Lead Opinion
Opinion
We granted review in these matters to determine whether, when a driver who has been detained for citation for a Vehicle
I.
A. In re Arturo D.
At approximately 11:30 p.m. on a weeknight in late August 1998, Suisun City Police Officer Rowe stopped minor Arturo D.’s extended cab truck, which had been traveling more than 70 miles per hour in a 50-mile-per-hour zone. Arturo was driving and was accompanied by two passengers, one of whom was stretched across the truck’s rear pull-down seat. When asked for his identification, Arturo gave his name, date of birth, and a Vallejo address, but admitted that he lacked a valid driver’s license and that the truck was not his. Arturo provided no documentary evidence as to his identity, proof of insurance, or vehicle registration. At that point, Officer Rowe planned to issue defendant a citation for speeding and for driving without a license. Rowe asked the occupants to exit from the truck, and they did so. From inside the front of the truck cab, Rowe then blindly felt with his hands under the driver’s seat for documentation relating to the driver and the vehicle. Not encountering such documents, Rowe repositioned himself behind the driver’s seat, bent down, and looked under the seat. Rowe found a glass smoking pipe located “towards the center” of the floor under the driver’s seat. In the same location Rowe also found a blue box containing a white vial, which itself contained an unusable amount of white powder. Rowe asked whether the items belonged to Arturo, and he replied that they did.
Rowe issued a citation to Arturo for speeding and driving without a license, and because there was no licensed driver to drive away the truck, Rowe made arrangements to have the vehicle towed. (Veh. Code, §§ 12500, subd. (a), 14602.6, subd. (a), 22651, subd. (p).) Arturo went to the police station, planning to make a telephone call to arrange a ride home. At the police station Rowe examined the blue box more closely, discovering in an
At the jurisdictional hearing, the trial court denied Arturo’s suppression motion and sustained the petition as to counts II and HI.
B. People v. Hinger
In August 1997, while driving alone in his automobile, defendant Randall Hinger was stopped by Orange Police Officer Skinner for making unsafe lane changes. Hinger told Skinner that his name was “Randy Hinger” but that he did not have his driver’s license with him, and that he had no documentation concerning the car he was driving. At some point during this process, Skinner noticed Hinger open the glove compartment of the vehicle. According to the officer, Hinger explained that he only recently had purchased the vehicle, or that he was in the process of purchasing it.
With Officer Skinner’s permission, Hinger exited from the car. While Skinner used his radio to conduct a record check on Hinger’s name and automobile, a backup officer arrived. While waiting for the requested record check, Skinner asked Hinger whether he could search the car. Hinger declined to consent. After Skinner informed Hinger that he would look for identification and registration notwithstanding Hinger’s refusal, Hinger said he might have a wallet in the car after all, suggesting it could be in the glove compartment.
Officer Skinner noticed that the glove compartment that Hinger previously had opened was still ajar, exposing some loose papers. As Skinner later explained, “I wanted to find out who [defendant] was. I wanted to make sure
Hinger was arrested for possession of methamphetamine and pleaded guilty to that charge after the superior court denied his motion to suppress the foregoing evidence. In an unpublished opinion, Division Three of the Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment, finding that the officer’s search for identifying documentation was reasonable under the circumstances and that the contraband found during the course of that search was admissible.
II.
Vehicle Code sections 4462 and 12951
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Although it is well established that motorists have a cognizable privacy interest against unreasonable searches and seizures, the United States Supreme Court frequently has observed that, in light of the pervasive regulation of vehicles capable of traveling on the public highways, individuals generally have a reduced expectation of privacy while driving a vehicle on public thoroughfares. (E.g., New York v. Class (1986)
A.
The leading case on this subject is People v. Webster (1991)
The defendant challenged the search on the grounds that “Abbott had neither a warrant, nor probable cause, nor justification based on exigent circumstances.” (Webster, supra,
We also noted in Webster that the vehicle “was validly detained on the highway for a moving traffic violation” and that given the “uncertain situation” concerning ownership of the car, the officer “was amply entitled to inspect the [vehicle’s] registration to ascertain its owner before deciding whether to release or impound the vehicle.” (Webster, supra,
B.
The parties focus upon two decisions of the United States Supreme Court—one issued several years prior to the 1991 decision in Webster, supra,
1.
In Class, supra,
The high court upheld the warrantless search on a five-to-four vote. All members of the court agreed that the Fourth Amendment was implicated and
In nonetheless upholding the search under a balancing test that considered “ ‘the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against the importance of the governmental interests alleged to justify the intrusion’ ” (Class, supra,
Plainly, the high court’s majority opinion in Class, supra,
2.
