The short version is that if the police see a car owned by a person with a suspended driver’s license, that fact alone, without more is enough reasonable articulable suspicion for a stop.
I agree with Sotomayor and think that this is a terrible erosion of the Fourth Amendment. First, there is no reasonable articulable suspicion that the individual has committed any sort of crime. They are simply using statistics to determine that there is a greater than zero chance that the person who owns the car is continuing to drive despite the state prohibition.
What is to stop this from being applied generally? If police see a guy walking down the street at 2am, can they use this case to say, “Well, we have no evidence that this guy is doing something wrong, but generally, a non-zero chance, that someone out and about at 2am may be selling drugs or seeking prostitutes, so we will do a Terry stop”?
Second, if a family member does the completely lawful thing of driving around the person with a suspended license, then that family member is subject to being detained at any time, or even multiple times per day for doing nothing wrong. And during that detention, they are subject to the panoply of traffic stop jurisprudence including bringing the drug dogs around, etc.
There was a throwaway line that if the police see objective evidence that it is not the owner who is driving, say they see a 120lb. 30 year old female driving when the registered owner is a 250lb. 50 year old male, then they may not make the stop. But this ruling encourages willful blindness. Why attempt to identify the driver when you can make the stop anyways and let the chips fall where they may?
The SCOTUS majority clearly disagrees. A meaningful percentage of the miles driven in cars whose owner’s license is suspended are driven by that owner, which supplies the necessary “particularized and objective basis to suspect legal wrongdoing." The decision also notes this:
Sure, I read the opinion. I just disagree with it. I think it is a pretty stark departure from prior case law. In prior cases, the police would observe an individual doing something, and even if what the individual was doing could be attributed to many other lawful things, if what the police observed in totality gave a reasonable articulable suspicion that the individual might be committing a crime, then the stop was good.
This is qualitatively different. The police observe otherwise lawful activity but maybe the unknown individual committing the activity may be someone who is not permitted to do that activity. The focus is not on observation of suspicious activity of an individual, but merely reduces the formula to a percentage game.
To me it seems more akin to being able to pull a car over with hippie bumper stickers on the back because probability-wise, from the officer’s training and experience, there is likely marijuana in the car. Or pulling over a car with an NRA bumper sticker because that person is more likely to be carrying a gun (in those states that don’t generally allow concealed carry).
It is just so incredibly common for a person to drive a vehicle who is not the registered owner that it should not raise an inference that a driver is the registered owner. Hell, just in the past three days I have driven two cars that I am not the registered owner of–my wife’s car in her name, and my daughter’s car that is in my ex-wife’s name.
And see, I said “my daughter’s car” but she is not even the registered owner. Nearly 100% of the time that car is not driven by the registered owner.
Except they’re not using this to conclude that a crime has been committed, but rather than there is a reasonable likelihood that a reasonable person would agree warrants additional investigation, e.g., by stopping the car or vehicle and verifying the driver.
I’m not sure how else they would do it, given that it’s not very practical to identify the driver in a moving vehicle. This isn’t like automated speeding fines (a personal issue I have) where many towns or cities just treat the owner of a car as though they had definitely committed a traffic violation. In this case, the traffic cops are ensuring that someone who shouldn’t be driving is not, in fact, driving.
I have a great many problems with police practice in this country, and, there’s a 100 page thread in the Pit filled with various questionable, unwise, unprofessional, unethical, or even illegal acts done by police officers. But the plain fact is that if we’re going to bother enforcing the laws, that requires that police have the power to investigate. Verifying the driver of a car, known to be owned by someone who cannot lawfully drive, does not seem excessively imposing on the public given that it is a limited and targeted matter of public safety.
I don’t pretend to be a legal scholar, but this is not right at all. My understanding is that, while the police cannot initiate a traffic stop for no reason, they do not have to clearly identify an individual’s violation provided that there are reasonable grounds for the stop (and there is a long list of exactly what constitutes that, which may vary by state). You can make the argument that the situation listed shouldn’t be grounds for a stop and we would likely disagree, but it’s definitely in line with existing case law AFAIK.
