The STATE of Arizona, Appellee, v. Kyle Andrew STOLL, Appellant.
No. 2 CA-CR 2015-0280
Court of Appeals of Arizona, Division 2.
Filed May 23, 2016
370 P.3d 1130
MILLER, Judge
of Sotomayor and the denial of the Rule 15 motion for lack of jurisdiction.
Thomas C. Holz, Bisbee, Counsel for Appellant.
Judge Miller authored the opinion of the Court, in which Presiding Judge Vasquez and Chief Judge Eckerstrom concurred.
OPINION
MILLER, Judge:
¶ 1 Kyle Stoll was convicted of aggravated driving under the influence with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or more while his license was suspended, canceled, or revoked, and sentenced to four months imprisonment followed by five years of supervised probation. He argues the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence obtained during the traffic stop, which was initiated because the light illuminating the license plate emitted white light visible from the rear of the vehicle. We conclude the officer misinterpreted the relevant statutes and the mistake of law was not objectively reasonable; therefore, the stop was not based on reasonable suspicion and the motion to suppress should have been granted. We vacate the conviction and sentence, and we remand for further proceedings.
Factual and Procedural Background
¶ 2 In reviewing a trial court‘s ruling on a motion to suppress, we consider only the evidence presented at the suppression hearing and view it in the light most favorable to sustaining the trial court‘s ruling. See State v. Moreno, 236 Ariz. 347, ¶ 2, 340 P.3d 426, 428 (App. 2014). One evening in January 2013, two Cochise County sheriff‘s deputies were in a convenience store when they smelled the odor of burnt marijuana in the proximity of two men, later identified as Stoll and his friend.1 When the two men left the store and began to drive away in an SUV, the deputies followed and stopped the SUV one or two blocks away. The deputies observed white light from the lamp illuminating the license plate. It was a standard lamp, properly functioning, and operated in the usual manner. Nothing in the record indicates Stoll was issued a traffic citation. At the suppression hearing, however, the deputies testified they believed white light visible from a vehicle moving forward violated
¶ 3 During the stop, the deputies detected the odor of alcohol, and observed that Stoll had bloodshot watery eyes and a flushed face. A horizontal gaze nystagmus test suggested the presence of alcohol in his system, and a breathalyzer test measured his alcohol concentration at .165. The deputies arrested him.
¶ 4 Stoll moved to suppress the evidence seized during the stop, arguing that the deputies’ belief about white light from a license plate light was not supported by any statute. The state contended the stop was supported by reasonable suspicion because the SUV‘s license plate lamp, though functioning properly and apparently as designed, did not have an opaque casing entirely shrouding its back, and thus emitted some white light to the rear of the vehicle. After taking the matter under advisement, the trial court granted Stoll‘s motion to suppress. Its ruling that the license plate light did not violate Title 28 was based on specific facts:
There was no evidence that the [license plate] light created any public safety or
community welfare concern. There was no evidence that the lamp obstructed the vision of other drivers or that other drivers might confuse the license lamp with a head light or backup light. The white lamp was simply “visible” from the rear of Defendant‘s vehicle.
¶ 5 In December 2014, shortly after the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Heien v. North Carolina, 574 U.S. 54, 135 S.Ct. 530, 190 L.Ed.2d 475 (2014), the state moved for reconsideration of the suppression ruling, arguing the deputies made a reasonable mistake of law in interpreting
¶ 6 Stoll filed a motion to reconsider the new ruling, which the trial court denied. A bench trial followed, and Stoll now appeals the resulting conviction and sentence. Our jurisdiction is pursuant to
Whether the License Plate Light Violated Arizona Law
¶ 7 Although the trial court did not vary from its initial ruling that Stoll‘s license plate lamp did not violate Title 28, we address that conclusion because if we determine an Arizona statute prohibits a license plate lamp from emitting any white light to the rear, then the officer had reasonable suspicion to investigate a violation of such statute in this case. See, e.g., State v. Teagle, 217 Ariz. 17, ¶ 25, 170 P.3d 266, 272-73 (App. 2007) (defining reasonable suspicion). We review issues of statutory interpretation de novo. Dobson v. McClennen, 238 Ariz. 389, ¶ 7, 361 P.3d 374, 376 (2015). When interpreting a statute, our chief duty is to determine and effectuate the legislature‘s intent. See Glazer v. State, 237 Ariz. 160, ¶ 12, 347 P.3d 1141, 1144 (2015). “If the statute is subject to only one reasonable interpretation, we apply it without further analysis.” Id. However, if it is ambiguous, we may consider other factors such as “the context of the statute, the language used, the subject matter, its historical background, its effects and consequences, and its spirit and purpose.” Id., quoting Wyatt v. Wehmueller, 167 Ariz. 281, 284, 806 P.2d 870, 873 (1991).
