A sex offender has asked the Montana Supreme Court to strike down a misdemeanor drug conviction, claiming he was illegally searched and detained.

Steven Todd Hoover, 56, was convicted of misdemeanor criminal possession of dangerous drug paraphernalia in 2015 after he was taken into custody by a Flathead County Sheriff’s deputy. He was ordered to serve a six-month deferred sentence.

Hoover claims in an appeal filed Sept. 15 that the sentence is unjust because the night he was stopped, officers did not have reason to detain or interrogate him.

“On a summer evening, Steven Hoover and his lady friend ... drove his F-150 pickup to a secluded spot on an ungated mini storage lot,” Hoover’s public defender Koan Mercer wrote. “They parked, turned off their lights and engaged in consensual intimacies. It was late and dark and even from within 15 yards all anyone looking would have seen was two silhouettes and some movement in the cab.”

A nearby sheriff’s deputy was training a new deputy and noticed the couple parked in the car. Based on testimony at trial and court documents, the sheriff’s deputy, trainee and a Montana Highway Patrol officer approached the vehicle.

The deputy testified that he thought the individuals in the car might be involved in a burglary, though Hoover’s attorney claims there was not any recent reports of burglaries in the area. The deputy also stated that he thought the parties might be involved in “either loading up a marijuana bowl or shooting up,” because the people were looking down at their laps.

“Although not noted in the police report, [the officer] would later testify that the four-officer investigation was also justified by particularized suspicion of drug use based upon his training and experience that Montanans seek out dark spots in order to use drugs,” Mercer wrote in the appeal.

The officers involved shone a light on the vehicle and found the woman in the vehicle watching Hoover sexually stimulate himself. The investigating officer then testified that the pair were detained because she was worried that the woman might be subject to a sex crime, though, according to Mercer, the woman made it clear she was a willing participant. A marijuana pipe was found in Hoover’s possession.

“(The officer) testified unambiguously that there was no evidence (the woman) was being held against her will,” Mercer wrote. “There were no sounds from within the cab, no protestations, nothing other than the officer and state’s apparent concern that a female should not be comfortable in the presence of a man’s exposed penis.”

Mercer claims that both Hoover and the woman’s rights to privacy were violated. The attorney points out that because it was dark, the pair were not at risk of exposing themselves to the general public. He has asked the evidence obtained in the allegedly illegal search be suppressed.

“(The officer’s) belief in the possibility that folks sometimes seek darkness to break the law does not transform the commonplace behavior of two Montanans parking their pickup in a secluded spot for a bit of privacy into a constitutional justification for the police seizure of any such citizens. Mr. Hoover’s merely looking down while parked in a dark lot falls well short of the objective data necessary to establish particularized suspicion of drug use,” Mercer wrote.

The appeal does not mention that Hoover is a two-time convicted sex offender. He was convicted of felony indecent exposure in Deer Lodge County for an incident in 1990 and he was convicted of an identical charge in Flathead County in 1994. According to state records he has been convicted of felony failure to register in Flathead County three times, for incidents dating back to 2004. He was most recently sentenced for failure to register in December 2015. He is currently on felony probation.

The state has not responded to the petition.

Reporter Megan Strickland can be reached at 758-4459 or mstrickland@dailyinterlake.com.