State v. StrangeState v. Strange
- Reporters:
- ,
- Before:
- Per Curiam (per curiam)
PER CURIAM.
The state‘s application is hereby granted, the rulings of the courts below suppressing evidence seized from defendants are reversed, and this case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings.
The evidencе adduced at the hearing on defendants’ motion to suppress established that on November 19, 2002, a Thunderbird traveling east on Interstate 10 through St. Martin Parish caught the attention of State Trooper Troy Dupuis because the vehicle had both a regular or “hard” license plate located in its customary position near the rear bumper of the car and a paper or temporary tag displayed in the back window. Both tags were from Texas. Aware of Louisiana law requiring that the owner of a vehicle must remove any temporary tags once he receives a hard copy of his license plate, Trooper Dupuis decided to stop the Thunderbird to determine “which plate was the real plate” and to check the registration “to see if it wasn‘t stolen” or whether the plates had been switched.
After pulling the vehicle over, the trooper explained the reason for the stop, determined that the driver, Talbert Porter, had no license on him and that the passenger, Sean Strange, was in fact the owner of the vehicle. A check of the papers produced by defendant Strange, including а bill of sale from a car dealer in Fort Worth, Texas, satisfied the trooper that Strange had recently purchased the vehicle in Texas and was driving on a temporary tag while waiting for his registration in his own name. Strange had, in fact, insured the vehicle on the day before the officer pulled the car over in Louisiana. The paper work thus “show[ed] that [the vehicle] was not stolen” and that its plates had not been switched. Strange explained to the trooper on the scene, as he would later to the court during the hearing on the motion to suppress, that Texas would eventually issue a registration sticker to be placed on the front windshield near the inspection sticker as a replacement for the temporary tag issued by the car dealer. He further explained that in Texas, license plates do not change with the owner, “[t]he owners change with [the plates].”
On the basis of the testimony provided by Trooper Dupuis and the defendants at the evidentiary hearing conducted in May, 2003, the trial court, satisfied that Texas law permitted a vehicle registerеd in that state to display both a hard license plate and a temporary tag, and that Louisiana permits vehicles properly registered in other jurisdictions to travel on the roads of this state without complying with this state‘s registration requirements, granted respondents’ motion to suppress. The court thus took the position that “[i]f the plates were properly displayed under Texas law, then [Trooper Dupuis] didn‘t have any reasonable suspicion to stop them.” The court of appeal agreed. State v. Strange, 03-0901 (La.App. 3rd Cir.12/30/03), 861 So.2d 951 (unpub‘d)(Saunders, J., dissenting). The court acknowledged that as a matter of Louisiana law, a vehicle may not display both a hard license plate and a dealer‘s temрorary tag. See
In dissent, Saunders, J., argued that “[a]lthough subsequent research revealed that the vehicle was properly registered in Texas, it is unrealistic to expect Louisiana State Troopers, or any other peace officer of the State of Louisiana to be versed in the vehicle registration laws of the other forty-nine states.” Strange, 03-0901 at 6 (Saunders, J., dissenting). In his view, the vehicle‘s display of a hard license plate аnd temporary tag constituted the “`particularized and objective basis‘” required for a lawful investigatory stop which then led to the discovery of the marijuana concealed in the car after defendant gave his cоnsent to search the vehicle. Id., at 6 (quoting United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417, 101 S.Ct. 690, 695, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981).
We agree with Judge Saunders that the pertinent question in the present case is not whether defendant Strange had taken all of the appropriate steps to register the Thunderbird in his name in Tеxas under the laws of that state after he purchased the vehicle, and had in the interim displayed on the vehicle the license tags required by Texas law,2 but whether Trooper Dupuis‘s conduct was reasonable as a matter of the Fourth Amendment and
The trial court therefore erred in concluding that the initial stop of the Thunderbird was illegal. However, the court correctly found that “once the stop was made, everything that occurred after that was appropriаte.” Nothing precluded Trooper Dupuis from engaging the defendants in conversation, State v. Lopez, 00-0562 (La.10/30/00), 772 So.2d 90, and the officer did not need any degree of reasonable suspicion, as opposed to intuition or “hunch,” to ask for, and receive, Strange‘s consent to search the car. Consent is a well-recognized exception to the warrant requirement, State v. Owen, 453 So.2d 1202, 1206 (La.1984); State v. Packard, 389 So.2d 56, 58 (La.1980), and rendered lawful the subsequent discovery and seizure of the marijuana hidden behind the Thunderbirds‘s rear bumper. Sеizure of the small amount of cocaine and methamphetamine from Strange‘s wallet was incident to the lawful arrests and was therefore also lawful. Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969); State v. Wilson, 467 So.2d 503, 517 (La.1985).
The ruling of the trial court granting defendants’ motion to suppress is reversed, and this case is remanded to the court for further proceedings in accord with the views expressed herein.
JUDGMENT REVERSED; CASE REMANDED.