People v. Saunders

• Decision Date: 29 June 2006
• Docket Number: No. S122744.,S122744.
• Citation: 136 P.3d 859,45 Cal.Rptr.3d 66,38 Cal.4th 1129
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Devance SAUNDERS, Defendant and Appellant.

45 Cal.Rptr.3d 66

38 Cal.4th 1129

136 P.3d 859

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Devance SAUNDERS, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S122744.

Supreme Court of California.

June 29, 2006.

George O. Benton, Santa Rosa, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.

Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gerald A. Engler, Assistant Attorney General, Martin S. Kaye and Ronald E. Niver, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

BAXTER, J.

[136 P.3d 1131]

May a peace officer order a traffic stop to investigate possible Vehicle Code violations when the vehicle's front license plate is missing and the registration tabs on the rear license plate have expired but the vehicle's rear window displays what appears to be a current temporary operating permit? We conclude that such an investigative stop does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, at least when the officer has no other ready means of verifying the vehicle's compliance with the law. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal.

BACKGROUND

Defendant Devance Saunders appeals the denial of his motion to suppress evidence (Pen.Code, § 1538.5, subd. (i)) after having pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed weapon (id., § 12025, subd. (a)(2)), carrying a loaded firearm (id., § 12031, subd. (a)(2)), and being a felon in possession of a firearm (id., § 12021, subd. (a)) and ammunition (id., § 12316, subd. (b)). The following uncontradicted facts are taken largely from the Court of Appeal opinion in this case.

On March 31, 2002, San Jose Police Officers Mark Womack, Brian Simuro, and Javier Acosta were in an unmarked car near Club Rodeo on Coleman Avenue in San Jose. They were patrolling a gathering of motorcycle clubs engaged in an annual ritual called a "blessing." The blessing included members of the Hell's Angels, the Mongols, and several other clubs, including the Soul Brothers, who were associated with the Hell's Angels. The officers had knowledge of ongoing tensions between the Hell's Angels and the Mongols and of the clubs' involvement in violence and weapons possession on previous occasions. At the previous year's blessing, members of the Hell's Angels were arrested for possession of automatic weapons and ammunition. Additionally, Officer Womack had earlier that day participated in a traffic stop of a Hell's Angels vehicle and found weapons and body armor inside the vehicle.

[136 P.3d 1132]

Around 10:30 a.m., the officers saw a Chevy pickup truck following directly behind 15 to 20 Soul Brothers members riding their motorcycles on Coleman Avenue. The officers were aware that the vehicle preceding or following a group of motorcycle club members is often the "load" or "tail" car, which carries other members, wives or girlfriends of the members, weapons, and drugs. After Officer Womack noted that the pickup had expired registration tabs and no front license plate, the officers stopped the vehicle. Both the driver, Roosevelt Ingram, and defendant, the passenger, wore leather jackets with "Soul Brothers" patches. When Officer Simuro went to the driver's side of the truck, Ingram asked why he had been stopped. The officer explained it was because of the missing front license plate and asked Ingram for his driver's license and registration. After Ingram complied, Officer Womack, who was on the passenger side, asked defendant "if he had any I.D. with him." Officer Womack could not recall whether he saw a temporary operating permit taped to the pickup's rear window. Officer Acosta collected the identification cards and radioed in a records check. Four or five minutes later, the officers learned that Ingram's license was suspended.

When the driver has a suspended license, it is San Jose Police Department policy to impound the vehicle. Consequently, the officers asked both men to get out of the truck. As defendant stepped outside, Officer Womack noticed that defendant was shaking and trembling and appeared to be very nervous. His large and bulky jacket covered his waistband, where weapons are often concealed. Based on these facts and the possibility that this was a "tail" car containing weapons—like the Hell's Angels vehicle containing weapons and body armor he had seen earlier that morning—Officer Womack decided to patsearch defendant. As he stepped behind defendant to begin the patsearch, he asked defendant "if he had anything illegal on him." Defendant replied, "Yes, I have a gun in my pocket"—and, indeed, there was a loaded .25-caliber semiautomatic weapon in the inner left pocket of defendant's jacket. An inventory search of the pickup uncovered .25-caliber bullets and a speed loader containing .357-caliber bullets in a plastic baggie inside a work glove on the passenger-side floorboard.