But here are the facts known to the officer: That vehicle is owned by a person who has a suspended driver’s license. That is all. Full stop.
There are no facts to suggest that the registered owner is the one driving the vehicle. Not a single one. But you just know, right, deep in your gut, that the scofflaw owner is the one driving. The only way you make that leap is by hunches or inchoate suspicions. But what the Court has done is allowed that bastardized form of probability analysis.
The argument seems to be that there is somewhat of a chance that the person driving is the owner, so police can stop for that reason alone. If you apply this generally, there are no real bounds.
A person in this neighborhood, for example, (and maybe a black person in this neighborhood) at this time of night may be up to no good. I have not observed anything concrete, but the Supreme Court said I don’t need 51% probability. Just a reasonable suspicion. And a person in this neighborhood at this time of night may be up to something illegal. I know this because there are many crimes committed in this neighborhood at this time of night. Maybe he is innocent, but I don’t need to consider all possible innocent motives.
Can the police now stop that person? If not, how is that situation meaningfully different than the case holding?
Yes, and so does this. There is no particularized or objective basis to make a determination that the registered owner is the one driving the vehicle. You are using hunches and probabilities, much like with hippie stickers and weed.
Or how about this. Let’s say that there is a 10pm curfew for teenage drivers. At 11:35 p.m. a police officer sees a car pass with a bumper sticker that says “Go Shadyside High School Football!!!”
That could be a teen driver, it could be a parent, it could be an alumni. Is the fact that there is somewhat of a probability it is a teen driver give “reasonable” suspicion to pull the car over?
It’s an interesting ruling and an interesting dilemma, though I don’t think your above example is particularly persuasive. The ownership of a car is stronger evidence of who is likely to be driving it than some silly bumper sticker, but I’m nevertheless surprised that Sotomayer was the only dissent – I would have expected something closer to 5-4 or 6-3.
I can see both sides of this. On one hand, I know at least one family with three kids of driving age that owns three cars, all of them bought by the husband and registered to him, but widely shared among the family – though they are careful for insurance purposes to list the appropriate “primary driver” for each one but then list the rest of the family as secondary drivers. If said husband ever had his license suspended, all three cars would become marked as targets, and in these days of automated license plate scanning, would likely be constantly pulled over regardless of who was driving – and in that family, it could be almost anyone! It’s probably not that uncommon a situation.
One thing that the SDMB has helped shaped my perspective on are some of the cultural/philosophical differences between the US and my own country of Canada. In pondering how the Supreme Court of Canada would likely have ruled on this case, I’m virtually certain that they would have come to the same conclusion as the SCOTUS did. One reason is that as a general principle, public safety has a higher priority here than some abstract concept of unfettered individual rights. That’s one argument in favor of the SCOTUS decision. The other is – well, really it’s the same reasoning – that stopping a driver on a public highway is a very different thing than police intruding on private property without a warrant, and such warrants need damn good justification. The required justification for stopping a driver is far lower and can be almost anything. Again, it’s the priority of public safety. Here in Ontario we randomly have drunk-driving spot-checks where everyone on a given roadway is stopped and very briefly and politely questioned. It only takes seconds – no driver’s license or registration is requested, they just want to know that you’re sober – but the fact that the randomness and sometimes unpredictably odd timing and location puts fear into potential drunk drivers is, to my mind, a positive thing.
It’s not a perfect world, but on balance, I tend to agree with the ruling despite some drawbacks. One could raise similar arguments about red-light cameras and the short-lived and much-despised photo-radar speed traps, now fortunately abolished, but red-light cameras live on and I’m seeing more of them. These automatically photograph morons running red lights and since the driver of the vehicle can’t be identified, the registered owner gets the ticket (and photo proof of the transgression) and presumably sorts it out with the family member or employee or car renter who he knows was driving. In keeping with fairness and the Constitution, no one is charged demerit points because the driver is presumed to be unknown, but the registered owner is responsible for the fine. Again, an imperfect system but one that contributes in an important way to public safety.
I’m confused, for two reasons.
