344 Ga.App. 572
810 S.E.2d 660
HARRIS
v.
The STATE.
A17A1785
Court of Appeals of Georgia.
February 14, 2018
Lister & Holt, Carrie M. Richardson, for appellant.
Tasha M. Mosley, Solicitor-General, Shalonda Jones-Parker, Assistant Solicitor- General, for appellee.
Mercier, Judge.
Following a bench trial, Alfred Harris, Jr. was convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol. Harris appeals his conviction, contending that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress. For the reasons that follow, we reverse.
"The State bears the burden of proving that both the search and seizure of evidence were lawful." Lucas v. State , 284 Ga. App. 450, 451, 644 S.E.2d 302 (2007) (citation and punctuation omitted). "When the evidence at a suppression hearing is uncontroverted and the credibility of witnesses is not in question, we conduct a de novo review of the trial court’s application of the law to the undisputed facts." Jones v. State , 291 Ga. 35, 36-37 (1), 727 S.E.2d 456 (2012). The facts in this case are essentially undisputed.
An officer with the Clayton County Police Department testified as follows at the suppression hearing. The officer was stopped in his vehicle behind Harris’s vehicle at a traffic light at the intersection of two roads, and another vehicle was in front of Harris’s at the light. Harris’s right turn signal was engaged. After waiting for several minutes, Harris turned right into an adjacent gas station, drove through the gas station parking lot, and exited on the other side of the gas station to avoid the traffic light. The officer conducted a traffic stop on Harris.
The officer testified that a "Code Section... says no vehicle shall disengage to a traffic control device by running the traffic control device." According to the officer, he believed Harris violated the law by "disengaging the stop light, as the Code Section states, by cutting through the parking lot ... instead of sitting for the light to turn green." The officer further testified that he had been trained that individuals are not allowed to do what Harris did, and he has stopped other drivers in the past for this same conduct. The officer did not identify in his testimony the particular "Code Section" on which he relied, but it is undisputed that the officer believed that Harris had violated OCGA § 40-6-20. As a result of the officer’s interaction with Harris during the traffic stop, he subsequently arrested Harris for driving under the influence of alcohol and also charged him with a traffic control device violation pursuant to OCGA § 40-6-20.
OCGA § 40-6-20 (a) states,
The driver of any vehicle shall obey the instructions of an official traffic-control device applicable thereto ... unless otherwise directed by a police officer," subject to exceptions not applicable to this case. OCGA § 40-6-20 (e) states, "The disregard or disobedience of the instructions of any official traffic-control device or signal
placed in accordance with the provisions of this chapter by the driver of a vehicle shall be deemed prima-facie evidence of a violation of law, without requiring proof of who and by what authority such sign or device has been erected.
Although the trial court found that no violation of OCGA § 40-6-20 had occurred, it further found that the traffic stop was legal because the officer’s mistake of law was "reasonable but honest." Specifically, the court found that "the officer was under a reasonable belief, based on what he testified was his training, ... [and] the fact [that] he had cited other people for making the same movement[.]" Following a bench trial in which the...
