Attorney seeks dismissal of charges against Bassett

The attorney for a Libby man accused of drug possession and distribution filed a motion in Lincoln County District Court to dismiss the charges, arguing that local law enforcement illegally stopped and searched him last year.

Authorities arrested Dakota Bassett, 27, following a Nov. 9 traffic stop on U.S. Highway 2 near the Troy weigh station. Deputy Ben Fisher of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office pursued Bassett after seeing him fail to fully obey a stop sign, according to court documents.

As law enforcement personnel — including U.S. Border Patrol Agent Dave Grainger — approached the vehicle, they could smell the odor of “raw marijuana,” Detective Brandon Holzer wrote in an affidavit. The K9 accompanying Grainger immediately detected narcotics, Holzer recalled.

He wrote that Bassett was a medical marijuana supplier, but also sold the drug “on the black market.” An informant for the sheriff’s office had previously bought marijuana from Bassett without a medical card, Holzer wrote.

After questioning, Bassett consented to a search and “in an excited utterance state he had three hydrocodone pills in the glove box without a prescription,” wrote Holzer in the affidavit.

Hydrocodone is a medication that contains opioids.

Deputies subsequently arrested Bassett and seized his vehicle. A search yielded six pounds of marijuana buds, a container of marijuana, the three pills and a kilo of dab marijuana.

But attorney Sean D. Hinchey of Kalispell-based Hinchey and Hinchey argued June 8 that law enforcement personnel overstepped in pulling Bassett over and later searching his vehicle. His motion to dismiss and suppress revealed new information about the stop.

In it, Hinchey pointed out myriad problems with the arrest, which he argues was predicated on information from an untrustworthy source. He wrote that Holzer and the other law enforcement officers were looking for Bassett based on “an uncorroborated tip from an admittedly unreliable confidential informant” when they spotted his truck heading onto U.S. Highway 2.

Hinchey alleged that Fisher offered contradictory statements regarding whether Bassett came to a stop, acknowledging that he did come to a stop while also writing in a police report that Bassett failed to stop. Regardless, the view of the stop sign from where Fisher, Holzer and Grainger were watching was blocked, Hinchey argued.

“There are trees obscuring the view so that the stop sign and area around it cannot be clearly seen,” Hinchey wrote.

Fisher also failed to ticket Bassett for a stop sign violation and did not offer a formal or written warning for the infraction, Hinchey noted. He also did not notify dispatch that he was pulling Bassett over for a stop sign violation.

Hinchey also wrote that the subsequent K9 search, initiated before Bassett could undergo a field sobriety test — which he passed shortly thereafter — was conducted without probable cause.

By failing to inform Bassett he could leave and intimidating him with questions underscored by the threat of criminal prosecution — issued in the dark and punctuated by the flashing lights of police vehicles — coerced the admission of the existence of the hydrocodone pills from the 27-year-old, Hinchey wrote.

In the motion, Hinchey made a multipronged legal argument to throw the legality of the arrest into doubt. First, Bassett was pulled over on a pretext lacking in reasonable suspicion and not because he failed to stop for a traffic sign, Hinchey asserted. Evidence gained by the stop must be suppressed, he wrote.

Hinchey further argued that the canine search was performed before law enforcement had evidence that Bassett was intoxicated or under the influence of a drug.

He also asserted that the deputies interrogated Bassett before giving him the Miranda warning and coerced him into making an admission.

“He subsequently made involuntary admissions of possession of hydrocodone pills, and consented under duress to a search of his closed glove box,” Hinchey wrote. “Bassett maintains he was coerced into making those statements under the totality of the circumstances of being confronted with three officers, being asked a variety of questions by state and federal law enforcement; being told the officers did not believe him … and not being issued a Miranda warning.”

Thus a search of the glove box for the pills was involuntary, Hinchey argued.

The search warrant later obtained to inspect Bassett’s vehicle also was “fatally flawed,” Hinchey wrote. It does not mention that investigators initially were looking for Bassett based on an informant, “the statements of whom have since the time of the stop been characterized as ‘unreliable’ by law enforcement,” Hinchey argued.

The warrant includes an admission by Bassett that he had a container of marijuana in the vehicle given to him by a friend. The admission was not recorded and Bassett denies having made it, Hinchey wrote.

“Although there is substantial video evidence in this case of Bassett’s interactions with law enforcement, there is no recording of this alleged and highly incriminating statement,” Hinchey argued in the motion.

“[Given] the substantial procedural errors which occurred in the processing of this matter as outlined above, all evidence obtained by law enforcement herein should be suppressed, and the matter dismissed,” Hinchey concluded.