The reasoning of this case failed to consider how often people drive cars that are owned by another person who has a suspended license. This Mark of Cain assigned to an automobile just gives the police unlimited power to pull over these cars without reason. That is awful.
But is not the only solution to a serious problem. The simplest solution has been ignored, if your license is suspended you can’t own a car anymore. Period. Sell it, give it away, put it in a spouse’s name, or pay to put it in storage. Driving is a privilege, abuse it seriously enough and you aren’t qualified to own a car. This isn’t some major issue of anyone’s rights either, cars have to be registered, states can revoke the registration of cars for many reasons, and localities have disallowed the possession of unregistered cars on property.
The entire system of licensing, registration, ownership, and insurance for motor vehicles is a mess and needs to be reformed nationwide to keep dangerous drivers out of cars and not to use the issues of traffic safety as excuses to violate peoples rights.
This problem is very difficult to fix, from a policy perspective.
Studies going back as far as the 1960s have shown that, whatever systems are put in place to punish dangerous drivers, a significant portion of those drivers will simply continue to drive, no matter what. This 2003 report (PDF) by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program of the Transportation Research Board says that “as many as three-fourths of S/R [suspended and revoked] drivers continue to drive,” and cites studies from 1965, 1980, 1988, and 1990. This 2016 story from Nebraska says:
Almost 15,000 a year caught for driving on a suspended license in Nebraska. That’s just the people who were caught! In one year! In Nebraska! Based on these figures, can you even imagine how many people nationwide are driving on suspended licenses?
So your solution of forbidding drivers with suspended or revoked licenses from owning cars will, most likely, not change things very much. Leaving aside, for a moment, the expense and difficulty of administering a program to oversee and monitor the sale of vehicles by people with suspended or revoked licenses, what will likely happen is that those people will transfer ownership of their cars to another family member, and will continue to drive anyway.
We could get more draconian about dealing with the truly dangerous drivers, and just lock them up. Some studies suggest that this is literally about the only way to stop some people from driving. But the studies also note the expense and rather extreme nature of such a program, and I’m not sure that creating even more prisoners is a very god idea in a nation that already locks up more people than basically anywhere else on earth. Also, we can’t assume that all people with suspended licenses are dangerous drivers. Plenty of states suspend licenses if you’re too poor to pay your tickets, which is not only draconian, but dumb policy, because it prevents people from getting to their jobs and thus makes it even harder for them to pay their debts.
I wonder if technological solutions might present the greatest potential for fixing the problem, but I’m not quite sure how one might adapt some sort of ankle device and/or ignition interlock system, or some sort of GPS tracking, to monitor when such people are in a car, and whether they are a passenger or a driver.
I realize that, but I’m saying that my solution is preferable to pulling over cars because they are owned by someone with a suspended license, but by no means perfect.
I do think it gets much more difficult for the dangerous drivers to drive if they don’t own a car, but it’s nothing like a complete solution. Perhaps technology can get us there some day, or just remove manual driving eventually. But taking away people’s cars does not lead to abuse of people’s rights the way this ruling does. And as we know, this reasoning can be used in the next case where someone wants to avoid getting a warrant or having an actual reason to pull over a car. If the police are doing their job, using modern license plate scanners, any car owned by someone with a suspended license should now get pulled over every time it is in sight of a police car.
I don’t actually have a problem with putting unlicensed drivers in jail. If someone does it more than once I have no doubt they’re likely to do it again, and I don’t care if they have killed someone or not, they are all over the place costing people a fortune on top of the serious injury and death that also happens. Getting a driver’s license is actually pretty easy, dangerously easy I think, so anyone that doesn’t have one shouldn’t, and if they drive they are a danger to the public.
We suspend licenses for safety reasons. We also suspend them for administrative reasons. If the latter, the driver isn’t necessarily dangerous. One solution is to not suspend licenses for, say, unpaid fines.
It is not that I disagree with #2-#4 so much it is that they are based on probabilities and not individual suspicion.
Sure some people in Kansas will break the law. That’s really all #2 says, but it has been true since time immemorial and does nothing to add to the analysis.
#3 is again more probabilities and adds nothing to whether this particular car is being driven by its registered owner.
and #4 is really out there. Case after case says that criminal history is not a sufficient ground for stopping someone.
It seems similar to me to say that you could racially profile under this case and it would pass muster because, hey, a larger percentage of people arresting for this crime, based on training and experience, are black, because the Court has eliminated the requirement for individual suspicion.
No, I’m trying to think of a good analogy and bumper stickers seem to fit. Your license plate is a type of “bumper sticker” on your car that contains information. Using the registered owner is a teenager example only restates the problem by leaving the same question.
While the SCOTUS decision may be right in theory, the problem I have is how it will be used by law enforcement to trample over our rights. They will stop the driver and assuming it is not the person with the suspended licence they will still run the name. They will look in the car for illegal things in plain sight or ask to search the car. Money will be seized under CAF (They have money and are driving someone else’s car. Clearly a crime was committed)
It is opening the door for abuse by law enforcement to people who have not committed any crime.
