People v. Rodriguez
| Decision Date | 15 September 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 96SC230,96SC230 |
| Citation | 945 P.2d 1351 |
| Parties | 97 CJ C.A.R. 1922 The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Petitioner, v. Rafael RODRIGUEZ, Respondent. |
| Court | Colorado Supreme Court |
Gale A. Norton, Attorney General, Martha Phillips Allbright, Chief Deputy Attorney General, Richard A. Westfall, Solicitor General, John Daniel Dailey, Deputy Attorney General, Robert Mark Russel, First Assistant Attorney General, Roger G. Billotte, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Enforcement Section, Denver, for Petitioner.
David F. Vela, Colorado State Public Defender, James Grimaldi, Deputy State Public Defender, Denver, for Respondent.
We granted certiorari in People v. Rodriguez, 924 P.2d 1100 (Colo.App.1996), to review the judgment of the court of appeals overturning the conviction of respondent Rodriguez for possession of a schedule I controlled substance, heroin. 1 The court of appeals reversed the district court's denial of Rodriguez's motion to suppress, holding that the detention of Rodriguez constituted an illegal arrest which tainted Rodriguez's later consent to search. We affirm the holding of the court of appeals, but we employ different reasoning.
We hold that when an officer possesses reasonable suspicion that a traffic offense has been committed and the officer has decided not to give the driver a ticket for the traffic offense, the officer may request identifying information from the driver, such as a driver's license, vehicle registration, and proof of insurance. We hold this request for information is constitutionally permissible because the officer's conduct is to be evaluated on the basis of an objective standard. The officer's subjective decision not to give a ticket does not strip the officer of legal justification to make further inquiries. The circumstances of this case, that is, minor discrepancies in the van registration and the lack of the Nader safety label on the doorjamb of the van, furnished reasonable suspicion for the trooper to investigate further whether the van was stolen. However, the ninety-minute detention of Rodriguez and the ten-mile forced drive in this case exceeded the permissible parameters of an investigatory stop. The temporary detention escalated into an arrest unsupported by probable cause to believe that the van was stolen, in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article II, Section 7 of the Colorado Constitution. Rodriguez's arrest was illegal. His consent to search was not sufficiently attenuated from this illegal arrest which immediately preceded his consent. Hence, we conclude that the heroin discovered in the search of Rodriguez's van must be suppressed. We affirm and remand to the court of appeals to return this case to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
On September 30, 1992, Rodriguez was traveling east on Interstate 70 (I-70) in his van, accompanied by his pregnant wife, their three toddlers, and a friend named Miguel Munoz. They were returning from Las Vegas, Nevada, to their home in Chicago, Illinois. Rodriguez was born in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and speaks little English. Munoz was born in Mexico and is now a resident of Illinois. Munoz is bilingual in Spanish and English.
At approximately 7:25 a.m., as Rodriguez was driving on a winding section of I-70, west of Vail, a Colorado state trooper observed Rodriguez's van weave across the continuous white line on the right shoulder by approximately half the width of the van, then cross over and touch the white-dashed line on the other side of its lane. The trooper followed the van approximately a mile and a half to a straight stretch of highway near the Wolcott exit on I-70. There the trooper stopped the van on the shoulder of the interstate to determine whether the driver was intoxicated.
Upon being told by the trooper that he was weaving, Rodriguez stated that he and his family were driving from Las Vegas to Chicago. He said he was very tired. The trooper testified it was obvious that Rodriguez had not been drinking. The trooper decided that he would not issue a traffic citation to Rodriguez for failure to drive within a single lane (weaving). 2 The trooper requested Rodriguez's driver's license and vehicle registration. Rodriguez produced these documents and the trooper instructed him to wait in the van. The trooper also observed and recorded the van's vehicle identification number (VIN) from the dashboard by looking through the driver's side corner of the vehicle's windshield.