As noted, defendants also question the continuing validity of limited warrantless searches for license and registration documents under Webster and related cases in light of the 1998 decision in Knowles, supra,
In Knowles, supra,
The high court held that the twin rationales supporting the search incident to custodial arrest exception to the warrant requirement—officer safety and the need to preserve evidence for later use at trial—were not present on the facts in Knowles, in which the driver already had been issued a citation following a routine traffic stop. (Knowles, supra,
Defendants assert that Knowles, supra,
Indeed, in Knowles, supra,
We proceed to address whether the warrantless searches here at issue were proper under the Fourth Amendment.
A. Arturo D.
Arturo first asserts that Officer Rowe had no reason to enter the vehicle to search for registration because, Arturo claims, the record discloses that the trial com! found that he earlier had given the registration to the officer. The record does not support this reading. At one point during direct examination, the officer testified that when he asked Arturo for his license and registration, Arturo produced neither item. Thereafter, during cross-examination, the officer testified that he could not recall whether Arturo had produced the requested documentation. Still later, following further discussion concerning the evidence on this point, and in response to defense counsel’s argument that Officer Rowe had no right to be where he was or to search, the trial court interrupted defense counsel and asserted: “There’s no suggestion that the officer was doing anything other than looking for documents of title and driver’s identification.” (Italics added.) To this, defense counsel replied, “That’s right.” The trial court immediately responded, “That’s what he said.”
This constitutes a finding by the trial court that when the officer searched the car, he was looking for both registration and driver identification. Of course, “the power to judge the credibility of the witnesses, resolve any conflicts in the testimony, weigh the evidence and draw factual inferences, is vested in the trial court. On appeal all presumptions favor the exercise of that power, and the trial court’s findings on such matters, whether express or implied, must be upheld if they are supported by substantial evidence.” (People v. Lawler (1973)
Arturo next asserts that a limited warrantless search under Webster, supra,
We agree with the Attorney General. Although we observed in Webster, supra,
Our conclusion is also consistent with general Fourth Amendment case law concerning the scope of permissible searches (e.g., Michigan v. Long (1983)
We proceed to apply this standard to the facts of this case. As the Attorney General suggests in his briefs, some persons who are stopped for traffic violations may not wish to provide an officer with valid documentation showing the driver’s true name or identity, or showing the name of the vehicle’s owner. Some drivers who wish to avoid disclosing such documentation to the police may keep the documents under the driver’s seat and yet disclaim their existence. Indeed, at the suppression hearing, the prosecutor
We conclude that case law supports the Attorney General’s view. Although Arturo asserts that he was able to find only one case in which a wallet was found under a driver’s seat, in fact numerous published appellate decisions report that drivers’ wallets (and hence, often, identification) have been located under the front seats of vehicles. (E.g., People v. Barrick (1982)
Published decisions of other state and federal courts also report numerous instances of drivers’ wallets being found under the front seats of vehicles. (E.g., United States v. Dento (3d Cir. 1967)
These citations amply support the observation that “persons trying to hide their identity will often put their wallets underneath the seat.” (State v. Gordon (1991)
Arturo insists that even if it is generally reasonable to search for identification or registration documents under the driver’s seat, Officer Rowe exceeded the permissible scope of a proper limited search for such documents because he searched an area that the driver could not easily reach and conducted the search from behind the driver’s seat. For the reasons that follow, we disagree.
As noted above, Officer Rowe first attempted to search under the seat from the front area of the truck’s cab—he reached blindly with his hand under the seat, but felt nothing. Immediately thereafter, the officer approached the same general area beneath the seat from a different vantage point, behind the driver’s seat of the truck’s extended cab, in a position that allowed him not only to feel, but also to view, the area under the seat. As the Attorney General observes, the space behind the truck’s driver’s seat would have afforded the officer an opportunity to inspect beneath the seat without restriction from the steering wheel and pedals, etc. At that point, Officer Rowe noticed and seized the pipe and the box in the middle of the area under the driver’s seat.
Nor do we find Officer Rowe’s decision to conduct the search from a vantage point behind the driver’s seat to be unreasonable. We agree with the Attorney General that “an officer may conclude based upon a variety of factors such as the size of the vehicle, the size of the door opening, the height of the vehicle off the ground, and the positioning of the seat in relation to the steering wheel and pedal, that viewing the area under the driver’s seat is more easily and reasonably accomplished from behind the driver’s seat rather than from the front seat.”
