meth is admissible	Suppression required because the initial stop was unlawful and the discovery was closely temporally linked to the stop	Applying Strieff factors, court held the warrant was a critical intervening circumstance and officer misconduct was not flagrant; despite temporal proximity, attenuation applies and the meth is admissible

Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (probable cause for a traffic stop suffices even if stop is pretextual)
Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690 (probable-cause determinations are objective and fact-dependent)
Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590 (sets attenuation factors used to determine admissibility of evidence following unconstitutional conduct)
Utah v. Strieff, 136 S. Ct. 2056 (preexisting arrest warrant can attenuate the taint of an unlawful stop)
Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (discussion of attenuation and exclusionary-rule limits)
Bowling Green v. Godwin, 110 Ohio St.3d 58 (Ohio principles on unreasonable searches and seizures)
Dayton v. Erickson, 76 Ohio St.3d 3 (Ohio: probable cause exists for stops based on minor traffic violations)
State v. Mays, 119 Ohio St.3d 406 (Ohio law on traffic-stop probable-cause standard)
State v. Burnside, 100 Ohio St.3d 152 (standard of review for suppression rulings)