The trooper ran a check on Rodriguez's license, registration, and VIN. The license was valid, the vehicle was properly registered under Rodriguez's name, and the van had not been reported stolen. The VIN on the dashboard matched the VIN on the registration card and showed no signs of alteration or tampering. However, the trooper's examination of the vehicle registration revealed two discrepancies. The registration card indicated that the letters on the van's license plate were "CAW," but the actual letters on the license plate were "CAD." In addition, the registration card indicated that the van was a 1985 model, while the computer check showed that the van was a 1980 model. The registration card was hand written; the trooper testified he gave little weight to the registration because of this fact. Rodriguez also provided the trooper with a document from the Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles concerning his hand-written registration card. At this time, however, the trooper did not read the document and later testified he was under the impression that the paper was a reminder for registrants to check their plates against the card for accuracy.
Because of the discrepancies with the registration the trooper decided to compare the VIN from the dashboard and registration with the VIN on the "Nader Label," which is a sticker that is glued to the doorjamb on the driver's side of an automobile. The trooper testified that this label appears on "99 percent" of vehicles and that it "only takes a couple seconds" to compare the VINs. Without requesting permission, the trooper opened the driver's side door of the van and found that the van did not have a Nader Label.
In the absence of a Nader Label, the trooper wanted to compare another VIN on the van to the VIN from the dashboard and registration card. The trooper was aware that automobile manufacturers often place the VIN in another, inconspicuous location. The trooper did not know the location of the hidden VIN. He believed that a state patrol auto theft specialist in Grand Junction would be able to tell him where the hidden VIN could be found. The trooper did not want to search for the hidden VIN on the shoulder of the interstate because of his concern for his safety and for the safety of the occupants of the van. He decided to conduct further investigation at a better location ten miles west, the state patrol headquarters in Eagle.
The trooper approached Rodriguez, explained the discrepancies concerning the plate numbers and the manufacture date of the van, and requested that Rodriguez follow him to the state patrol office in Eagle, which was ten miles west from where the van was stopped and in the opposite direction from which Rodriguez was traveling. Because Rodriguez was not fluent in English he had difficulty understanding this request. Munoz, who was sitting in the passenger seat, began to interpret. Rodriguez, through Munoz as interpreter, replied that he did not want to follow the trooper to Eagle. Rodriguez said they were too tired and wanted to continue on their way eastward. The trooper told Rodriguez that he would disable and impound the van unless Rodriguez complied with his request to return to Eagle. Rodriguez then agreed to follow the trooper. At this point Rodriguez had been detained for forty-two minutes. The trooper, followed by Rodriguez, left the roadside location at 8:07 a.m. and arrived in Eagle approximately fourteen minutes later, at 8:21 a.m. During this drive, the trooper contacted a second trooper and asked for assistance in Eagle.
At 8:25 a.m. at the patrol headquarters in Eagle, the second trooper assembled a video camera and began videotaping the van and the area around the van. The time and the factual summaries discussed below are based in part upon this video which was introduced as evidence during the hearing on Rodriguez's motion to suppress.
Because it was a cold morning, the first trooper told Rodriguez's wife and their children to go to a nearby diner to get warm, but he required Rodriguez and Munoz to remain with the vehicle. While the first trooper went inside the headquarters to telephone the auto theft specialist regarding the location of the hidden VIN, the second trooper remained outside with the van to ensure that Rodriguez and Munoz did not leave. Munoz attempted to explain the discrepancies on the registration card to the second trooper by showing him the notice from the Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles which informed Rodriguez, among other things, that "the license plate number on your current identification card is incorrect." In conversation with Rodriguez and Munoz the second trooper read this notice aloud at 8:32 a.m. but failed to acknowledge that this document explained the one digit difference between the van's plates and the registration card. Instead, the second trooper changed the subject of the conversation by asking both Munoz and Rodriguez their respective countries of birth. When Rodriguez answered that he was born in Puerto Rico, the trooper initially did not recognize that this entitled Rodriguez to United States citizenship. 3
The first trooper emerged from the headquarters and opened the hood of the van. He quickly located a VIN under the hood which matched the VIN located on the dashboard and the one written on the vehicle...
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Summaries of Published Opinions
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