¶ 8 Arizona law requires that a lamp, either separate or incorporated in the tail light, be placed on a vehicle “in a manner that illuminates with a white light the rear license plate and renders it clearly legible from a distance of fifty feet to the rear.”
All lighting devices and reflectors mounted on the rear of any vehicle shall display or reflect a red color, except that:
- The stoplight or other signal device may be red, amber, or yellow. . . .
- The light illuminating the license plate or the light emitted by a backup lamp shall be white.
¶ 9 Our reading of
All lighting devices and reflectors mounted on the rear of any vehicle shall display or reflect a red color, except: the stoplight or other signal device, which may be red, amber, or yellow, and except that the light illuminating the license plate shall be white and the light emitted by a back-up lamp may be white, amber, or red.
Id. quoting
¶ 10 There is no dispute that the license plate lamp on Stoll‘s SUV illuminated the license plate with a white light. Because this lamp fell within an express exception in
¶ 11 Having concluded Stoll‘s license plate lamp did not violate
¶ 12 We emphasize, therefore, that this is not a case in which the license plate lamp was missing or was not operating. See, e.g., State v. Kjolsrud, Nos. 2 CA-CR 2015-0230, 2 CA-CR 2015-0231 (consolidated), 239 Ariz. 319, ¶¶ 2, 11, 371 P.3d 647, 2016 WL 1085229 (Ariz. Ct. App. Mar. 18, 2016) (unilluminated license plate is proper basis for traffic stop under
Whether the Deputies’ Mistake of Law Was Reasonable
¶ 13 The state maintains that even if Stoll‘s license plate lamp did not violate
¶ 14 The Fourth Amendment forbids “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
¶ 15 In Heien v. North Carolina, the United States Supreme Court held reasonable suspicion supporting a traffic stop can rest upon a reasonable mistake of law. 574 U.S. 54, 135 S.Ct. at 536. If a law enforcement officer makes a stop based on a reasonable mistake of law, “there [is] no violation of the Fourth Amendment in the first place.” Id. at 135 S.Ct. at 539. The Court emphasized, however, that “[t]he Fourth Amendment tolerates only reasonable mistakes” of law, and “those mistakes must be objectively reasonable.” Id.; accord Moreno, 236 Ariz. 347, ¶ 10, 340 P.3d at 430-31. Our inquiry is exclusively objective—the court will not examine “the subjective understanding of the particular officer involved.” Heien, 574 U.S. 54, 135 S.Ct. at 539. If the statute the officer interpreted mistakenly “is genuinely ambiguous, such that overturning the officer‘s judgment requires hard interpretive work, then the officer has made a reasonable mistake. But if not, not.” Id. at 135 S.Ct. at 541 (Kagan, J., concurring).
¶ 16 The state argues a reasonable officer could have believed Stoll‘s license plate lamp violated
¶ 17 The state‘s interpretation distinguishing direct light from reflected light lacks a textual basis. In fact, by its terms,
¶ 18 In addition, the state offers no basis to distinguish white light illuminating the license plate from white light the lamp emits toward the front of the vehicle that does not happen to fall on the license plate itself. Under the state‘s reading, unless a vehicle‘s license plate lamp is shielded with such precision as to emit white light only onto the license plate itself and nowhere else—not even elsewhere on the rear of the vehicle—
¶ 19 The state further argues the deputies’ reading is reasonable because other drivers could confuse a license plate lamp emitting white light directly to the rear for an illuminated backup lamp, creating a risk that they might incorrectly conclude the vehicle is in reverse. See
¶ 20 We agree with the Seventh Circuit‘s reasoning that ”Heien does not support the proposition that a police officer acts in an objectively reasonable manner by misinterpreting an unambiguous statute.” United States v. Stanbridge, 813 F.3d 1032, 1037 (7th Cir. 2016); compare United States v. Alvarado-Zarza, 782 F.3d 246, 249-50 (5th Cir. 2015) (mistake of law not objectively reasonable where statute is “unambiguous” and “facially gives no support” to officer‘s interpretation), with Heien, 574 U.S. 54, 135 S.Ct. at 540 (mistake of law objectively reasonable where ambiguous statutory language, not yet interpreted by courts, fairly allowed two different readings). Nor does the testimony of the patrol commander at the hearing on the motion for reconsideration regarding officer training affect our analysis. As Justice Kagan noted in Heien, “an officer‘s reliance on ‘an incorrect memo or training program from the police department’ makes no difference” for purposes of our strictly objective inquiry. Id. at 135 S.Ct. at 541 (Kagan, J., concurring), quoting State v. Heien, 366 N.C. 271, 737 S.E.2d 351, 360 (2012) (Hudson, J., dissenting); accord id. at 135 S.Ct. at 539-40 (majority opinion). Put another way, the fact that the department had trained its officers in a way that permitted a misreading of
¶ 21 We vacate Stoll‘s conviction and sentence, reverse the grant of the state‘s motion for reconsideration, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this decision.