Ingram testified at the suppression hearing that he had purchased the pickup from a wrecking yard four or five months prior to the stop. He had applied to register the vehicle in his wife's name and to get new license plates, but he "hadn't finished the smog and some few other things [he] had to do to the truck before [he] got the new license." The truck was also "missing the bumpers." The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) had issued Ingram a temporary operating permit sticker, which he placed in the upper right corner of the rear window. The sticker bore a large number "3," which corresponded to the month of March, and allowed him to operate the vehicle through March 31, 2002.

[136 P.3d 1133]

Connie Gonzalez, a clerk at the DMV who handles licenses and registrations, testified that a temporary operating permit is issued to a vehicle to enable the owner to legally use the vehicle on the public roads while the application for registration is being completed. The permit, which is always red, displays a large, bold face number in white, indicating that the vehicle may be lawfully operated until the last day of the corresponding month. Other information on the permit specifies, among other things, the make of the vehicle, the license plate number, the vehicle identification number (VIN), and the applicable year. An officer would not be able to determine whether the sticker is for the current year, or whether it is associated with the particular vehicle, without stopping the vehicle and verifying the information on the sticker.

Defendant's motion to suppress argued that the initial traffic stop was unlawful; that if the seizure of his person began only when Officer Womack took possession of his driver's license, it too was unlawful; that the traffic stop, even if lawful, was unreasonably prolonged; and that the patsearch was unlawful. The trial court denied the motion, finding that the officer was justified in making a traffic stop to investigate the apparent violation of Vehicle Code section 5200, which requires a vehicle to have two license plates; that the officer had a right to ask the driver for identification; and that the officer had ample concern for his safety to justify the patsearch of defendant.

Following the denial of the motion to suppress, defendant pleaded guilty as charged and admitted a prior strike conviction. At sentencing, the trial court exercised its discretion under Penal Code section 1385 to dismiss the strike and placed defendant on probation for three years, with the condition that defendant serve six months in jail and not associate with motorcycle gangs.

The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment. It found that the Fourth Amendment rights of defendant, as a passenger, were not infringed by the traffic stop; that the traffic stop was in any event justified by the missing front license plate and the expired registration tab; that the traffic stop was not unlawfully prolonged; and that the officer's concern that defendant might be concealing a weapon justified the patsearch. We granted review, limited to (1) whether defendant, as a passenger in a vehicle subjected to a traffic stop, was seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment; and (2) whether reasonable suspicion of Vehicle Code violations relating to the missing front license plate and the expired registration tab could exist where the pickup also displayed a current temporary operating permit.

DISCUSSION

In ruling on a motion to suppress, the trial court must find the historical facts, select the rule of law, and apply it to the facts in order to determine [136 P.3d 1134]

whether the law as applied has been violated. We review the court's resolution of the factual inquiry under the deferential substantial-evidence standard. The ruling on whether the applicable law applies to the facts is a mixed question of law and fact that is subject to independent review. (People v. Brendlin (2006) ___ Cal.4th ___, ___, 45 Cal.Rptr.3d 50, 53-54, 136 P.3d 845, 862 (Brendlin).) In this case, the facts are largely undisputed.

During a patsearch following a traffic stop of a pickup in which defendant was a passenger, the police discovered a loaded semiautomatic firearm in defendant's jacket pocket. The police also found ammunition on the passenger-side floorboard of the truck. Defendant seeks suppression of the evidence seized from his person and the vehicle in which he was riding, asserting that the traffic stop was not supported by reasonable suspicion. The Attorney General responds that we need not consider whether the traffic stop was justified because defendant, as a passenger in the vehicle, was not seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when the driver submitted to the show of police authority.

The Attorney General correctly describes defendant's status at the inception of the traffic stop. As explained in Brendlin, supra, ___ Cal.4th at p. ___, 45 Cal. Rptr.3d at p. 51, 136 P.3d at p. 846, a mere passenger in a vehicle is not seized when a police officer initiates a traffic stop absent additional circumstances that would indicate to a reasonable person that he or she was the subject of...