Or, “I Choose To Not Know What That Is, Step Out Of The Vehicle”
A police officer can search your car if you have what the officer believes is drug paraphernalia in plain view during a traffic stop. That is probable cause, probably 'cause the officer saw that crack pipe with their own two eyes.
However, if the officer is dumb (or “dumb”) enough to believe a tire pressure gauge is a crack pipe, does that change the legality of the search if it comes to trial? Is there any standard about how dumb or ignorant is too dumb or ignorant?
If someone’s too stupid to know the tree’s poisoned, is that an antidote?
IANAL, but I would have to think that a reasonable defense attorney could mount a defense here. A tire pressure gauge is easily recognizable as such by anyone who drives a car for much of their day, say, for their jobs, say as a patrolman or woman.
That probably cause seems pretty weak to me, if it is as presented.
Weisshund, in General Questions we ask that joke answers not be posted until some factual answers have been given. No warning issued, but please restrict yourself to factual answers here.
(OP: hopefully this is just an extension of your question and not a hijack…)
Is it just a matter of getting a search started for any “reasonable” reason, and then all’s fair game? What if the cops are out looking for the perpetrator of a murder committed with a hatchet, and they stop Innocent Bob who happens to have a hatchet in his backseat for woodworking purposes. They search Bob’s car and find illegal drugs. Is probable cause established for that search in a subsequent drug case against Bob even if that cause was for something unrelated?
If they’re looking for an axe and it’s an axe, then presumably that’s fair. (Happens all the time. “Your honor, despite the age, height and weight differences, he was the same skin color as the alleged perp, so of course we arrested him…”) However, I guess the question for the OP would be - how reasonable would it be to mistake a tire pressure gauge for a hash pipe? I suppose the question would come up in court, and someone (defense, prosecution) would present a photo array of similar devices to convince the court of their point of view. Wheneever the question is “is it reasonable?” then it’s up to the judge to provide the answer, after arguments from both sides.
Obviously, “That banana looked like a lethal weapon!” is the one extreme where any evidence would get tossed. (Cue Monty Python’s “how to defend yourself against a man armed with a banana…”)
I’m not a police officer, but I could see myself sitting on a jury one day and if I was shown these two implements:
And then told that the officer thought he saw something like that, through a window, nestled in cranny of the seat, in the dark, I’d probably vote that he had a reasonable cause to investigate further (assuming that marijuana was illegal in my state).
I’m not a lawyer, but I think it would make sense to not keep your pressure gauges in the front seat if you engage in illegal activities in a way that will leave evidence in your vehicle. (Though, in general, it probably also makes sense to not engage in illegal activities if you’re not willing to deal with the potential ramifications of that choice.)
Yes and the reasonable officer standard is higher than the reasonable person standard. An officer is expected to have training and experience that the average person does not. Mistaking a tire pressure gauge for a crack pipe would get the case thrown out. You can excuse beginning the search for an honest mistake. In the dark from a distance it looked similar. But once he picks it up there is no way he wouldn’t know it’s not a crack pipe. The PC disappears and the search is improper after that point. If for some reason he decides to continue the search there better be a different reason or anything found will be thrown out.
Tire gauges are commonly used as crack pipes. They’re more commonly used as tire gauges, though, so the sight of one in a car shouldn’t arouse suspicion absent any other sketchy stuff.
My question was whether seeing an axe as probable cause for an axe murder translates to a fair search for subsequent drug charges is drugs are found. An axe wouldn’t provide probable cause for a drug search under normal circumstances.
I don’t think most police would ever claim a really, really stupid reason for conducting a search in the first place - at least not in court or any other documented form. It seems to me the whole lack of probable cause issue would be pretty easily circumvented by most officers and that they’d know how to do what they want and collect the evidence they need by knowing how to navigate the rulebook.
How hard is it to claim an additional reason to continue the search after seeing the pressure gauge wasn’t a pipe, and how could it be argued anyway? Aren’t officers pretty much taken at their word when they say they saw something; eg he claims he saw the butt of a gun sticking out from under the seat when he bent down to pick up the gauge (when it was actually fully hidden but he felt around anyway)? How often does something like that actually happen, where the police start a search but stop after 30 seconds and not bother looking through the whole car anyway, especially if they have a hunch the guy’s dirty?.. in most every search I see conducted on COPS (yes it’s edited TV but still real officers) they tell the driver they’ve noticed a few a generic suspicious signs (you seem nervous, I smell MJ, you had you had down between the seats, etc…), then they pull the guy out, cuff him, and just go through the entire car, usually eventually finding something that had been concealed.
