State v. Alsheriffe Mire

COURT OF APPEALS
DECISION NOTICE
DATED AND FILED This opinion is subject to further editing. If
published, the official version will appear in
the bound volume of the Official Reports.
February 4, 2026
A party may file with the Supreme Court a
Samuel A. Christensen petition to review an adverse decision by the
Clerk of Court of Appeals Court of Appeals. See WIS. STAT. § 808.10 and
RULE 809.62.

Appeal No. 2024AP2481-CR Cir. Ct. No. 2019CF1477

STATE OF WISCONSIN IN COURT OF APPEALS
DISTRICT II

STATE OF WISCONSIN,

PLAINTIFF-RESPONDENT,

V.

ALSHERIFFE MIRE,

DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.

APPEAL from a judgment of the circuit court for Racine County:
ROBERT S. REPISCHAK, Judge. Affirmed.

Before Neubauer, P.J., Gundrum, and Lazar, JJ.

¶1 GUNDRUM, J. Alsheriffe Mire appeals from a judgment of
conviction, on his guilty plea, for attempting to flee or elude an officer. He contends
the circuit court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence without
conducting an evidentiary hearing. For the following reasons, we affirm.
No. 2024AP2481-CR

BACKGROUND

¶2 The relevant facts, as stated in the criminal complaint, are as follows.
Deputies with the Racine County Sheriffs Department initiated a traffic stop of Mire
for speeding at around 1:00 a.m. After speaking with Mire and returning to his
squad to complete a citation for that offense, one of the deputies again approached
Mire’s vehicle, along with another deputy. The first deputy informed Mire that he
would be issuing a citation for speeding and asked Mire to exit the vehicle so he
could explain the citation in front of the squad. Mire refused to exit. The second
deputy explained to Mire that he was required to exit, but Mire continued to resist
and eventually drove off at a high rate of speed. The deputies pursued him for nearly
three miles before terminating the pursuit. The first deputy estimated that during
the pursuit Mire reached a speed of “approximately 135/140 mph” while passing
other vehicles in heavy rain.

¶3 Related to Mire’s abrupt departure from the scene and disturbing
driving thereafter, Mire was charged with second degree recklessly endangering
safety, attempting to flee or elude an officer, obstructing an officer, and disorderly
conduct. Claiming the traffic stop was unlawfully extended in violation of his
constitutional rights, Mire filed a motion to suppress “the evidence gathered in the
present matter resulting from an illegal detention” as well as “all derivative
evidence.” Based upon statements purportedly made by deputies and captured on
their body cameras, Mire asserted in his motion that the deputies had no reasonable
suspicion of any violation of the law other than speeding; no deputy “was …
working on completing the citation for the initial stop”; deputies asked Mire to step
out of the vehicle “explicitly for investigative purposes, not because of a concern
for officer safety”; and the deputies “had effectively executed [their] investigation

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No. 2024AP2481-CR

of speeding, and [were] explicitly removing Mr. Mire … from his vehicle to pursue
an entirely distinct investigation—to run a canine unit around his vehicle.”

¶4 The circuit court denied Mire’s suppression motion without
conducting an evidentiary hearing, concluding that even if the traffic stop had been
unlawfully extended, “that does not give [Mire] the legal right to flee the police.”
Mire subsequently pled to attempting to flee or elude an officer, with the remaining
counts being dismissed and read in. The court sentenced Mire, and he now appeals.

DISCUSSION

¶5 Mire contends the circuit court erred in denying his motion without
affording him an evidentiary hearing. He claims the court “was incorrect that if it
found that the stop was unreasonably extended, it could not suppress any evidence
that occurred during or thereafter of flight from the police resulting from this
unlawful police conduct.” We conclude the court did not err.

¶6 A circuit court has the discretion to deny a pre-trial motion without an
evidentiary hearing “if the record conclusively demonstrates that the defendant is
not entitled to relief.” State v. Radder, 2018 WI App 36, ¶11, 382 Wis. 2d 749, 915
N.W.2d 180 (quoting State v. Bentley, 201 Wis. 2d 303, 309-10, 548 N.W.2d 50
(1996)). Whether the record conclusively demonstrates this is a matter of law we
review independently. Radder, 382 Wis. 2d 749, ¶11 n.5.

¶7 Mire appears to be under the mistaken belief that he had carte blanche
authority to use any criminal means he wished in order to “escape” from the traffic
stop once—if—law enforcement crossed over the line from a lawful detention to an
unlawful one. That is not the law. Our decision in State v. Bourgeois, 2022 WI
App 18, 401 Wis. 2d 489, 973 N.W.2d 818, provides helpful guidance on this point.

