A new Utah Supreme Court decision was filed January 21, 2021 and its impact, while very narrow in scope, is important to understand as its a change in some established precedent to this point. The analysis of the Court of Appeals decision the Court was reviewing can be seen here, along with the facts of the case, so I will not restate those in this post. The importance of this opinion is the change in view that the Court of Appeals followed from State v. James, 2000 UT 80, 13 P.3d 576.
In this opinion, the Supreme Court is overturning its own precedent in James based upon subsequent Supreme Court of the United States decisions. However, in doing so they do not suppress the evidence in the present case as the officer was objectively relying in good faith on controlling precedent.
The important take away from this case is simply that the broad rule in James that the identity of the person that opened the car door was not important for 4th Amendment purposes on a traffic stop is no longer good precedent. The analysis there was essentially that because an officer may order a driver out of the car on a lawful traffic stop, and opening the door could be part of gaining compliance with that lawful order for a driver to get out of the car during the stop, that creating a rule saying the officer can't be the one to actually open the door was putting form over substance. This is what the Court addressed in this opinion, and now states that the identity of the person opening the car door MAY be a factor under the 4th Amendment going forward. While the Court did overturn the prior precedent, it's important to note that the Court did not create a rule saying that every time an officer opens a car door it is a search, let alone an unreasonable search. The holding in State v. Malloy is a very narrow holding, simply to clarify a previously held broad rule, but the Court did not analyze the current facts of the case as they were able to affirm based upon the officer's objectively good faith reliance on the prior precedent.
This is an important point to get out to law enforcement agencies as officers may no longer rely upon the holding in James to open a car door without consent of the driver. If they do so, they should be able to articulate the reasons in their report as to why that was reasonable. How much leeway the Utah Supreme Court will give officers on this topic moving forward is an open question and will need to be litigated down the road.
The full opinion can be found here: State v. Malloy.