We reject Arturo’s suggestion that allowing the limited search here at issue to be conducted from the more efficient vantage point of behind, rather than in front of, the seat constitutes a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. For example, although it is accepted that an officer under proper circumstances reasonably may search for documentation in a glove compartment, and might gain such access from the driver’s seat area, an officer alternatively, and just as reasonably, may gain such access by opening the front passenger door and searching from that vantage point, rather than restricting his or her entry and positioning to the driver’s side of the vehicle.
In sum, the controlling question is whether the officer lawfully was entitled to search the location where he was looking. We conclude that it was reasonable for Officer Rowe to view the area underneath the driver’s seat. The search was not rendered improper merely because the officer elected to view that area from behind the driver’s seat. And if, as here, the officer observes contraband in plain view while conducting a proper limited search for regulatory documents, the contraband properly may be seized. (Webster, supra,
Finally, Arturo asserts that Officer Rowe’s search was unreasonable because the nature and quality of the intrusion on his Fourth Amendment interests outweighed the importance of the governmental interests alleged to justify the intrusion. (See Class, supra,
The Court of Appeal below reached a contrary conclusion, finding instead that “the scope of the officer’s intrusion went beyond that justified by the need to locate registration [or other identifying] documents and accordingly, it was unreasonable as a search for registration [or other identifying] documents.” In support of its view, the court asserted as follows: (1) “[T]he problem with this search is that the officer testified that he first searched the area ‘in control of the driver, which would be in the front area.’ ... It was only when Officer Rowe positioned himself behind the bench seat that the pipe was visible”; (2) “[W]e cannot say that the scope of a search for registration or identification documents in the cab of a pickup reasonably extends to virtually all areas in the physical proximity of the driver”; (3) “The officer did not testify that he was concerned for his personal safety and was searching for weapons”; and (4) “Nor did [the officer] testify that the area below the driver’s seat could even be reached by the driver with or without the rear seat in use.”
With regard to the Court of Appeal’s first point—that Officer Rowe testified he was searching the area within the driver’s control, “which would be in the front area,” but conducted that search from behind the driver’s seat—as we have explained above, the search was not improper merely because the officer elected to undertake it from behind the driver’s seat rather than from in front of the driver’s seat. Nor do we agree with the Court of Appeal’s implication that approving the search here at issue would condone searches for required documentation of “virtually all areas in the physical proximity of the driver.” As explained above, the scope of such a search is circumscribed, being limited to places where such documentation reasonably could be expected to be found.
Accordingly, we conclude in Arturo D. (S085213) that the trial court properly denied the suppression motion, and that the Court of Appeal erred in determining otherwise.
B. Hinger
Defendant Hinger asserts that the area underneath a front passenger seat is not a traditional repository of registration or identification documentation, and that pursuant to the Attorney General’s proposed test, the “entire car and all of its compartments” might be subject to a Webster-type search for required documentation, in violation of the teaching of Knowles, supra,
As noted above, the dispositive question is not whether the area searched is a traditional repository for registration or identification documentation.
Defendant Hinger was unable to produce the required registration or license documents upon Officer Skinner’s reasonable demand. Hinger appears to suggest that such documentation would not reasonably be expected to be found under a front passenger seat, but on the facts of this case Officer Skinner had reason to extend marginally his search for Hinger’s wallet. As noted, the officer had seen Hinger look into the glove compartment (an area directly above the front passenger seat), and the officer reasonably might have thought that while Hinger was doing so, Hinger had managed to place the wallet under the front passenger seat. (Cf. Mallet v. Bowersox, supra,
On these facts, and in view of the circumstance that Officer Skinner was preparing to issue a traffic citation and therefore needed to learn the true identity of the person to be cited, we believe it was reasonable for the officer to conduct a limited search of the glove compartment, the area underneath the driver’s seat, and the area beneath the front passenger seat.
Accordingly, we conclude in People v. Hinger (S085218) that the Court of Appeal correctly determined that the trial court properly denied the defendant’s suppression motion.
IV.
The judgment of the Court of Appeal in People v. Arturo D. (S085213) is reversed, and the judgment of the Court of Appeal in People v. Hinger (S085218) is affirmed.
Baxter, J., Chin, J., and Moreno, J., concurred.
Notes
The court found the evidence insufficient to establish that the blue box belonged to Arturo, and hence did not sustain the petition as to count I.
All further statutory citations are to the Vehicle Code, unless otherwise indicated.
