Appeals Court ruled police don't need probable cause to question drivers.

TX - The second highest court in Texas on Wednesday signaled support for police who make up phony reasons to pull over motorists. A sharply divided Court of Criminal Appeals declined to sanction officers for pulling over Alvaro Mazuca because his yellow Mustang had "defective tail lights." The Mustang's lights were just fine.

On December 11, 2008 at around 10pm, El Paso Police Officers Mike Chavez and Christopher Grijalva were out looking for people to ticket at the Sunland Park Mall when the brightly colored Ford caught their eye. They performed a traffic stop in the parking lot of Linens n Things, admitting they had no suspicion that the driver had committed any crime. It turned out that Mazuca had drugs on him along with an outstanding arrest warrant, but his lawyer moved to suppress the evidence because the initial stop was bogus.

Mazuca had installed a modified set of clear tail lights on his vehicle five years ago. Although the lenses were clear, its bulbs were red and could only emit a red light. The setup had always passed the yearly state safety inspection, but Officer Grijalva insisted they did not appear red when the brake pedal was pushed.

"There was mostly white," Grijalva testified. "From what I distinctly saw it was mostly white. I don't recall if we got close and saw that there was any red. But the white dominated the red color."

The trial judge found the police officers' version of events was "not credible" and that the stop was flagrantly illegal. Prosecutors immediately appealed to the Court of Appeals, which upheld the lower court finding. A three-judge panel reasoned that if it sanctioned the arrest, police would be encouraged to go on fishing expeditions, stopping drivers randomly on the hunt for people with warrants.

The next highest court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, had a different view. On Wednesday, the majority ruled that the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule should not apply, citing the "attenuation of taint" doctrine that makes illegally obtained evidence admissible if that evidence is not closely connected with the illegal methods used.

"In the present case, we conclude that the temporal proximity between the first illegal arrest and the second legal arrest does not bear on the attenuation," Judge Tom Price wrote for the majority in the 5-4 decision. "This factor has been cited and considered exclusively in cases where confessions or statements were obtained from a suspect subsequent to an illegal arrest. We also reason that, unlike the confession cases, where the statements can be seen as a psychological product of the arrest, the diminution of the likelihood of the discovery of physical evidence as a result of the illegal arrest cannot be a function of the passage of time. Thus, we conclude that the temporal proximity factor is of no moment in this case."

Four of the nine judges sided with the earlier rulings.

"The result fashioned by the majority opens the door for police to ignore the probable cause requirement and make traffic stops without adequate grounds for doing so," Judge Lawrence E. Meyers wrote in a dissent. "The majority's analysis of the weight of the Brown factors may be correct, but the result discounts the trial court's findings as to the credibility of the officers."

Judge Cheryl Johnson blasted her colleagues for taking lightly the seriousness of the police misconduct here.

"Ignorance of the law is no defense," Johnson wrote. "We have all heard that statement many times, usually in the context of a defendant who claims not to have known of the law he or she is charged with violating. If an average citizen cannot plead ignorance of the law, how are we to condone a law-enforcement officer, who is charged with knowing the law he or she enforces, using that excuse to justify a traffic stop that is blatantly improper?" http://thenewspaper.com/news/38/3804.asp

Texas v. Mazuca ruling: http://thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2012/tx-clear.pdf


Delaware Supreme Court ruled against traffic stop delays.

Police may not unnecessarily detain motorist pulled over for speeding, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled.

A police officer may not unreasonably delay a motorist pulled over for a traffic citation, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled last week. Many departments use minor infractions as an excuse to conduct an extensive search for possible evidence of more serious crimes. The justices ruled 4-1 against this practice.

"An officer who pulls a car over for speeding does not thereby gain free rein to ask as many questions, for as long a time, as he might wish," Chief Justice Myron T. Steele wrote for the majority. "Further investigation requires further justification."

