Failure to Stop at the Command of Police Officer - Mens Rea Reiterated

 The Court of Appeals released an opinion regarding Utah Code 76-8-305.5. This is a river floating case where a state parks ranger was attempting to stop some kayakers that were not wearing life jackets, however, the analyis applies to any other type of offense in this category, including some of our traffic offenses. 

The Court not only made clear that there is a mens rea to this offense, but that the fleeing must be to avoid an arrest. This case is a follow up to prior cases on these topics and reiterates the importance of establishing those elements that coincide with the mens rea requirements on this offense and also 41-6a-210. 

You can review the full opinion here: State v. Nelson

Officer's Prior Knowledge of Suspended DL Not Enough for RAS

The Utah Court of Appeals recently gave a ruling on the topic of whether an officer's prior knowledge that a driver had a suspended driver license was sufficient for reasonable articulable suspicion for a detention of that driver. 

The ultimate holding goes as follows: 

"This appeal asks us to decide whether an officer’s knowledge that Correa did not have a valid driver license two months before the stop created a reasonable suspicion that Correa still didn’t have a valid license and was therefore driving impermissibly. We hold that it did not."

It is important to note that at the evidentiary hearing, the officer testified that he learned that it was about two months prior that the defendant had been driving that truck with a suspended license, and maybe even three. This information was obtained via dispatch and also from other officers prior to the detention. There was no records check on the DL done, just information passed along from other people. The Court of Appeals acknowledged that this can be an ongoing crime, but there has to be some temporal boundaries put on it, and based upon the information presented, it was not reasonable to assume that because someone was driving with a suspended DL two to three months prior, that it was reasonable articulable suspicion to assume the person was driving with a suspended DL on this occassion. The officer would need more. 

The Court contrasts this ruling to that in West Valley City v. Temblador-Topete, 2020 UT App 64, 463 P.3d 721 where an officer ran a plate and the insurance check came back "not found." This case was different because the insurance database was updated multiple times each month and the officer was doing a current check of that database. In the present case, this was just stale knowledge of a citation issued for driving on a suspended DL from months prior, without more. 

For a lawful detention to occur, officers will need more than just two to three month old information that a person was cited for driving on a suspended DL. See the full case here: State v. Correa. 

 Temblador-Topete

DUI Sentencing Decision - State v Timpson

The Utah Court of Appeals published an opinion regarding mandatory DUI sentencing. The case revolved around the question of whether "home confinement" met the mandatory jail provisions for people convicted three (or more) times within a ten-year period. 

The district court, over the objection from the State, sentenced defendant to serve the mandatory 62.5 days in home confinement with an ankle monitor. The State appealed and the Court of Appeals was persuaded by the State's argument that "home confinement" and "jail sentence" do not mean the same thing within the structure of the DUI statute, and therefore this was an illegal sentence. 

We often hear of courts around the state sentencing someone to home confinement instead of jail. There are provisions where this is contemplated and even allowed in the the statute. However, when there is a minimum jail sentence, this case makes clear that "home confinement" is not akin to jail, and courts may not impose those sentences in lieu of jail unless the statute allows for it. 

Here is a link to the decision: State v. Timpson

Recent SCOTUS Traffice Related Cases

The Supreme Court of the United States has recently decided a couple cases that involve traffic related matters at least tangentially. The cases are Lange v. California and Torres v. Madrid. 

My colleague Erin Inman with the National Traffic Law Center (NTLC) at NDAA did a great write up about these cases in their August newsletter. You can access Erin's very well done write-up here at this link: Between the Lines August 2021. 

NTLC has developed a ton of great resources for prosecutors. If you've never looked through their materials, I'd strongly suggest you do! 

State v. Malloy: Update to View on Officer Opening Car Door

 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. 

United States v. Mayville - Triple I checks during traffic stops after Rodriguez

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals published a decision in April in a traffic stop case regarding Triple I checks and the extension of the scope of the stop. 

Defendant in the case stated that under Rodriguez, running the Triple I through dispatch unconstitutionally extended the scope of the stop. 

This is a Utah case based upon a stop by UHP, record checks, and a K9 sniff while waiting for reports to come back from dispatch. There is some very helpful language in the opinion analyzing what is allowed by officers after Rodriguez. 