As explained in People v. McGaughran, supra,
Section 40302, subdivision (a), permits an officer who plans to issue a Vehicle Code citation to accept “other satisfactory evidence of [the driver’s] identity.” As observed in People v. Monroe (1993)
Reporter’s Note: For Supreme Court opinion, see
At the times relevant to the Arturo D. and Hinger cases, section 2805 provided: “(a) For the purpose of locating stolen vehicles, a member of the California Highway Patrol, or a member of a city police department or county sheriffs office whose primary responsibility is to conduct vehicle theft investigations, may inspect any vehicle of a type required to be registered under this code, or any identifiable vehicle component thereof, on a highway or in any public garage, repair shop, terminal, parking lot, new or used car lot, automobile dismantler’s lot, vehicle shredding facility, vehicle leasing or rental lot, vehicle equipment rental yard, vehicle salvage pool, or other similar establishment. . . , and may inspect the title or registration of vehicles, in order to establish the rightful ownership or possession of the vehicle or identifiable vehicle component. . . .” (Stats. 1988, ch. 392, § 1, p. 1735, italics added.)
Section 2805 was enacted in 1959, and the italicized language concerning police officers and sheriff’s deputies was added in 1979. (Stats. 1979, ch. 252, § 1, p. 543.) Even before the 1979 amendment, the statute had been construed to allow any peace officer—not only members of the CHP—to conduct limited and appropriate searches for registration documents in vehicles stopped or found stopped on roadways and highways. (E.g., People v. Martin (1972)
As observed in People v. Faddler, supra,
Other decisions, preceding Webster, supra,
See, e.g., Carroll v. United States (1925)
The majority in Class, supra,
The majority in Class stated that the legislatively mandated visibility of the VEST (i.e., placement on the dashboard in an area visible from outside the vehicle) made it “more similar to the exterior of the car than to the trunk or glove compartment.” (Class, supra,
As noted above, Class was not cited in Webster, supra,
Similarly, a critic of the high court’s opinion in Class asserts: “If a motorist, after a police request for [a driver’s license or registration certificate], is unable to produce the requested document, then, under the reasoning of Class, an officer is entitled to enter the vehicle to secure the documents.” (Maclin, New York v. Class: A Little-Noticed. Case With Disturbing Implications (1987) 78 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 1, 6; see also id., at pp. 28-29.)
The original decision of the New York Court of Appeals in Class (People v. Class (1984)
The officer in Class did not ask the defendant for the vehicle’s VIN, nor did the officer give the defendant an opportunity to reveal the VIN, instead peremptorily searching for it in the vehicle. In any event, as explained below, in the context of a normal traffic stop an officer has no authority to search peremptorily for required documentation, but instead may conduct a search for such documentation only when the driver fails to produce it after first having been directed to do so.
The type of search at issue in Knowles, supra,
In addition to Webster and the related California cases cited above, federal decisions decided prior to Knowles allowed Webster-type warrantless, limited searches for documentation (e.g., United States v. Brown (9th Cir. 1972)
We note various problems presented by other possible options in this factual setting. Recognizing the right of a driver to elect between, on the one hand, submission to a limited search for documentation, and, on the other, being arrested and transported to the police station for booking, in most circumstances would subject the driver to considerably greater intrusion. Indeed, if the driver were arrested, in many instances the vehicle also would be impounded and would be subject to an inventory search (see, e.g., People v. Green (1996)
Moreover, it might be argued that such a “choice” would be inherently tainted as coercive. We believe that a court should be wary of imposing a rule that effectively would allow a Vehicle Code violator to require, by his or her own election, that police agencies expend the considerable time and resources necessary to undertake a full stationhouse booking (with possible towing, impounding, and inventorying of a vehicle). As the Court of Appeal below observed in People v. Hinger, “[t]he direct approach” contemplated by a Webster-type limited
As the Attorney General observed in his briefs, subsequent to the suppression hearing (the ensuing ruling of which we review here), Arturo testified at the jurisdictional hearing that he
Indeed, cases from other jurisdictions essentially have followed the standard suggested by the Attorney General, allowing limited searches for required documentation in locations where such documents “may reasonably be found.” (See State v. Taras, supra,
Although Professor LaFave extensively discusses Knowles, supra,
As the Attorney General also observes, blindly feeling under the driver’s seat—as the officer initially did in this case—“presents the officer with unwarranted risks, such as encountering an unsheathed blade or a hypodermic needle.”