[ol][]Absent any contrary evidence, isn’t the registered owner of a vehicle the most likely driver of it?[]If a person’s license is revoked or suspended, isn’t that a crime by itself? And if a crime is probably being committed, isn’t that sufficient justification for a stop? Why does a cop have to wait for a second crime before a stop?[/ol]
I agree with the OP and frankly I’m surprised so many people seem all too willing to give up their civil liberties. The police routinely trample on our rights as it is, stuff like this just erodes our rights to go about our business unmolested even further.
And as we move more frequently toward automated plate scanners hooked up to various databases, this will approach the limit of having the car stopped every time it comes in view of a police car that has an officer who isn’t otherwise occupied.
I can’t speak to whether the decision was correct or not, but I don’t like the scenarios it enables.
The requirement is for a particularized and objective basis to suspect wrongdoing, not to determine that the owner is the one driving.
The check of the license plate yielding the fact that the owner’s license is suspended satisfies this requirement. By contrast, in your examples there’s nothing “particularized” about a bumper sticker, and no objective correlation between bumper stickers and crime.
I’m confused, for two reasons.
[ol][li]Absent any contrary evidence, isn’t the registered owner of a vehicle the most likely driver of it?If a person’s license is revoked or suspended, isn’t that a crime by itself? And if a crime is probably being committed, isn’t that sufficient justification for a stop? Why does a cop have to wait for a second crime before a stop?[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
It’s probably true, under most circumstances, that the most likely driver of any particular car at any particular time is also the registered owner of the car.
This begs the very question that the court was addressing: the fact that the driver of the car is likely to be the registered owner doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the registered owner. And if it’s not the registered owner behind the wheel, then there is no crime. The police don’t actually know whether an offense has been committed until they pull the car over and find out who the driver is, and generally this isn’t how traffic stops are supposed to work.
As for this case, I’m not particularly surprised at the outcome, although I did think, like wolfpup, that Sotomayor might have some company in her dissent. Unfortunately, automobiles have become something of a 4th amendment-free zone in the United States.
I’m confused, for two reasons.
[ol][li]Absent any contrary evidence, isn’t the registered owner of a vehicle the most likely driver of it?If a person’s license is revoked or suspended, isn’t that a crime by itself? And if a crime is probably being committed, isn’t that sufficient justification for a stop? Why does a cop have to wait for a second crime before a stop?[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
Faulty logic. You are starting with the fact that the car owner has a suspended license. This quite likely dramatically changes the odds that the suspendee is driving. The percentage of unsuspended drivers driving their cars is irrelevant.
So Lenny gets his license suspended. He lets Carl drive his car in the meantime. Carl gets pulled over multiple times per day for no good reason.
Note that the penalty for license suspension is that you can’t drive. It does not add the penalty that effectively no other person can drive your car.
And your 2nd point is flat out completely absurd. Yes, they do have to wait for a second crime to be committed. The first one has already been taken care of.
I’m confused, for two reasons.
[ol][li]Absent any contrary evidence, isn’t the registered owner of a vehicle the most likely driver of it?[*]If a person’s license is revoked or suspended, isn’t that a crime by itself? And if a crime is probably being committed, isn’t that sufficient justification for a stop? Why does a cop have to wait for a second crime before a stop?[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
Not necessarily. In a single-income, one car, family household, it would not be unusual for the car to be registered in the primary earner’s name, while the other person actually drives the car more often; going shopping, taking kids to school or appointments, running errands, etc. When the kids are of age, they are likely to borrow the car, as well.
In Florida, driving on a suspended license is only a crime if the person knew it was suspended. Often, a person’s license is suspended for unpaid tickets or some other reasons, and the they’re completely unaware of it.
You might be surprised to learn that in countries where there are less restrictions on police conduct, no protections against random stops and detentions, no requirements for reasonable suspicion, and a legal code that actually allows police to stop any vehicle on the road absent any reason whatsoever… in countries like this, the police are actually less oppressive and draconian than in countries like America that supposedly have all these freedoms and protections in place. There’s more at play here than just what’s on the books. The case in the OP is a good example. Prior to this court decision, most cops were still able to get around the rules. They’d run a plate and find that the registered owner had a suspended license. Then they’d simply use any number of arbitrary traffic infractions to justify the stop–even though the real reason they wanted to stop the car in the first place was the suspended license. They just had to be sure to pretend it was for something else, like swerving or improper lane change or something like that. They were still doing the same thing, regardless of how the law was actually written.
