Supreme Court upholds traffic stop search
Supreme Court upholds traffic stop search
Calling the intrusion “minimal,” the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld the ability of police to pat down the passenger of a vehicle stopped for unrelated reasons – and, by extension, the ability to charge that person with illegal possession of a gun.
In a unanimous decision involving a Tucson arrest, the justices acknowledged that, in a lawful traffic stop, there is reason to believe the driver has committed an offense. Similarly, they said, there generally is no reason to stop or detain the passengers.
But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court, said officers may act if there is a “reasonable suspicion” they may be armed and dangerous.
She said there is a possibility of violence if those in the vehicle – including passengers – are concerned that the stop will lead to uncovering evidence of something more serious than the traffic violation. And Ginsburg said since the vehicle is already stopped, along with its passengers, the additional intrusion on the passenger is minimal.
Monday’s ruling, however, does not end the matter. The justices said that Edith Cunningham, a Pima County public defender handling the case for Lemon M. Johnson, will still get a chance to prove that Oro Valley police officer Maria Trevizo lacked that “reasonable suspicion” necessary to search him in the first place.
According to court records, Trevizo was on patrol in 2002 with two other officers in a midtown Tucson neighborhood.
Trevizo testified that the area is associated with the Crips gang and that gang members usually wear blue. She also said that “gang members will often, in general, possess firearms.”
They stopped a vehicle because a check of the license plate showed a violation of Arizona’s mandatory auto insurance laws.
There was no specific reason to suspect criminal activity.
The vehicle had a driver, someone in the passenger seat and Johnson in the back.
Trevizo said she noticed Johnson was wearing clothing, including a blue bandanna, she considered consistent with Crips membership. He also had a police scanner in his jacket pocket, something she said was unusual unless someone were going to commit a crime or evade police.
When she questioned Johnson he provided his name and date of birth and that he lived in Eloy, which Trevizo said she knew was home of a Crips gang. Johnson also told the officer he had been in prison for burglary and been out for about a year.
Saying she wanted to get intelligence about the gang, she asked him to get out of the vehicle so she could question him separately. When he got out she patted him down and found a gun, resulting in his arrest.
The state Court of Appeals said the pat-down – and subsequent arrest – were illegal because Trevizo admitted she asked him to get out of the car not for public safety purposes but to question him about gang activity. That decision was upheld without comment by the state Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court thought otherwise. Ginsburg said the fact remains that the vehicle was lawfully stopped. And that stop, she said, included all the occupants.
“The temporary seizure of driver and passengers ordinarily continues, and remains reasonable, for the duration of the stop,” she wrote. Ginsburg said that stop normally ends when officers have no need to control the scene and tell the driver and passengers they are free to leave.
But she said as long as the vehicle is lawfully stopped, police can question all the occupants about other matters.
“An officer’s inquiries into matters unrelated to the justification for the traffic stop … do not convert the encounter into something other than a lawful seizure, so long as those inquiries do not measurably extend the duration of the stop.”
Cunningham said the high court ruling was “narrow,” dealing only with what police can do when they have reasonable cause to search someone. She said nothing in the ruling undermines her contention that, despite the clothing and the scanner, Trevizo never had cause to suspect her client was a danger or doing anything wrong.