Addressing the same question in People v. Hart, supra,
Officer Rowe might well have been concerned for his own safety, however. He faced a driver whom he had stopped for a traffic infraction and who professed to have no required documentation. There were two passengers, one of whom was stretched across the rear seat, and it was late at night. Nationwide, 13 law enforcement officers feloniously were killed while enforcing traffic laws in the year 2000. That year, 6,234 officers were assaulted during traffic pursuits and stops. (FBI, Uniform Crime Reports (2001) Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 2000, pp. 28, 83; see, e.g., People v. Rodriguez (1986)
When asked about the portions of the vehicle he investigated, the officer testified that he searched the area “that I would believe to be in control of the driver, which would be in the front area.” (Italics added.) Possibly, the Court of Appeal construed the term “front area” as referring only to the area of the cab directly in front of the driver’s seat, but not to the front area of the cab below the driver’s seat. We note that the trial court, as fact finder, apparently interpreted the same testimony to mean that the officer searched “the area that would be closely attended by the driver of the vehicle.” As the Attorney General observes, “the pipe was located in the center of the area under the front seat . . . , which the trial court could readily infer was easily within the driver’s reach absent special circumstances blocking the driver’s access.”
For example, the trunk of a car is not a location where required documentation reasonably would be expected to be found, absent specific information known to the officer indicating the trunk as a location where such documents reasonably may be expected to be found—e.g., as when a driver has told an officer that his registration or license is inside a jacket located in the trunk.
In a related argument, defendant maintains that section 2805, which was relied upon in Webster, supra,
In the words of the Court of Appeal, “[Officer] Skinner quite reasonably wanted to identify the driver as well as the vehicle. It does little good to issue a traffic citation to a phantom.”
Although the point has not been raised in these proceedings, it appears that the officer’s search may have been permissible for reasons independent of the analysis we set out above. As noted previously, after Officer Skinner informed defendant Hinger that the officer would search the car for documentation, defendant told him that defendant’s wallet might be in the glove compartment. Having been advised that a wallet might be in that location (and hence might contain requisite documentation), Officer Skinner was entitled to protect his own safety by retrieving that item himself, rather than permitting defendant to further rummage about in the glove compartment. (People v. Hart, supra,
Concurrence Opinion
The situation is a common one: A police officer stops a driver with the intention to issue a traffic citation for an infraction under state law. We address in this case the question whether an officer making such a stop may conduct a warrantless search of the driver’s vehicle without violating the driver’s right to be free of
Unlike both the majority and dissent in this case, I find that whether an officer also may undertake some type of vehicle search when the driver stopped for a traffic infraction is unable to present a valid driver’s license (Veh. Code, § 12951, subd. (b))
I
Section 2805, subdivision (a) provides that “[f]or the purpose of locating stolen vehicles, [police] may inspect the title or registration of vehicles, in order to establish the rightful ownership or possession of the vehicle.” (See also §§ 4000, subd. (a) [illegal to drive a vehicle unless it has been registered], 4454, subd. (a) [owners must maintain registration card with the vehicle].) Section 2805 thus reflects a legislative intent to permit police officers to determine whether the driver is the rightful owner of a vehicle or,
I agree the glove compartment and visor (and, in days past, the steering column) are traditional repositories for vehicle registration documentation, and an officer, faced with a driver who does not produce the required registration, is permitted under the United States Constitution to conduct a limited search of those locations in an attempt to obtain such information. The small intrusion caused by such limited searches is not much different from that occasioned by the VIN search approved by the high court in New York v. Class, supra,
n
Notwithstanding the majority’s conflation of registration documentation and a driver’s license as “regulatory documentation” (e.g., maj. opn., ante, at pp. 76, 79), a driver’s license differs from a vehicle registration document and requires a different analysis. A driver is required by law to carry a valid driver’s license (§ 12951, subd. (a)) and to present it to a police officer upon demand {id., subd. (b)). Failure to do so is an infraction. (§ 40303.5.)
Nor does any asserted need to identify the driver support the majority’s rule.
The purpose of requiring a driver to present a license is to assure a citation is not being issued to a “ ‘phantom.’ ” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 87, fn. 27.) If the driver fails to produce a license, the officer has several choices: run the driver’s name on the computer in an attempt to determine his or her true identity (as the officer did in Hinger via his police radio), ask the driver to submit a thumbprint (§ 40500, subd. (a)), accept other evidence of identification (§ 40302, subd. (a)), or arrest the driver (ibid.; see Knowles v. Iowa, supra,
Vehicle Code section 12951, subdivision (b) provides: “The driver of a motor vehicle shall present his or her license for examination upon demand of a peace officer . . . All further undesignated statutory references are to the Vehicle Code.
