The stop of a vehicle requires a reasonable suspicion that an occupant has been engaged in criminal activity or is, for some other reason, subject to seizure, i.e., arrest. If the registered owner of a vehicle is the subject of an outstanding arrest warrant, he or she would be subject to seizure, so is that fact alone enough to support a constitutional stop of the vehicle? The Kentucky Supreme Court has just addressed and slightly blown the answer to this question in Traft v. Commonwealth.
Traft was driving "during the early morning hours" and a deputy sheriff determined from a license plate check that the registered owner of the vehicle was the subject of an outstanding arrest warrant for missing a court appearance. The deputy sheriff "could not even discern the gender or race of the truck's driver, much less identify [Traft] as the driver." There were no alleged traffic violations. The driver, Traft, was found to be intoxicated when he was pulled over. Traft was charged with DUI, lost on a motion to suppress, entered a conditional guilty plea and had the suppression ruling affirmed by both the circuit court and Court of Appeals.
Traft first argued, somewhat implausibly, that he possessed an expectation of privacy in the information shown on his vehicle's license plate. The Court rejected that argument, although in a kind way.
Traft's second argument was that the deputy sheriff could not tell that he was driving the truck, could not tell the race or gender of the driver, and took no further investigative steps before pulling it over. The Court rejected this argument also and overstated its ruling, which is where the mistake was made:
While it is true that [the deputy sheriff] did not know the identity of the driver when he initiated the stop, we hold that the fact that the owner of the vehicle was subject to seizure for violation of law creates an articulable and reasonable suspicion for an officer to initiate a traffic stop.
The mistake here is that the Court's ruling sweeps too broadly. What about a situation where the information available to the law enforcement officer is that a vehicle is registered to a female, who is subject of an outstanding arrest warrant, but the officer sees that the vehicle contains only men and gives testimony such as the following:
Q: You’ve determined that the registrant of the car was Angela Burdine?
A: That’s correct.
Q: You recognized Angela – or believed Angela Burdine was a woman, correct?
A: Yes.
Q: And you hadn’t seen any women – didn’t appear to you that there was a woman in the car, right?
A: That’s right.
…
Q: But the information available to you at the time that the car stopped along the interstate was there’s three males in there, right?
A: Yes.
Q: And your resolution is, well, maybe I’ll stop ‘em and look in there and see if Angela Burdine’s in there, right?
A: That’s right.
Q: Now, you had no idea who the three male occupants were at the time you stopped the car, correct?
A: That’s correct.
Where the officer has information readily available to him or her indicating that the registered owner is not in the vehicle, there is no reasonable suspicion that anyone in the car is subject to seizure. This is the issue presented to the Sixth Circuit in United States v. Pyles, No. 17-6334.
Meanwhile, the Kentucky Supreme Court's failure to cabin its ruling consistent with the facts before it will cause many, many vehicle stops that are unsupported by reasonable suspicion of any kind that the occupants are subject to seizure.
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