The decision considered the actions of Wilmington Detective Samuel Smith who was patrolling in an unmarked car one day at 30th Street and Jefferson Street. Smith saw a man -- Glen Murray -- look at him, then get in a Chrysler and drive off. Smith called in backup, Wilmington Police Officer Matthew Hazzard, who was able to stop Murray's car for allegedly speeding on Interstate 95.

Instead of a ticket, Murray was given a verbal reprimand. The officers then proceeded to interrogate him and his passengers solely for the purpose of finding drugs. Even though the officers admitted they had no reason to believe Murray was dangerous in any way, they ordered him out of the car so he could be frisked. The officers then searched a bookbag on the floor of the car for "anything illegal."

The high court has no problem with officers using speeding or other common tickets as a pretext to pull over a motorist, so long as the violation is a real one. Once the violation is handled, however, the traffic stop must end.

"The officer's power to detain the car evaporated after the officers ended the investigation that provided the objective justification for the stop," Steele wrote. "At that time, the officers had no authority to continue detaining the car, and, admittedly, no reason to suspect that Murray possessed contraband."

Ordering Murray out of the car constituted the first violation of the Fourth Amendment. Justice Henry duPont Ridgely disagreed with his colleagues and insisted the drugs found in the search of the bookbag were the fruit of a legitimate search because the police had obtained consent and the intrusion was minimal.
http://thenewspaper.com/news/37/3799.asp

Murray v. Delaware ruling: http://thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2012/de-delay.pdf


Ohio Court of Appeals blasts police embellishment of traffic stop testimony.

Prosecutors and sometimes even judges will embellish the testimony of a police officer to justify a traffic stop after the fact. A divided Ohio Court of Appeals panel ruled Tuesday that this practice was unacceptable. The majority determined Henry County Deputy Sheriff Sean Wymer unconstitutionally seized Dustin A. Haas because the officer did not understand the law he was enforcing.

At around 2:30am on March 16, 2010 Wymer saw Haas' vehicle stopped on State Route 65 in the village of McClure. A woman was standing outside the car. As Wymer passed, Haas' car pulled off onto a side street and parked in a driveway. Wymer approached, turned on his lights and conducted a traffic stop based on what he said was a violation of Ohio law prohibiting "stopping in the roadway." Alicia Reinbolt says Haas was picking her up that night and took her to a friend's house. In a 2-1 decision, an appellate panel overturned a lower court decision that found Wymer's actions legal.

"In order for a traffic stop to be constitutional, an officer must be able to articulate that the defendant's conduct violated a traffic law on its face," Judge Richard M. Rogers wrote for the majority.

The law that Wymer cited prohibits stopping on any highway "outside a business or residence district." Since Haas was in a business district, the code did not apply. The trial judge and dissenting appellate Judge Stephen R. Shaw argued the totality of the circumstances, which included the turn off the road and parking on the driveway, were suspicious. The majority disagreed because this was not Wymer's rationale.

"The officer testified that he had already made his decision to stop the vehicle based on his mistaken notion that a violation of law had occurred, and that was his sole reason for the stop," Rogers wrote. "No other facts or circumstances are material to our consideration of the officer's reasonable articulable suspicion. If the officer had found other acts of appellant to be suspicious he could have so testified. He did not."

Prosecutors insisted that police cannot be expected to have expert knowledge of every traffic law they enforce. Requiring such knowledge, they said, would create "paralysis by analysis." The majority said such knowledge is the bare minimum standard officers must meet.

"We aver that knowledge of the traffic laws is the very essence of a patrol officer's job," Rogers wrote. "To require any less than an accurate, working knowledge of the traffic offenses and to fail to ensure that the one being seized at least reasonably appeared to have violated a statute on its face gravely deprives citizens of their constitutional right to be free from warrantless searches and seizures."
http://thenewspaper.com/news/38/3807.asp

Court Ruling, Ohio v. Haas: http://thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2012/oh-articulate.pdf