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No. 2024AP2481-CR

¶8 In Bourgeois, Bourgeois was charged with nine criminal counts
stemming from law enforcement’s search of his hotel room, which led to the
discovery of a handgun Bourgeois had stolen and to a related theft charge, and
officers’ subsequent interaction with him at his residence later in the day, which led
to a charge of threatening a law enforcement officer. Id., ¶2. Bourgeois moved to
suppress all evidence discovered from the search of his hotel room as well as “any
subsequent evidence derived therefrom.” Id. Following the circuit court’s denial
of the motion, Bourgeois was convicted at trial of the theft and the threatening-a-
law-enforcement-officer charges and was acquitted on the other seven charges. Id.

¶9 On appeal, Bourgeois challenged both convictions on the basis that
the circuit court erred in denying his suppression motion. Id., ¶¶2-3. We agreed
the court erred in declining to suppress evidence discovered during the unlawful
search of Bourgeois’s hotel room, and we vacated the theft conviction related to the
gun discovered in the room. Id., ¶4. We concluded, however, that the court did not
err in declining to suppress evidence related to the threatening-a-law-enforcement-
officer conviction. Id.

¶10 In so concluding, we recognized that “the exclusionary rule of
suppressing evidence obtained through an illegal search or seizure ‘applies not only
to primary evidence seized during an unlawful search, but also to derivative
evidence acquired as a result of the illegal search.’” Bourgeois, 401 Wis. 2d 489,
¶29 (quoting State v. Carroll, 2010 WI 8, ¶19, 322 Wis. 2d 299, 778 N.W.2d 1).
We determined, however, that “the evidence underpinning the threatening-a-law-
enforcement-officer conviction … [was] not ‘derivative evidence acquired as a
result of the illegal search’ of Bourgeois’s hotel room.” Bourgeois, 401 Wis. 2d
489, ¶29 (quoting Carroll, 322 Wis. 2d 299, ¶19). We noted that “Black’s Law
Dictionary defines derivative evidence as ‘[e]vidence that is later discovered by

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No. 2024AP2481-CR

using evidence that was illegally obtained.’” Bourgeois, 401 Wis. 2d 489, ¶30
(alteration in original) (quoting derivative evidence, BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY
(10th ed. 2014)). We observed that

[i]n this case, law enforcement did not “use” the handgun or
any other evidence seized from Bourgeois’s hotel room to
“discover” the evidence related to the threatening-a-law-
enforcement-officer charge. Rather, Bourgeois created new
criminal evidence when he committed this new crime against
[the officer] separate from the unlawful entry into
Bourgeois’s hotel room.

Bourgeois, 401 Wis. 2d 489, ¶30.

¶11 The present case is similar. With his motion, Mire sought to suppress
all evidence resulting from law enforcement’s allegedly unlawful extension of the
traffic stop, including “all derivative evidence.” But, the evidence underpinning the
charges of second-degree recklessly endangering safety, attempting to flee and
elude an officer, obstruction of an officer, and disorderly conduct is neither “primary
evidence” seized during the allegedly unlawful detention nor “derivative evidence
acquired as a result of” the detention. See id., ¶29. “[L]aw enforcement did not
‘use’ [evidence from the allegedly unlawful detention] to ‘discover’ the evidence
related to” second-degree recklessly endangering safety, attempting to flee and
elude police, obstructing an officer, or disorderly conduct. See id., ¶30. “Rather,
[Mire] created new criminal evidence when he committed th[ese] new crime[s] …
separate from” the allegedly unlawful detention. See id.

¶12 For the foregoing reasons, we conclude the circuit court had the
discretion to deny Mire’s motion without a hearing because “the record conclusively
demonstrates that [Mire] is not entitled to relief.” See Radder, 382 Wis. 2d 749,
¶11 (quoting Bentley, 201 Wis. 2d at 309-10). Mire has not developed any
arguments related to the court’s exercise of its discretion, and it is not within our

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No. 2024AP2481-CR

role to make such arguments for him. See Doe 1 v. Madison Metro. Sch. Dist.,
2022 WI 65, ¶35, 403 Wis. 2d 369, 976 N.W.2d 584 (stating that appellate courts
“do not step out of [their] neutral role to develop or construct arguments for parties”
(citation omitted)).

By the Court.—Judgment affirmed.

Recommended for publication in the official reports.

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