See the full opinion here: United States v. Mayville

Kansas v. Glover - Stops Based Upon Registered Owner Having Revoked DL

Today the Supreme Court of the United States announced an 8-1 decision upholding an officer's ability to make an investigative traffic stop after running the vehicle's license plate and finding the registered owner has a revoked driver license. The Court held when the officer lacks information negating an inference that the owner is the driver of the vehicle, the stop is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Justice Thomas authored the opinion for the Court, which all other justices aside from Justice Sotomayor joined in the opinion. In addition to joining with the majority opinion, Justice Kagan authored a concurring opinion, which Justice Ginsburg joined. Justice Sotomayor authored a dissenting opinion.

Facts:
No testimony was taken at the suppression hearing, but both parties stipulated to the following facts. On the date in question, Deputy was on routine patrol when he observed a pickup truck with a Kansas plate. Deputy ran the plate through the state's file service. The registration came back to a matching 1995 Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck. Kansas Department of Revenue files indicated the truck was registered to Glover. The files also indicated that Glover had a revoked driver’s license in the State of Kansas. Deputy assumed Glover was driving the vehicle. Deputy did not observe any traffic infractions, and did not attempt to identify the driver of the truck. Based solely on the information that the registered owner of the truck was revoked, Deputy initiated a traffic stop. The driver of the truck was identified as the defendant, Glover.

The case history was that the district court granted Grover's motion to suppress based upon lack of reasonable suspicion. The Kansas court of appeals reversed, stating the deputy had reasonable suspicion. The Kansas Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals and held that the deputy's belief that the registered owner was driving the vehicle as nothing more than a "mere hunch" and did not give rise to reasonable suspicion.

Decision:
SCOTUS noted the "less demanding" standard of reasonable suspicion and cited much precedent that establishes that the standard requires "considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of the evidence, and obviously less than is necessary for probable cause.” SCOTUS reaffirmed that this requires a reasonableness standard based upon considerations in every day life, not that of legal technicians.

In holding that there was reasonable suspicion, SCOTUS focused on the following three facts: First, he saw a vehicle being operated; next, deputy knew that according to the license plate, the registered owner of the vehicle had a revoked license; and finally, that the vehicle matched the description on the registration. The Court noted that deputy drew a commonsense inference that the registered owner would likely be driving the vehicle, and this "provided more than reasonable suspicion to initiate the stop." The fact that people that are not the registered owners of vehicles often drive them did not negate the deputy's reasonable inference, and SCOTUS reminded us that reasonable suspicion falls far short of 51% accuracy. Additionally, SCOTUS cited references showing that people with revoked licenses often continue driving, so the fact that Grover had a revoked license had no bearing on whether deputy's inference was reasonable. 

There was a large and helpful discussion on what experience is required to come to reasonable inferences under reasonable suspicion. It was reaffirmed that officers can draw on every day experiences, and are not required to draw only on law enforcement specific training and experience as the dissent suggests. Requiring such would defy "the commonsense understanding to commonsense." To be clear, the Court is not saying specialized training and experience have no place in criminal investigations. It simply said that these are not required in every instance.

Finally, there is a discussion of the limited nature of the opinion. As with other analysis, the reasonable inference made is based upon the totality of the circumstances. An example cited would be that if the registered owner of the vehicle was a 60 year old male, and the officer observed that the driver was a young female, the stop would not be justified at its inception. Or if the stop occurred and the officer becomes aware immediately that the driver is not the registered owner of the vehicle, without some other reasonable suspicion, the stop would need to terminate.

While Justice Kagan joined in Justice Thomas' opinion, she also wrote a concurrence that analyzed the facts in more depth. She noted specifically that Kansas very rarely revokes a driver license, and when it does, it is normally for repeated violations of traffic offenses. This information possessed by an officer in Kansas would lead to a more reasonable inference that a driver might ignore the fact that his license is revoked since he has shown a propensity to ignore other traffic offenses. She contrasted this with if the license was merely suspended, as the state suspends licenses for non-traffic offenses regularly. While the concurrence goes into depth on this differentiation, the majority opinion did not adopt this analysis fully, but opted for the more broad approach of totality of the circumstances.

Ultimately the holding of this case is pretty basic: If an officer runs a license plate and sees that the registered owner has a revoked driver license, absent further information to suggest otherwise, the officer may reasonably infer that the registered owner is driving the vehicle and may make an investigative traffic stop.

You may read the full opinion here: Kansas v Glover.