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March 5, 2026 Get Citation Alerts Download PDF Add Note

State v. Anderson

Court of Appeals of Utah

• Citations: 2026 UT App 29

• Docket Number: Case No. 20220321-CA

• Opinion

• Authorities (15)

• Cited By (0)

• Summaries (0)

• Similar Cases (12.9K)

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Combined Opinion

2026 UT App 29

THE UTAH COURT OF APPEALS

STATE OF UTAH,
Appellee,
v.
DONALD DEE ANDERSON,
Appellant.

Opinion
No. 20220321-CA
Filed March 5, 2026

Second District Court, Farmington Department
The Honorable Michael Edwards
No. 191702417

Scott L Wiggins, Attorney for Appellant
Derek E. Brown, Joshua J. Prince, and
Jeffrey D. Mann, Attorneys for Appellee

JUDGE RYAN D. TENNEY authored this Opinion, in which
JUDGES DAVID N. MORTENSEN and AMY J. OLIVER concurred.

TENNEY, Judge:

¶1 During an encounter in a gas station parking lot, a police
officer (Officer) learned that Donald Anderson had outstanding
warrants for his arrest. After Officer arrested Anderson on those
warrants, he searched Anderson’s vehicle. During that search,
Officer found illegal drugs and a pipe bomb.

¶2 Anderson was charged with various offenses stemming
from what was found inside his vehicle. He later moved to
suppress the evidence. The district court denied the motion, and
Anderson now challenges that denial on appeal. For the reasons
set forth below, we affirm.
State v. Anderson

BACKGROUND 1

¶3 While working a patrol shift late one evening in November
2019, Officer drove into a gas station parking lot and began
running “records check[s]” on the license plates of various
vehicles that were there. Officer later testified that running the
plates from “random vehicles” was something that he typically
did during his shifts.

¶4 When Officer ran the license plate of one particular vehicle
that was at a gas pump, the search showed that the registered
owner was “Donald Anderson,” and when Officer then ran a
search on Anderson’s name through another database, he learned
that “there [were] numerous state warrants” for Anderson’s
arrest.2 While Officer was running the records searches, the driver
moved the vehicle from the gas pump to a parking stall in front of
the gas station. Officer then pulled up somewhere near the vehicle
without activating his lights. 3 Officer approached the driver’s side
window, which was partially open, and he asked the driver if he
was Anderson. The driver confirmed that he was, and he then
“immediately” volunteered that he had warrants out for his

1. The district court conducted an evidentiary hearing on
   Anderson’s motion to suppress, after which it issued findings of
   fact. We accordingly “recite the facts in the light most favorable”
   to the district court’s findings. State v. Hansen, 2025 UT App 121,
   n.1, 576 P.3d 1160 (quotation simplified).

2. From the record, it seems clear enough that both searches were
   from government databases. We’ll refer to them together as the
   “records searches” moving forward.

3. As will be discussed below, there was a dispute at the
   evidentiary hearing about where Officer parked, but we find that
   dispute to be immaterial.

20220321-CA 2 2026 UT App 29
State v. Anderson

arrest. Officer asked Anderson to step out of the vehicle, and
Officer then arrested Anderson.

¶5 After Officer placed Anderson in the back of his patrol
vehicle, another law enforcement officer arrived to assist. Officer
asked the backup officer to have his K9 walk around the vehicle
and conduct a “free air sniff.” When doing so, the K9 alerted on
the vehicle. Officer read Anderson his Miranda warnings, and
Anderson agreed to speak with Officer. During this conversation,
Anderson denied knowing that any illegal drugs might be in the
vehicle.

¶6 During a subsequent search of the vehicle, Officer
discovered drugs, drug paraphernalia, and a pipe bomb. In an
ensuing discussion, Anderson denied knowing anything about
the drug-related items. Anderson admitted that he had made the
pipe bomb a couple of years earlier, though he said that “he had
no intentions of using it.” As Officer transported Anderson to jail,
however, Anderson admitted that some of the drugs and drug
paraphernalia were his and that he knew the items were inside
the vehicle.

¶7 The State charged Anderson with various offenses relating
to both the drugs and the pipe bomb. Anderson later filed a
motion to suppress the evidence that was obtained during the
search of his vehicle.