At what point is the reason for the search documented by the officer… doesn’t he write up a report after conducting a search? If he actually thought the pressure gauge was a pipe and started a search in which he also opened the glove box (perhaps improperly) and found a brick of coke, wouldn’t he just put an easily defended cause for the initial search in his report rather than get his own case thrown out by admitting he didn’t follow procedure correctly?
I’m certainly not saying police conduct improper searches very often, but on the rare occasion that they do I’m quite sure they know how to conceal the fact through specific wording and years of experience in courts. Expecting someone with that kind of know-how not to word his reasoning in his favor but instead state that he in fact didn’t follow proper procedure seems pretty naïve and not very realistic. Sure cases and evidence sometimes get tossed, but I’d think that’s almost always because an equally experienced defence lawyer uses his expertise to argue for it, and very seldom because an officer simply states he doesn’t know how to do his job properly.
I was involved in an incident a few years ago that made me wonder if there are any practical limits on “probable cause.”
I’m a middle-aged white guy who’s never smoked anything in his life, who pulled off the expressway in a Chicago suburb one night, to more safely change a flat tire on a residential side street. Unable to budge the lug nut, I called AAA. Despite being able to clearly see the flat tire, Elmhurst police claimed AAA was saying they had no record of a call from me, and that they’d called in my plate and it came back as “reported as used in a burglary.” My clear response that I did not consent to a search of the vehicle went unheeded, and I sweated bullets as I imagined what they might plant under a seat while I was being held on the curb. The AAA truck showed up while they were searching, and the police departed, muttering under their breath.
In the unlikely event they’re ever called to testify in an exclusionary hearing, what keeps the police from simply claiming they or the dispatcher must have misheard the plate number, or misread the computer display?
As TheChileanBlob pointed out, tire gauges are used to make crack pipes. Instructions are readily found on the Internet, complete with how-to videos. Takes a minute or two to make and you end up with a pipe with a nice angled bowl on the far end. Dennis http://herb.co/2016/05/10/wa tch-how-to-make-a-tire-gauge-pipe/
We rely upon police officers to be truthful on the witness stand, both during hearings on things like exclusion of evidence, and on things like what they witnessed, found, heard, etc. That’s not always true, of course; police officers are human beings with all their frailties, and just like almost all other humans, they don’t always see their way clear to truthful testimony. But, I would say that the percentage of times they are untruthful is extremely low.
The number of exceptions to the general exclusionary rule are by now so numerous, they really rarely need to worry about lying to obtain the ability to search a vehicle without permission.
If it turns out that whatever it was is not, in fact, anything of a criminal nature, how come the question as to whether the police officer was entitled to search ends up in front of a jury anyway?
I thought it was up to the judge to decide admissibility things, not the jury. (And not usually in the jury’s presence.) If the judge rules it’s a legal search, then the jury isn’t (usually) going to be deciding the case based on whether the cause was valid or not.
Stopped at a DUI checkpoint, an officer pointed to an item on my dashboard and asked what it was.
“It’s a hemostat; specifically a Halsted-Mosquito hemostat.”
He asked what they were for.
“Well, in the medical community they are used to grasp blood vessels, allowing them to be ligated, during surgery and such.”
He asked why I had them.
“I purchased them to allow myself to grasp small objects in situations where pliers or other tools would be too large. I also use them when fishing to remove hooks.”
I was sober as a judge and my car was totally clean. When the cop asked my permission to search the vehicle I smiled and told him no. He gave up and I drove on. It was an enjoyable police encounter that left me happy, but the cop furious.
Precisely. The only reason the issue of probable cause would end up in front of a jury would be in a civil rights lawsuit against the department or officer, as part of determining if the officer’s actions violated the rights of the complainant. And, of course, if a judge has made a determination on that in the criminal case, that would be dispositive of the question in the civil case, by collateral estoppel.
If you are asking if contraband unrelated to the probable cause would be admissible the answer is yes. Although in the case of an axe murder there is no way I would do a roadside PC search. The car would be seized and the car would be searched with a warrant. It’s likely that a more thorough forensic search is needed.
In my state all such searches are on video.
I guarantee he wasn’t furious and probably forgot you before you were out of sight. Do you really think you are the only one who refused to give consent that night at the checkpoint?