Section 4462, subdivision (a) states: “The driver of a motor vehicle shall present the registration or identification card or other evidence of registration of any or all vehicles under his or her immediate control for examination upon demand of any peace officer.”
Refusal to present one’s license is a misdemeanor. (§ 40000.11, subd. (h).)
I agree, however, with the dissent that such asserted need is irrelevant under Knowles v. Iowa, supra,
Dissenting Opinion
With a few well-established exceptions, the federal Constitution’s Fourth Amendment prohibits a warrantless search without probable cause, as determined by the totality of circumstances known to the officer conducting the search. Today, the majority’s unprecedented decision creates a new exception allowing warrantless vehicle searches when a motorist stopped for a minor traffic violation cannot produce either a driver’s license or the vehicle’s registration. This holding flies in the face of Knowles v. Iowa (1998)
The majority insists such warrantless searches are “limited” to areas within a car where identification documentation might reasonably be found. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 65.) Yet the facts of the two cases here suggest otherwise. In one case the officer reached behind and under a truck’s bench seat, and in the other the officer searched underneath the front passenger seat. The majority would go even further. It favors warrantless trunk searches for documentation when the officer has “specific information” that those documents “reasonably may be” found in the trunk. (Maj. opn., ante, p. 86, fn. 25.) The majority’s new rule may well result in limitless searches throughout a vehicle whenever a driver cannot produce the requisite documentation. Because the scope of these warrantless searches weakens the
I.
After granting review in these two cases, this court consolidated them to decide the validity of warrantless police searches of vehicles during routine traffic stops.
A. In re Arturo D.
Minor Arturo D. moved to suppress evidence seized during a search of the extended cab pickup truck he was driving on August 26, 1998.
Suisun City Police Officer Michael Rowe testified at the suppression hearing that while patrolling Highway 12 he stopped Arturo for speeding. When Officer Rowe asked Arturo for his driver’s license, Arturo said he did not have one, but he gave his full name, date of birth, and home address. Officer Rowe stated on direct examination that Arturo did not produce the registration for the truck. But on cross-examination, Rowe was not so sure, saying he could not recall whether Arturo had given him the truck’s registration, but that Arturo “might have.” Rowe remembered, however, that Arturo said the pickup truck did not belong to him. Rowe never suggested at the suppression hearing that he ever suspected the truck was stolen.
“Just to confirm that there was no identification on [Arturo] or in his vehicle,” Officer Rowe did a patdown search of Arturo, after which he searched the truck. Initially, Rowe reached in through the driver’s door and ran his hand under the front area of the driver’s seat, but finding nothing there he leaned into the area behind the driver’s seat and looked under that seat. There, Rowe saw a glass smoking pipe and a small blue box, which upon further examination proved to contain traces of a white powdery substance. Believing that the amount of the substance was “unusable,” Rowe intended only to cite Arturo for speeding and for driving without a license. Rowe explained that because Arturo was an unlicensed driver, Rowe could not release the truck to him, but had to have it towed. Arturo agreed to go with Rowe to the police station to telephone someone who could pick him up. At the station, Officer Rowe took a closer look at the seized blue box and uncovered a false bottom concealing a plastic baggie containing a usable quantity of methamphetamine.
In contending that the search of the truck did not violate the Fourth Amendment, the prosecution stated it was not seeking to justify the search as
B. People v. Hinger
Defendant Randall Hinger moved to suppress a wallet and its contents seized during a warrantless search of his car. At the suppression hearing, Officer Robert Skinner of the City of Orange Police Department testified that on August 20, 1997, he stopped Hinger for making an unsafe lane change. Hinger told the officer he did not have his driver’s license with him and did not have registration documentation for the car, which he was “in the process of purchasing.” Hinger gave the officer his name. Officer Skinner then contacted police dispatch personnel to ascertain whether Randall Hinger was a licensed driver and whether Hinger or someone else was the car’s registered owner.
