The trial court sentenced defendant as a fourth-offense habitual offender to a term of 3 to 20 years imprisonment for the OUIL III conviction, 12 months in jail for driving with a suspended license, and 90 days in jail for possessing an open container of alcohol in a vehicle, with credit for 213 days served. Because Trooper believed that he had observed an illegally tinted front driver’s window as defendant drove by, it was reasonable for Trooper to suspect that defendant may have been violating a traffic ordinance. Trooper also noted that, when he was following defendant, the exhaust system on defendant’s vehicle was so loud that he could hear it with his windows closed, raising the possibility that defendant was violating a traffic ordinance regarding the state of his exhaust system. Trooper reported that he had observed that defendant’s front driver’s side window was tinted, in possible violation of traffic ordinances, when defendant first drove by him and then, following the stop, when he approached while defendant was sitting in the vehicle. Defendant thus denied being guilty of either OUIL or possessing an open container of alcohol in a vehicle. Defendant testified and admitted that his driver’s license was suspended however, he stated that after he had pulled over in response to Trooper’s lights and siren, he exited the car, opened the bottle of whiskey, and drank half of it. Another officer found an open and partially-consumed bottle of whiskey in defendant’s vehicle before its impoundment.ĭefendant moved to suppress evidence gathered from Trooper’s stop, and the subsequent search, of his vehicle, arguing that when Trooper stopped defendant’s vehicle, he lacked a reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed. ![]() 192 grams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood, far in excess of the BAC required for an OUIL conviction. Defendant refused field sobriety tests, and Trooper eventually transported defendant to the hospital for a blood alcohol test.ĭefendant’s blood alcohol count was tested at. ![]() Trooper indicated that, after he pulled the vehicle over, he became suspicious that defendant was intoxicated. He decided to pull the vehicle over because he believed that the vehicle’s front-window tint and loud exhaust system were possible traffic violations. ![]() Trooper testified that he also could hear the vehicle’s exhaust system through his closed vehicle window, and noticed that the exhaust system was louder when the car accelerated, leading Trooper to believe that the exhaust system may have been defective. In this case, while on patrol, Michigan State Police Trooper observed defendant’s vehicle and believed that it may have had illegally tinted driver’s side windows.
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