A state trooper lacked legal justification to pull over a motorist who had a purple baseball-size object dangling from his rear-view mirror, a divided state Superior Court panel has ruled.

The majority decision, authored by Judge Paula Francisco Ott, will almost certainly sink the drugged-driving case against driver Darren Marino.

The dispute hinges largely on perceptions.

It was Trooper Joseph Snyder’s perception that the mirror dangler was obstructing Marino’s view out the windshield as Marino drove through Grove City in Mercer County on Sept. 5, 2017.

Snyder pulled Marino over, intending to cite him for a vision obstruction, court filings state. That morphed into a drugged-driving charge and a count of possession of a small amount of marijuana after the trooper said he smelled pot at Marino’s car and found a small bag of the drug in the glove compartment.

Marino asked the county court to suppress all the evidence Snyder gathered during the stop. County Judge Daniel P. Wallace did just that, agreeing with Marino that Snyder “had no reasonable suspicion to stop the vehicle for a violation of the Motor Vehicle Code,” Ott wrote.

In seconding Wallace’s finding, Ott and fellow state judge Mary P. Murray rejected an appeal the Mercer County District Attorney’s Office filed in a bid to overturn the suppression order.

Ott and Murray backed Wallace’s conclusion that the mirror dangler wasn’t large enough to constitute an obstruction, even though Snyder claimed he saw it swinging back and forth in front of Marino’s eyes.

Wallace “found there was no reasonable basis for the stop, and we find no reason to disagree,” Ott wrote.

President Judge Emeritus Correale F. Stevens filed a dissenting opinion, arguing that Snyder “had specific and articulable facts prior to the stop sufficient to form a reasonable suspicion that Marino was violating the Motor Vehicle Code.”

Wallace improperly substituted his own judgment about the obstructiveness of the mirror dangler for that of the officer at the scene, Stevens found.