It was lawful for a deputy to call in a drug dog and make a meth bust on a driver who made a premature right-hand turn in Gillette, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled Friday.
A dispatcher had also told the deputy, mistakenly, that the man’s driver’s license was not valid.
The drug-dog sniff, meth discovery and arrest that followed resulted in a two-to-four-year prison sentence for Andrew Boyer, 36.
Boyer is also serving 8-14 years for first-degree arson in an unrelated incident, says the Wyoming Department of Corrections database.
The arson case was ongoing when the traffic stop happened. Boyer was out of jail on a surety bond, his court file indicates. A jury convicted Boyer on that charge May 3, 2024.
He’d borrowed a lighter from a neighbor, started a fire in his own trailer, let his dogs out, walked away and soaked himself in bleach to cover the stench of smoke, the case affidavit says. Investigators responding to the house fire found the gas stove turned on to its maximum level on all four stove burners.
In Boyer’s traffic stop and meth bust, the meth search and discovery were lawful, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled, because the deputy had reasonable suspicion to stop the man based on his premature right-hand turn.
That Turn
Boyer was driving a black sedan about 40 minutes after noon on Aug. 3, 2023, when he stopped behind a silver SUV in the right-hand lane of the intersection of Burma Avenue and Warlow Drive in Gillette.
When the light turned green, the SUV stayed in place, and Boyer slid past it on the right side and turned right onto Warlow Drive before it did, the high court’s ruling recounts.
The SUV then turned right onto Warlow Drive as well.
Campbell County Sheriff’s Deputy Derek Lang decided to follow the black sedan, “as the presence of two vehicles turning right from that same location heightened his concern for safety,” the ruling says.
Lang’s front-facing dash cam was inoperable and didn’t capture the maneuver. He sped and caught up to the sedan in about 1.5 miles while relaying the vehicle’s information to a dispatcher.
The dispatcher told Lang the car was registered to Boyer, and that Boyer didn’t have a valid driver’s license.
Pulling up alongside the sedan, Cpl. Kyle Borgialli — who also was involved with the traffic stop — noted a silhouette that looked like Boyer’s.
Once stopped, Boyer told Lang he was driving oddly because he was frustrated with his girlfriend, the order says.
But he maintained that his driver’s license was valid and handed it to the deputy.
Lang was mindful, he testified in later case proceedings, that some people can still carry their driver’s licenses despite having them invalidated.
Drug Dog
Deputy Trevor Osborn arrived on scene with his drug-detection K-9, Torc. The dog conducted a free-air sniff of Boyer’s car and alerted to the presence of drugs near the driver’s side door.
Several minutes after the sniff, Lang confirmed that Boyer’s driver’s license was, in fact, valid.
This traffic stop unfolded about two months after the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled that police drug-detection dogs don’t need probable cause to sniff search outside of vehicles.
Drugs In There
Osborn and Lang searched the sedan and found used syringes, a baggie of what they believed to be meth, a syringe loaded with what looked like meth, glass tubes and a substance that looked like marijuana.
Boyer asked Campbell County District Court Judge Stuart Heally III to purge the drug discovery from the case evidence pool on the grounds that the traffic stop was a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and its roughly mirroring Wyoming Constitution provision, the order indicates.
Boyer argued that deputies improperly expanded the scope of the traffic stop after stopping him based on incorrect information from dispatch. He also claimed there was no observed traffic violation, so the stop should have ended once he presented his valid driver’s license — prior to Torc arriving and sniffing around the car.
The judge, conversely, found that Lang had reasonable suspicion to stop Boyer because of that right-hand turn.
Reasonable suspicion (needed to launch a traffic stop) is a lesser standard of proof than probable cause (which is needed to arrest someone).
An officer making a mistake, like investigating a valid driver’s license, doesn’t invalidate the traffic stop if the mistake was reasonable.
Usually details from dispatch are factual, the high court noted.
“Deputy Lang relied on database information and a commonsense judgment to initiate the traffic stop on Mr. Boyer’s vehicle,” says the order. “Deputy Lang had reasonable suspicion to initiate the traffic stop. Therefore, the initial stop did not violate the Fourth Amendment.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