¶8 The court held an evidentiary hearing on the motion, and
Officer and Anderson both testified at that hearing. Both of them
testified about where Officer had parked after Anderson had
pulled into a parking spot in front of the gas station. Officer
initially testified that he parked “a couple stalls away” from
Anderson and that he was “positive” that he did not park behind
him, but Officer later acknowledged that it was possible that he
may have parked “at a diagonal or something” closer to
Anderson’s vehicle. For his part, Anderson testified that Officer
had parked at “the rear driver’s side of the vehicle, . . . at an angle,

20220321-CA 3 2026 UT App 29
State v. Anderson

with the front” of his patrol vehicle “facing” Anderson’s vehicle.
Anderson testified that although he “probably could have”
reversed his vehicle and backed out, he would have had to “turn[]
sharp to the right” and could not have “pull[ed] back out
normally.”

¶9 During his testimony, Officer said that both his dashcam
and his bodycam were operational during the encounter. But
Officer also said that he had not reviewed the footage and that it
“may have been purged through the system” in the time since the
incident. 4

¶10 After the evidentiary hearing, Anderson filed a
memorandum in support of his motion to suppress. Anderson
raised what were essentially two sets of arguments. First, he
argued that Officer violated the United States Constitution, the
Utah Constitution, and the Utah Government Records Access and
Management Act (GRAMA) by running the records searches. He
then argued that without the information obtained from those
searches, Officer had no justification for allegedly blocking
Anderson in and approaching Anderson to ask him his name.
Second, Anderson argued that the State violated his due process
rights under the Utah Constitution by losing or even destroying
the bodycam and dashcam footage of the encounter, which, in
Anderson’s view, could have shown that Officer had seized
Anderson by blocking him into the parking stall.

¶11 The State opposed the motion, and the district court later
issued a written ruling that denied it. First, the court concluded
that under State v. Oryall, 2018 UT App 211, 437 P.3d 599,

4. Although this statement was less than definitive, Anderson
subsequently claimed that the State had not preserved the
footage, and the State pointedly did not dispute that contention in
its submissions to the court. In the briefing on appeal, both parties
have agreed that the footage was lost.

20220321-CA 4 2026 UT App 29
State v. Anderson

Anderson “did not possess a reasonable expectation of privacy in
his motor vehicle registration records” under either the federal or
state constitutions. Again relying on Oryall, the court also
concluded that Officer did not violate GRAMA by conducting the
records searches. From there, the court concluded that once
Officer learned from the records searches that the vehicle was
registered to “Donald Anderson” and that this individual had
active arrest warrants, Officer could briefly detain the driver of
the vehicle to determine whether he was indeed Anderson. In the
court’s view, since Officer then confirmed that the driver was
Anderson, the ensuing arrest and search of the vehicle were
permissible. Second, in light of the above conclusions, the court
concluded that even if it were true that the missing dashcam and
bodycam footage could have shown that Officer blocked in
Anderson’s vehicle, this would not have mattered because Officer
already had reasonable suspicion at that point that Anderson was
driving the vehicle and had active arrest warrants. The court
accordingly denied this additional basis for the motion to
suppress.

¶12 Anderson subsequently entered a conditional guilty plea.
Under its terms, Anderson pleaded guilty to a single count of
possessing or removing an explosive device, all other charges
were dismissed, and Anderson reserved the right to appeal the
denial of his motion to suppress.

ISSUES AND STANDARDS OF REVIEW

¶13 Anderson first argues that the district court erred in
denying his motion to suppress, claiming that the records
searches and the ensuing investigation violated his constitutional
rights. “A district court’s denial of a motion to suppress presents
a mixed question of law and fact,” wherein we review the court’s
“factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions,
including its application of law to the facts of the case, for

20220321-CA 5 2026 UT App 29
State v. Anderson

correctness.” State v. Oryall, 2018 UT App 211, ¶ 5, 437 P.3d 599
(quotation simplified).

¶14 Second, Anderson also challenges the court’s denial of his
motion to suppress based on an alleged due process violation
relating to the loss or destruction of evidence. We review this
ruling for correctness. See State v. Smith, 2025 UT App 35, ¶ 36, 566
P.3d 811, cert. denied, 570 P.3d 660 (Utah 2025).

ANALYSIS

I. Records Searches

¶15 Anderson first argues that Officer violated his
constitutional rights by running the records searches, blocking
him into the parking stall, and asking his name. We disagree.

A. Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

¶16 The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. Const.
amend. IV. For these purposes, a search occurs when a state actor
intrudes into an area for which a citizen has a “reasonable
expectation of privacy.” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 360
(1967) (Harlan, J., concurring); see also Kyllo v. United States, 533
U.S. 27, 33 (2001) (“[A] Fourth Amendment search occurs when
the government violates a subjective expectation of privacy that
society recognizes as reasonable.”). Like the federal constitution,
the Utah Constitution protects the “right of the people to be secure
in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable
searches and seizures,” Utah Const. art. I, § 14, and this provision
also turns on “whether an individual has a reasonable expectation

20220321-CA 6 2026 UT App 29
State v. Anderson

of privacy in the place or items being searched or seized,” State v.
Andrus, 2025 UT 32, ¶ 57, 575 P.3d 1071. 5

¶17 In State v. Oryall, we examined the same threshold question
that’s before us here: whether an officer needs a “reasonable
suspicion of criminal activity” before “run[ning] a license plate
check on” a vehicle. 2018 UT App 211, ¶ 1, 437 P.3d 599. There, an
officer had run a license plate search on a vehicle that had been
driven past the officer on a public road, and that search revealed
that the driver’s license of the registered owner had been
suspended. See id. ¶ 2. This information led to an investigatory
stop, which then led to various charges being filed against the
defendant. See id. ¶¶ 2–3.

¶18 The defendant later filed a motion to suppress, claiming
that the search of her records was unconstitutional. See id. ¶ 4. On
appeal, we affirmed the district court’s denial of that motion. See
id. ¶ 17. In doing so, we noted that federal courts had
“unanimously determined that law enforcement officers may
conduct warrantless and suspicionless checks of passing
motorists’ vehicle registration and driver’s license information.”

1. As noted, Anderson cited both the federal and state constitutions, and both have been interpreted to turn on whether a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the thing or area in question. In his brief, Anderson did not argue that there is any meaningful difference between these two standards. For purposes of this opinion, we’ll accordingly assume without necessarily deciding that the two standards have the same scope. We also note that a “parallel line of precedent has emerged” under which a person’s Fourth Amendment rights can turn on a trespass-related inquiry. See State v. Malloy, 2021 UT 61, ¶ 18, 498 P.3d 358. But neither party has invoked that line of precedent in this case, so, like the parties, we’ll focus on whether the records searches implicated a reasonable expectation of privacy.

20220321-CA 7 2026 UT App 29
State v. Anderson

Id. ¶ 8. We also noted that we were “aware of no other state that
ha[d] construed its own constitution to require an officer to have
a warrant (or at least reasonable suspicion) before checking a
motorist’s vehicle registration or driver’s license records.” Id. ¶ 9.

¶19 We then specifically rejected the defendant’s request to
“strike a different path under the Utah Constitution.” Id. ¶ 10. We
did so, in part, because of our conclusion that a person’s right of
privacy would not naturally “prevent a law enforcement officer—
part of the state or local government—from accessing information
that another part of that same government already lawfully
possesses.” Id. ¶ 13. And we said that we saw “nothing else from
which we might conclude” that a person has “a reasonable
expectation of privacy in [his or] her driver’s license and vehicle
registration records.” Id. ¶ 16.

¶20 In this appeal, Anderson has not asked us to overrule
Oryall. Under principles of stare decisis, that decision therefore
controls, at least as far as it goes. See Legal Tender Services PLLC v.
Bank of Am. Fork, 2022 UT App 26, ¶ 78, 506 P.3d 1211. Anderson
does, however, ask us to distinguish Oryall. In his view, what
makes this case different is that while the search in Oryall occurred
on a public road, Officer in this case ran the records searches while
in a gas station parking lot, which is private property.

¶21 But this is the proverbial distinction without a difference.
As the State credibly points out in its brief, the gas station parking
lot may well have been private property, but it was private
property that was open to the public. Anderson cites no case in
which a court has held that an officer may not run a records search
on a vehicle that is in a parking lot that is open to the public. And
there’s plenty of authority to the contrary. In State v. Atwood, for
example, we held that a defendant had no reasonable expectation
of privacy in an “open and shared” parking lot behind an
apartment house that the defendant shared with other tenants.
831 P.2d 1056, 1059 (Utah Ct. App. 1992). This was so because the

20220321-CA 8 2026 UT App 29
State v. Anderson

parking lot was not in the defendant’s “exclusive control.” Id.
Many other courts have reached similar conclusions with respect
to items or vehicles that were left in publicly accessible parking
lots. See, e.g., United States v. Cruz Pagan, 537 F.2d 554, 557–58 (1st
Cir. 1976) (holding that there was no “reasonable expectation of
privacy with regard to objects left” in a condominium’s common
underground parking garage); Roundtree v. Lopinto, 976 F.3d 606,
609 (5th Cir. 2020) (holding that there was “no reasonable
expectation of privacy” in a vehicle parked “in a shared apartment
parking lot,” even though “a private apartment parking lot is,
definitionally, not ‘public’”); United States v. Diaz, 25 F.3d 392, 396
(6th Cir. 1994) (holding that there was no reasonable expectation
of privacy in a car parked in the parking lot of the motel the
defendant was staying in).