In Germany, cops can stop you on the road for no reason at all, just to do courtesy safety checks. Yet, they hardly ever do this. If American cops had this ability, I think people would be getting pulled over constantly. I think I’ve been pulled over by the Polizei three times in almost five years–neither time was for an infraction. They can even make you give a breathalyzer on the spot for no reason. They were always polite and professional. I’ve never once felt oppressed or abused by the Polizei, despite the fact that there are less laws protecting me from them than from American cops. I’ve had a few interactions with police in multiple European and Southeast Asian countries, and I’ve never felt they were unreasonable or on a power trip of any kind. They were always respectful, kind, and generally acted like they cared for the community and citizens. Contrast that with the seemingly common mentality of so many American police who often treat everyone as if they are criminals. Practically every interaction I’ve had with American police has been unpleasant. If American police get involved, you can bet that someone is going to jail for something. Yet, in Europe, I’ve seen so many instances of rowdy drunks acting out, or people otherwise acting the fool, and the police just deescalate the situation, help them out, get them to calm down, get them a cab and/or send them on their way. It’s remarkable. It’s community policing as it’s supposed to be.
I don’t think it’s simple interpretations of the law that are the true threat to our civil liberties. It’s something much deeper than that.
I don’t think that’s quite right. The opinion suggests that the officer “knows” the following facts:
The vehicle is owned by a person with a revoked license.
People with revoked licenses (at least in Kansas) “frequently continue to drive”.
The driver of a vehicle is usually the registered owner.
(For Justice Kagan): the owner of this particular vehicle was a habitual violator of motor vehicle laws.
From that, the Court concludes, the officer reasonably suspects that this vehicle is being operated by a person with a suspended license (and, while not legally relevant, the officer was correct).
You disagree factually with proposition 3, I think. And perhaps with proposition 2.
But almost every Terry stop case involves the observation of lawful activity combined with an officer’s “training and experience” indicating that crime may be afoot. I have mixed views of that doctrine, but this seems like a straightforward application of it to me. In fact, it seems more grounded to me than officers observing a couple of guys walking up and down the street and looking in a store window.
I don’t think the bumper sticker analogy is right. I think the hypothetical is: Assume an officer observes a firearm in a vehicle (assume lawful open carry) and he knows the vehicle is owned by/registered to a convicted felon. Does this give rise to reasonable suspicion that the felon is possessing or transporting the firearm?
I grew up and spent the first part of my adult life in Australia, where there is less rigorous legal and constitutional protection against searches and other police actions than in the United States. In Australia, police conduct roadside stops of random vehicles for breath testing. Here is the law related to police authority for breath tests in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state:
So, basically, if you’re driving or have been driving, the police can require you to take a breath test. Refusal to take the test is an offense.
I’ve been tested like this a few times in New South Wales. Once, I was pulled over by a police car that was on the road behind me; the other two times, I was part of a group of five or six cars randomly pulled over at a breath test checkpoint.
In each case, there was no request for my name or my divers license. The cop asked me if I had been drinking. After I said no, I was given the test (takes about 15 seconds), and then was sent on my way with a smile and a wave.
I understand the American aversion to random stops like this; I even share it, in considerable measure. I’m also not arguing that Aussie cops always behave themselves; they don’t. But the extent of police oppression is not simply a function of legal or constitutional protections; some police can be authoritarian assholes even when the public is covered by supposedly strong legal and constitutional protections, and some police are respectful of liberties even when the police have fewer constraints on their behavior. If there’s a problem with excessively overbearing policing in America, I would argue that it’s at least as much a function of police attitudes as it is of the public being willing to give up their civil liberties.
Yep. I work at a university. It’s a commuter campus, and while a lot of students have their own cars, plenty of them drive their parents’ cars to school.