While awaiting that information, Officer Skinner asked Hinger, who had stepped out of the car, for permission to search the car. When Hinger refused to give consent, Officer Skinner said he would search anyway to look for registration and identification. Hinger replied that his wallet might be in the glove compartment, which was ajar. Officer Skinner opened the passenger door and reached into the glove compartment, but found no wallet, no identification, and no registration. Skinner then went to the driver’s side of the car, opened the door, and looked under the driver’s seat. Finding nothing, he returned to the passenger side, looked under the front seat, and saw a wallet. Inside the wallet were a check-cashing card bearing Hinger’s picture and a clear plastic baggie containing a white powdery substance resembling methamphetamine. Officer Skinner confirmed at the suppression hearing that Hinger was not under arrest until Skinner retrieved the wallet, opened it, and found the plastic baggie.
At the hearing, the prosecution argued that when a motorist stopped for a traffic infraction cannot produce a driver’s license or car registration, an officer is entitled “to look for identification and registration anywhere inside that vehicle.” The trial court agreed, and denied Hinger’s suppression motion. That ruling was upheld on appeal.
II.
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits “unreasonable searches or seizures” by the police. A warrantless search is
Today, the majority holds that whenever a police officer detains a motorist for a traffic infraction and the motorist fails to produce a driver’s license or car registration, the officer may search those areas of the vehicle where such documentation “reasonably may be expected to be found.” (Maj. opn., ante, p. 65.) This holding does not fit any of the narrow and well-delineated exceptions to the warrant requirement that the United States Supreme Court has recognized. Worse still, it directly conflicts with the high court’s unanimous decision in Knowles v. Iowa, supra,
Knowles concerned the validity of a search conducted under an Iowa statute allowing a police officer with “cause to believe” that a motorist had committed a traffic violation either to make an arrest and “immediately take the person before a magistrate,” or to “issu[e] a citation in lieu of arrest.” (Knowles, supra,
The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine whether the search of Knowles’s car fit an exception to the warrant requirement
The high court noted that the “threat to officer safety from issuing a traffic citation” where the suspect is not being transported is “a good deal less than in the case of a custodial arrest.” (Knowles, supra,
Turning to the second historical justification for the search-incident-to-arrest exception to the warrant requirement—the need to discover and preserve evidence—the court observed that “[o]nce Knowles was stopped for speeding and issued a citation, all the evidence necessary to prosecute that offense had been obtained.” (Knowles, supra, 525 U.S at p. 118 [
In sum, because in the case of a traffic citation “the concern for officer safety is not present to the same extent [as with an arrest] and the concern for destruction or loss of evidence is not present at all,” the United States Supreme Court invalidated the search of Knowles’s car incident to a citation for speeding. (Knowles, supra,
Unlike Iowa’s statutory scheme that was before the high court in Knowles, no California statute authorizes a police officer to search a car incident to a traffic citation. California’s statutory law is similar to Iowa’s, however, in granting police in most cases involving minor traffic offenses the discretion either to cite or arrest the driver. (See Veh. Code, §§ 40302, 40500.) And our
Today, the majority holds that when an officer detains a driver for a suspected traffic offense and the driver fails to produce a driver’s license or the vehicle’s registration, the officer, even though not intending to arrest the driver either for the traffic offense or for the failure to produce the required documentation, can nonetheless conduct a “limited warrantless search[]” for these documents “within a vehicle.” (Maj. opn., ante, p. 65.) In doing so, the majority writes into California law essentially the same search-incident-to-citation authority that Iowa created by statute and that the United States Supreme Court rejected in Knowles, supra, 525 U.S. 113.
There, in responding to Iowa’s argument that car searches incident to issuing traffic citations could be justified because drivers “may attempt to hide or destroy” evidence of identity such as “a driver’s license or vehicle registration,” the high court pointed out that “if a police officer is not satisfied with the identification furnished by the driver, this may be a basis for arresting him rather than merely issuing a citation.” (Knowles, supra, 525 U.S. at p. 118 [
In trying to distinguish this case from Knowles, supra, 525 U.S. 113, the majority points out that the blanket rule it adopts today would authorize only a limited search for a driver’s license or vehicle registration in those areas of a car where such documents “reasonably may be expected to be found.” (Maj. opn., ante, p. 65, italics added.) But the car searches here were far from “limited.”
With regard to the search of Arturo’s extended cab truck, Officer Rowe first looked under the front area of driver’s seat. Not finding identification documentation, he then leaned into the area behind the driver’s seat and reached underneath, finding a small blue box with a substance later determined to be methamphetamine.
