A Ridgway woman has won a decision in McKean County Court to
have evidence obtained in a vehicle search constitutionally
suppressed.

Sarah Roberts, 43, represented by Assistant Public Defender Doug
Garber, was charged with possession of a small amount of marijuana
and possession of drug paraphernalia following a traffic stop Oct.
3, 2005, on U.S. Route 219 in McKean County.

The facts of the case, according to court records, were that
Roberts was a back seat passenger in a car traveling north on Route
219. The car went by Kane-based state Trooper Theodore Race, who
was operating a radar unit from a marked patrol car; the driver
glared at the trooper, the records read.

Race pulled behind the car, checked the registration, saw that
the driver was wanted on an outstanding warrant, noticed the
exhaust of the car was leaking and noisy and saw fuzzy dice hanging
from the rear-view mirror, which he determined to be an
obstruction, the records read.

Race stopped the vehicle, arrested the driver and smelled
marijuana and alcohol; the driver admitted to the use of both, the
records read. Race asked if there were any drugs or weapons in the
car, to which the driver said no and consented to a search of the
car, according to the records.

Race asked Roberts to step out of the car; she was not under
arrest and was not told to leave her purse in the car, the records
read. She did, however, leave the car without her purse.

While searching the car, Race opened her purse, found a cigar
container, opened the container and found two marijuana cigarettes,
the records read. Roberts was placed under arrest.

Garber challenged the search, saying the odor of marijuana to
which Race referred was emanating from the driver of the car. The
driver admitted to the use of marijuana, Garber stated, and added
that Roberts did not give her permission for the search of her
purse.

“Because there was no probable cause for the search, the
evidence obtained pursuant to that search must be suppressed,”
Garber argued.

Judge John Yoder, who made the ruling, said the validity of the
stop is not in question. What is in question is whether the driver
of the car could consent to a search of Roberts’ purse, the judge
explained.

“Although the purse was not shielded from view, the contents of
the purse were shielded from view,” Yoder wrote. “The defendant did
have a reasonable expectation of privacy that her purse would not
be searched.”

The argument of the District Attorney’s office was that Roberts
consented to the search when she left her purse in the car upon
exiting at the request of Trooper Race. However, Yoder said Roberts
was likely not aware at that time that the driver of the car had
consented to the car being searched, and would not have known from
the outside of the car that Race was searching her purse in the
back seat.

Yoder said the driver had no authority to consent to a search of
Roberts’ purse, “as a briefcase is to a man, a purse is an object
of a woman’s highest privacy expectations.”

As Roberts was the only woman in the car and was located in the
back seat where the purse was found, the trooper should have sought
her consent to search the purse, not the driver’s, Yoder ruled.

“Under the totality of the circumstances, the defendant’s
expectation of privacy was legitimate and reasonable,” Yoder said
in his ruling. “Society would be willing to recognize that such an
expectation was reasonable.

“The Commonwealth has not proven defendant consented, the driver
had authority to consent or the troopers reasonably believed the
driver had authority to consent,” Yoder said. “The Commonwealth has
not proven by the preponderance of the evidence that the marijuana
found in defendant’s purse is admissible.”

Therefore, Yoder suppressed the evidence found in the
search.