It doesn’t fit, though. A bumper sticker does not give any facts about the registered owner of the car–only assumptions. In the referenced court case, the officers had facts about the registered owner of the car. The assumption was only that he was in fact the person driving the car. In your analogy, they’re not only assuming the driver of the car is responsible for the bumper sticker, they’re assuming that the bumper sticker is actually indicative of a crime in progress. That’s too big of a stretch, IMO.
Court Case:
Data Source: License Plate Query
Fact: Registered owner has a suspended license.
Assumption: The driver of this vehicle is likely to be the registered owner.
Your Analogy:
Data Source: Shady High Bumper Sticker
Fact: None.
Assumption(s): That the driver of the vehicle is the owner. That the sticker indicates the owner of the vehicle is a teenager rather than a teacher, parent, or alumni.
Data Source: Hippie Sticker
Fact: None.
Assumption(s): That the driver of the vehicle is the owner. That the sticker indicates the owner (who is assumed to be driving) is currently in possession of marijuana.
The judges aren’t suggesting that police can operate with no facts at all. In your bumper sticker analogy, there are no facts, just assumptions.
But the standard is “reasonable articulable suspicion”, not “certainty”. All the officer is being asked for is a statement of probability. I don’t see much daylight between “the driver is probably someone with a suspended license” and “I can articulate a reasonable suspicion that the driver is someone with a suspended license”.
If people shouldn’t be pulled over in this circumstance, that sounds to me like an argument that the law should be changed such that a “reasonable and articulable suspicion” isn’t enough grounds for a stop.
Lose your license and then are forbidden from owning an inanimate object??? Forced to liquidate your rolling stock? Or in some cases legitimate investments?
Amazing how that could be considered ‘simplest solution’.
Like **wolfpup **I am a bit more surprised about the 8-1 than about the ruling itself. The end result I would have sort of expected given the *general *trend towards giving police broad leeway when it comes to these sorts of stops and interventions. And I can see the reasoning about the (to be redundant) reasonableness of suspecting something may be up, because very often it is in the case of this specific offence. I suppose the distinction between driving on the public roads being “a privilege” vs. merely walking down the sidewalk minding your own business being some sort of unenumerated natural right would be at play, but I’d have expected a bit more pushback.
As mentioned earlier, part of the issue that I would be a bit skeptical about is whether all other things being equal police will merely stop at verifying it is or is not the owner who’s at the wheel, rather than try to opportunistically go fishing.
The whole idea behind investigative stops is that the office observes lawful conduct and concludes (based on a series of experiences and assumptions) that “criminal activity may be afoot.” (Of course, if the officer observes unlawful conduct, it’s a different type of stop).
That’s all about probabilities and experiences and assumptions. But it’s still an individualized assessment: do I believe that the particular operator of this particular motor vehicle is driving without a license? I get my reasonable suspicion from some specific facts as well as my experience with these types of cases.
So I’m having trouble understanding how this is a significant deviation from the norm. Isn’t that how these cases usually work? An officer observes lawful conduct and based on his experience with these types of cases makes an investigative stop.
So, I guess I don’t know what you mean by “eliminated the requirement for individual suspicion” given that the Terry analysis always seems to be about making probabilistic assumptions based on experience. The big difference in this case seems to be some nod towards trying to actual quantify these things, which strikes me as having less potential for abuse than an officer’s hunch.
This is hardly a groundbreaking decision and isn’t much different than what has been standard practice across the country. It just clears up the language and reasoning a bit. Even here in New Jersey where there are probably more restrictions on police than any other state it’s been allowed to pull over a car with a suspended owner as long as there was a good faith attempt at identifying the driver.
I’m most interested in seeing the guidance that comes down from our AG about this since state law can differ from SCOTUS decisions as long as they are more restrictive.
Especially considering most license suspensions are temporary and very limited in duration. If your license is suspended for 30 days should you have to sell your car?
An individual can have his car put in storage. Someone who owns a company with many vehicles can make an arrangement to have someone else maintain control of the vehicles and make sure they aren’t used improperly by someone who lost their license. There are certainly ways to maintain ownership as long as the owner will be prevented from driving.
You’re ignoring a big piece of contrary evidence, though, which is that the register owner has a suspended license.
Obviously, some people continue to drive illegally on a suspended license, but having your license suspended certainly is going to reduce the likelihood of driving, on average.
I’ve only personally known one person with a suspended license, and he did not drive his car for the duration. He kept his car, though, and would let friends drive it if they needed it and in return we’d drive him places when we were able and he needed to go.
I have no argument to make either way. It just seemed to me it’d be a good idea for someone to find out how many people with suspended licenses continue to drive. According to the National Council of State Courts, it’s 75%.
— “Driving is not a right” Well, before 1900, people had the right to move their person/goods by conveyance on public roadways. What constitutional amendment changed that? Like any right, it can be restricted if justified, but it’s still a right.
— “It’s a public safety issue.” No, an unlicensed driver is likely to be the most cautious and attentive driver on the road, with the most to lose by attracting police attention for a trivial infraction.