To the trial judge, the case of Daniel Garcia-Mendoza seemed to be a police stop based on “driving while Latino.”

Plymouth police officer Ryan Peterson said he was suspicious because “the driver had both hands on the steering wheel and was looking straight ahead.” What’s more, neither driver nor passenger “were looking at me.”

Checking the license plate, Peterson learned there was no driver’s license listed for the car’s owner.

Peterson pulled over the 2003 Chevy Tahoe on Interstate 94 in Minneapolis on March 19, 2012. “Luckily for Peterson, perhaps,” neither Garcia-Mendoza nor his passenger had a driver’s license, the judge said.

In a search of the car before it was towed, officers found 8 ounces of methamphetamine in a Pringles can.

What followed is going to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which hears arguments Monday on the question: If a judge in a civil forfeiture case finds a bad bust, can he keep the state from seizing the defendant’s property, even if the guy pleaded guilty in a criminal case?

Hennepin County District Judge Thomas Sipkins said the stop and search were unlawful — the cop had no “reasonable suspicion” to stop the car. At that point, he could have suppressed the drug evidence, using the “exclusionary rule,” and freed Garcia-Mendoza — if he were hearing the criminal case. The rule applies the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure.

But Garcia-Mendoza had pleaded guilty to a drug-selling charge in federal court and agreed there to forfeit the car and $611 in cash found on him. He is doing 10 years in prison.

Sipkins was hearing Garcia-Mendoza’s challenge to Hennepin County’s forfeiture action to take the car and cash. He ruled the forfeiture would stand. A panel of the Court of Appeals agreed, and said it would not extend the exclusionary rule to forfeitures in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Supreme Court will hear the oral arguments at Champlin Park High School, as it has done twice each year at schools across the state since 1995. Students will be allowed to ask questions of the justices, but not about this or any other pending case.

Forfeiture laws, sometimes called “policing for profit,” can lead to abuse of power. The Metro Gang Strike Force was shut down in 2009 after the state legislative auditor said the strike force could not account for more than $18,000 in seized cash and 14 seized cars. An independent review later concluded that perhaps a dozen strike force employees engaged in misconduct, and some in criminal acts, by taking seized goods for their own use.

Fueled in part by that scandal, Gov. Mark Dayton signed a bill last week that changed state forfeiture law.

Under the change, the government can take property only if it wins a criminal conviction. The bill, which goes into effect Aug. 1, also shifts the burden of proof to the government. Previously, owners who wanted their property back had to prove it was not the instrument or proceeds of the charged drug crime. Under current law, an acquittal in criminal court does not affect the civil forfeiture case.

Garcia-Mendoza’s case preceded these changes in the law. His lawyer, Kirk Anderson, argued that, under the exclusionary rule, “courts may deter the unbridled plunder of private property by law enforcement officials.”

Eleven of the 13 federal appeals courts and 34 states agree that the rule applies in forfeiture cases, according to Teresa Nelson of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, one of four groups that filed friend-of-the-court briefs, three of them supporting Garcia-Mendoza.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman argued in a brief that a state law, enacted in 1963, lets a person seek return of property based on unlawful search and seizure .

Anderson said the statute could resolve the issue, if the high court agrees.

But Nelson said the statute could be repealed by the Legislature, while the state Supreme Court’s constitutional holding would be a stronger remedy.

She cited a comment by the gang strike force commander, Ron Ryan, to a state investigator: “Some mope, he’s a drug dealer … and they have this thing that they don’t deserve so we’re going to take it, we’re going to forfeit it. You know. That’s just the mentality of the coppers.”

She said that attitude shows “the need for additional deterrence of unlawful acts.”

Hal Davis can be reached at 651-228-5302. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/haldavis3.