North Dakota's Supreme Court has ruled that a man who was stopped for traveling less than 10 mph on a Williston street should not have his license suspended for drunken driving.

Although Robert Johnson was driving slowly when he was pulled over shortly before 1 a.m. last Aug. 30, the police officer who stopped him did not have enough reason to believe Johnson was breaking any laws, the Supreme Court's majority opinion concluded.

The stretch of Second Avenue West in Williston has a 25 mph speed limit, and no posted minimum. The officer, Ian Wise, paced Johnson's vehicle for two blocks, and said he did not observe him weaving before he pulled Johnson over. There was no other traffic.

Johnson's blood-alcohol level was measured at 0.14 percent, and the Department of Transportation ordered his license suspended for three months.

Johnson appealed, and Northwest District Judge David Nelson lifted the suspension, saying that Johnson's snail-like driving was not an adequate justification for a police stop.

The Supreme Court, in a 4-1 decision issued Thursday, agreed with Nelson, and said Johnson's license should not have been suspended.

"People travel on our roads at all hours of the day, and it is not unusual for people to be traveling at 12:43 a.m. Furthermore, it is logical that drivers may reduce their speeds when traveling in the dark," Chief Justice Gerald VandeWalle wrote in the court's majority opinion. "These two non-suspicious factors, even when taken together, did not provide the requisite reasonable and articulable suspicion to justify stopping Johnson's vehicle."

In other business Thursday, the court:

3 Suspended the license of a lawyer after he reported he had taken money from a law firm in Bismarck.

The Supreme Court said Steven Aakre, a lawyer practicing in Moorhead, Minn., agreed Wednesday to be suspended.

The suspension stems from Aakre's own report to the court last year that he improperly took money from a Fargo law firm for which he worked.

3 Said former state Republican Chairman John Korsmo, who pleaded guilty to lying in a federal campaign fundraising investigation, won't be able to reapply for a North Dakota law license for a year.

The disciplinary action, announced Friday, is slightly harsher than what Korsmo indicated in court filings that he was willing to accept. Korsmo asked the Supreme Court to delay his ability to reapply until Jan. 11, when his probation ends for his August 2005 felony conviction.

3 Ruled that a man who was convicted of molesting his girlfriend's 4-year-old daughter should have a new trial because his lawyer could not question the child at his first trial, the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled.

James A. Blue was convicted in February 2005 of gross sexual imposition, largely on the strength of a videotaped interview of the girl. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison with two years suspended.