HELENA — The Montana Supreme Court has ruled unanimously against a Kalispell man who argued his constitutional rights were violated when he was arrested after trying to film a police traffic stop.
Sean Doman was found guilty of obstructing a peace officer in 2023 in Kalispell Municipal Court. Justices heard oral arguments in October as Doman appealed his conviction.
The court’s opinion, written by Justice Beth Baker, said Doman hadn’t raised his constitutional claims early enough in the legal process, so they had to make their decision based solely on whether prosecutors had provided enough evidence that a “rational juror” could conclude he was guilty.
In July 2022, Doman was riding his bike through a Kalispell neighborhood when he saw Kalispell Police Department Officer Dustin Willey conducting a traffic stop. He stopped and began recording the stop with his phone. The video he took is now posted to Youtube.
When a second officer, George Minaglia, arrived on the scene, he told Doman to move back. Doman said his recording was “First Amendment-protected activity,” and Minaglia said he agreed but directed Doman to move further away.
Doman told the officer he wanted to remain close enough to the stopped car that he could record audio, and that he was on a public sidewalk. Minaglia told Doman he could not stay where he was. When Doman continued to say no, Minaglia can be seen in the video raising his hand to cover the camera, just before the recording ends.
According to Doman’s attorneys, the officer took Doman’s phone and tossed it on the ground, then Doman threatened to sue him. Attorneys said Doman continued to move back from the stopped car, called Minaglia a “tyrant,” and was then arrested.
Prosecutors said Doman was arrested not because he was recording, but because his presence so close to the stopped car was disrupting the officers’ investigation. Doman’s attorneys said the officers had clearly treated him differently than they would have treated someone who wasn’t filming.
Baker wrote that Doman should have brought up his claims during his trial, like his argument that the jury instructions prevented him from making the case that Minaglia’s orders were unlawful. She said he hadn’t demonstrated that upholding his conviction would be a “manifest miscarriage of justice.”
“Considering that Doman stopped right next to the vehicle, gestured to its occupants, refused to comply with Minaglia’s orders despite multiple warnings, and acted combative towards the officers, he has not met his high burden of showing that failure to review his claims would result in a conviction on the basis of purely constitutionally protected activity and therefore would be manifestly unjust,” Baker wrote.
While all seven justices joined Baker’s opinion, Justice Jim Shea wrote his own concurring opinion, saying he agreed with the decision but wanted to praise how Minaglia handled the situation.
“Regardless of whether you think that Doman was guilty of obstruction or even what you might think of the merits of his constitutional challenges—had they been preserved—you would be hard pressed to view the video of this encounter and conclude that it should have been handled any differently from a public engagement standpoint,” he wrote. “This bears noting because we are constantly inundated with images of violent and confrontational encounters between law enforcement and citizens who are attempting to record and document their interactions with law enforcement. The encounter in this case stands in stark contrast to those images.”