With respect to the search of Hinger’s car, Officer Skinner first searched the glove compartment; then he looked under the driver’s seat; and finally he
The majority describes each of these two warrantless vehicle searches incident to traffic stops as “limited” and thus proper. But such a search is no less broad than the full car search that the high court invalidated in Knowles where, after citing the driver for speeding, the officer searched under the driver’s seat and found “a bag of marijuana and a ‘pot pipe.’ ” (Knowles, supra,
In yet another futile effort to distinguish its holding from the type of search prohibited in Knowles, supra,
Nor should it matter, contrary to the majority’s suggestion at page 76, ante, that the search in Knowles, supra,
Ultimately the majority rests its holding on People v. Webster (1991)
In Webster, an officer stopped the defendant for speeding. The defendant denied owning the car, claiming it belonged to someone in the backseat, but
Given the totality of circumstances known to the officer in Webster, he was amply justified in searching the car for registration. All six of the car’s occupants, including the driver, had denied that it was their car, and the officer had arrested the driver on an outstanding warrant, a fact that standing alone gave the officer cause to make an incidental search of the car’s passenger compartment: “[Wjhen a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.” (New York v. Belton, supra,
The majority, however, seizes upon this sentence in Webster: “Within constitutional limits, such statutes [requiring drivers to carry licenses and vehicle registration in a car] authorize an officer to enter a stopped vehicle and conduct an immediate warrantless search for the required documents.” {Webster, supra,
As the qualifying phrase “[w]ithin constitutional limits” suggests, Webster recognized that an officer’s mere desire to secure license or registration documents from a motorist would be insufficient by itself to qualify as an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. (Webster, supra,
m.
Unlike the majority, I would not adopt a blanket rule permitting police to make a warrantless search of a car for identification documentation or vehicle registration anytime a driver cannot produce these documents. Instead, I would evaluate car searches by applying established law, which permits a warrantless search of a car only if it falls within one of the “narrow
In each case, the officer stopped the driver for a traffic infraction. Arturo D. admitted he was an unlicensed driver, but he gave the officer his name, address, and birth date. With respect to Hinger, he could not produce either his driver’s license or the car’s registration, but he told the officer his name and said he was in the process of buying the car. The officer then placed a radio call to police dispatch personnel to verify Hinger’s identity and to ascertain whether he owned the car. In each case, had the officer been dissatisfied with the proof of identity offered, he could have arrested the driver (see Veh. Code, § 40302, subd. (a)) and, incident to such an arrest, could have searched the vehicle’s interior (New York v. Belton, supra,
Conclusion
Who among us can ever forget the horrendous events of September 11, 2001, when our nation suffered the most destructive terrorist assault in our
One principle, so basic to our personal liberty, is the prohibition that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution places on unreasonable searches and seizures. In determining whether a search is “unreasonable,” a court must adhere to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court articulating the meaning of that word in a similar case. Virtually identical to the two cases here is the high court’s unanimous decision in Knowles v. Iowa, supra,
Today’s majority decision does nothing to enhance our security and does much to erode our Fourth Amendment rights. Under California law, an officer making a routine stop for a traffic violation may arrest a motorist who fails to produce proof of identity and, within the limitations of the Fourth Amendment, may search the vehicle incident to the arrest. Given this ability, there is no justification for the warrantless, nonconsensual search of a car’s interior when the officer has made no arrest and the officer lacks probable cause to believe that the car contains contraband. In announcing a blanket rule authorizing such searches, the majority disregards the high court’s decision in Knowles and chips away at one of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by our federal Constitution.
Brown, J., concurred.
Nor does Webster, supra,
The concurring and dissenting opinion also relies on the United States Supreme Court’s five-to-four decision in New York v. Class (1986)
In Class, an officer looking for the vehicle identification number (VIN) of a car that had been stopped for a traffic violation, and not finding it on the left doorjamb, moved some papers on the dashboard that covered the VIN. In upholding this search, the high court noted “the lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy in the VIN” because federal law required that the VIN be displayed either on the left doorjamb (for cars built before 1969) or on a part of the dashboard visible through the windshield (for cars built later). (Class, supra,
The concurring and dissenting opinion construes Vehicle Code section 2805, subdivision (a), which states that police may “inspect the title or registration of vehicles, in order to establish . . . rightful ownership,” as authorizing vehicle searches for those documents behind the visor and in the glove compartment. (See conc. & dis. opn. of Werdegar, J., ante, at pp. 88-89.) I disagree with that interpretation. By its terms, the statute only permits an officer to inspect the documents, not to conduct a warrantless search for them. Warrantless searches of a car’s interior are not only unauthorized, but also unnecessary. From outside a car, an officer may see the VIN on the dashboard of any car made since 1969, and from the VIN the officer may readily determine the car’s ownership and registration.