¶22 More to the point of this case, the Sixth Circuit has
considered the implications of this on license plates searches. In
doing so, the court concluded that “so long as [an] officer had a
right to be in a position to observe the defendant’s license plate,
any such observation and corresponding use of the information
on the plate does not violate the Fourth Amendment.” United
States v. Ellison, 462 F.3d 557, 563 (6th Cir. 2006). And the court
further noted that “every court that has addressed [the] issue” of
whether there is a privacy expectation in either a license plate
number or the records that can be obtained by searching it had
“reached the same conclusion.” Id. (quotation simplified).

¶23 In short, Oryall established that a motorist lacks a
reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her governmental
records while driving on public roads, and we see no basis for
concluding that this somehow changes when the motorist pulls
into a publicly accessible parking lot. We accordingly conclude
that Officer did not violate Anderson’s rights under the federal or
state constitutions by running the records searches.

20220321-CA 9 2026 UT App 29
State v. Anderson

B. GRAMA

¶24 Anderson next argues that the records searches violated
the terms of GRAMA. Though a touch unclear, his argument
seems to be that because GRAMA protected the records, this
statutory scheme created a reasonable expectation of privacy in
the records that made the searches unconstitutional.

¶25 The defendant in Oryall made the same argument,
however, and we rejected it. See 2018 UT App 211, ¶¶ 14–15. As
an initial matter, we “assume[d],” without necessarily deciding,
“that automobile registration and driver’s license records fall
within the ambit of GRAMA.” Id. ¶ 14 n.3. But even with that
assumption, we then held that while GRAMA recognizes a
citizen’s “right of privacy in relation to personal data gathered by
governmental entities,” that right provides a “conceptual limit on
the public’s right to access governmental information, and not a
general prohibition on one government agency accessing
information possessed by another government agency.” Id. ¶ 14
(quotation simplified). We supported this conclusion, in part, by
reference to “three separate statutory subsections” from GRAMA
that “appear to give law enforcement officers the right to access
records such as vehicle registration and driver’s license
information.” Id. ¶ 15 (quotation simplified). 6 We then noted that
we saw no basis for concluding that any of these provisions were
either “inapplicable” or “unconstitutional.” Id.

¶26 On appeal, Anderson argues that contrary to what we said
in Oryall, GRAMA does not actually permit law enforcement to
conduct such searches. But his briefing on this point is cursory,
and he has not persuaded us that we should either overrule Oryall
or distinguish it. Given this, we accept Oryall as controlling on this

1. We cited Utah Code sections 63G-2-206(1)(b), 63G-2-206(9), and 63G-2-201(6)(a) (2016).

20220321-CA 10 2026 UT App 29
State v. Anderson

point, and we therefore reject Anderson’s assertion that Officer’s
searches violated GRAMA.

C. Ensuing Investigation

¶27 Because we have concluded that Officer could run the
records searches, we next consider whether the information
Officer obtained from those searches—namely, that the vehicle
was registered to “Donald Anderson” and that this individual
had outstanding arrest warrants—justified the ensuing
investigation. It did.

¶28 “In evaluating the reasonableness of police activity under
the Fourth Amendment, courts must consider the nature of the
police-citizen encounter . . . .” State v. Mitchell, 2019 UT App 190,
¶ 12, 455 P.3d 103. There are three types of encounters:

A level one encounter occurs when a police officer
approaches a citizen and asks questions, but the
person is not detained against his [or her] will and
remains free to leave. A level two encounter occurs
when a police officer temporarily seizes an
individual because the officer has a reasonable,
articulable suspicion that the person has committed
or is about to commit a crime. Finally, a level three
stop occurs when a police officer has probable cause
to believe that a crime has been committed and
effects an arrest of the suspect.

Id. (quotation simplified).

¶29 In Kansas v. Glover, the United States Supreme Court
considered a case in which an officer ran the license plate of a
passing vehicle and learned that the vehicle was registered to a
person with a revoked driver’s license. 589 U.S. 376, 381 (2020). In
the Supreme Court’s view, learning this information created a
“commonsense inference” that the driver of the vehicle was likely

20220321-CA 11 2026 UT App 29
State v. Anderson

its owner, and this inference then provided the officer with “more
than [the] reasonable suspicion” that would be necessary to
support a brief investigatory stop to determine whether this
driver was driving without a license. Id.

¶30 This is virtually indistinguishable from what happened
here. Again, Officer ran records searches that started from the
license plate of a vehicle that he encountered in a publicly
accessible parking lot, and these searches revealed that the
vehicle’s registered owner had multiple arrest warrants. As in
Glover, the “commonsense inference” was that the driver of the
vehicle was the owner of the vehicle, id., and since Officer now
knew that the owner had arrest warrants, Officer accordingly had
reasonable suspicion to conduct a brief investigatory stop to
determine whether this driver was indeed the owner. During the
subsequent encounter, Anderson acknowledged that he was the
owner of the vehicle and that he had outstanding warrants. Once
Officer learned this, Officer had grounds to arrest Anderson. As
noted, this arrest then led to the search of the vehicle that
uncovered the incriminating evidence. 7

¶31 In short, on the facts of this case, there seems to be a direct
line from (i) the search of the government records to (ii) the

1. It’s unclear from the record which constitutional doctrine the State relied on to support the search of the vehicle. In the briefing below, the State seemed to suggest at times that the search was justified because the K9 alerted on the vehicle. In other places below and again on appeal, the State suggests that the search was justified as an inventory search that was premised, in part, on Anderson’s arrest. Regardless, Anderson does not argue on appeal that the search of the vehicle would have been unlawful even if Officer had lawfully learned that he had arrest warrants. Instead, Anderson’s arguments are solely directed at the earlier questions of whether Officer could run the records searches and then approach him and ask him questions.

20220321-CA 12 2026 UT App 29
State v. Anderson

investigatory seizure of Anderson, and from there to (iii) either
the arrest of Anderson or the K9 sweep around the vehicle, one of
which led to (iv) the search of the vehicle. Because Anderson has
not persuaded us that there was any constitutional error at any
place in this sequence, we affirm the district court’s conclusion
that the search of the vehicle was lawful.

II. Loss or Destruction of Evidence

¶32 Anderson next argues that the State violated his due
process rights by losing or destroying evidence. We disagree.

¶33 The Utah Constitution’s Due Process Clause entitles
defendants to “information possessed by the State to aid in their
defense.” State v. Tiedemann, 2007 UT 49, ¶¶ 40, 41, 162 P.3d 1106.
When evidence is lost or destroyed, courts engage in a two-step
analysis to determine whether the loss or destruction of the
evidence violates the defendant’s due process rights. See id. ¶ 44.
“First, the defendant must demonstrate a reasonable probability
that the lost evidence would have been exculpatory—the
threshold requirement.” State v. DeJesus, 2017 UT 22, ¶ 27, 395 P.3d
111. “Only after the defendant has established” the threshold
requirement “should a court consider” the second step. Id. ¶ 29.
The second step involves balancing the “culpability of the State”
against “the prejudice to the defendant” “to gauge the seriousness
of the due process violation and to determine an appropriate
remedy.” Id. ¶ 27.

¶34 Anderson’s argument is premised on his assertion that the
bodycam and dashcam footage could have shown that Officer
blocked him into the parking stall in front of the gas station. In
Anderson’s view, because Officer did not yet have grounds to
detain him, this footage could have supported his motion to
suppress.

¶35 But as discussed above, before Officer pulled up to the
parking stall, Officer had already conducted the records searches,

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State v. Anderson

and those searches showed that the vehicle’s owner had multiple
arrest warrants. At that point, Officer had reasonable suspicion to
detain Anderson for a level two investigatory stop. Because of
this, it simply did not matter whether Officer pulled in to the side
of Anderson or even directly behind him, because Officer could
constitutionally detain him. The evidence in question therefore
would not have been exculpatory.

¶36 For these reasons, we conclude that there was no basis for
granting a motion to suppress based on the loss or destruction of
evidence.

CONCLUSION

¶37 We affirm the district court’s denial of Anderson’s motion
to suppress. Because this was the sole basis on which Anderson
challenged his conviction (which, as noted, was entered pursuant
to a conditional guilty plea), that conviction is likewise affirmed.

20220321-CA 14 2026 UT App 29