State v. Irwin

• Decision Date: 06 April 2006
• Docket Number: No. 30866.,No. 31200.,30866.,31200.
• Citation: 137 P.3d 1024,143 Idaho 102
• Court: Idaho Court of Appeals
• Parties: STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Leanna Z. IRWIN (a.k.a. Leanna Tinno), Defendant-Respondent. In the Matter of the License Suspension of Leanna Tinno. Leanna Tinno, Petitioner-Respondent, v. State of Idaho, Respondent-Appellant.

Page 1024

137 P.3d 1024

143 Idaho 102

STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Leanna Z. IRWIN (a.k.a. Leanna Tinno), Defendant-Respondent.

In the Matter of the License Suspension of Leanna Tinno.

Leanna Tinno, Petitioner-Respondent, v. State of Idaho, Respondent-Appellant.

No. 30866.

No. 31200.

Court of Appeals of Idaho.

April 6, 2006.

Review Denied June 21, 2006.

Hon. Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General; Carol L. Chaffee, Deputy Attorney General, Boise, for appellant. Carol L. Chaffee argued.

Echohawk Law Offices, Pocatello, for respondent. Paul C. Echohawk argued.

LANSING, Judge.

The State appeals from decisions in two cases arising from a traffic stop and the subsequent arrest of Leanna Irwin, a.k.a. Leanna Tinno, for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). In the criminal case, the State appeals a district court's order suppressing evidence. In the civil case, the State appeals a district court's intermediate appellate decision reversing the magistrate court's suspension of Irwin's driver's license for refusal to submit to a breath test for alcohol concentration. We reverse the district court's suppression order in the criminal case and affirm the magistrate's license suspension order in the civil case.

I. BACKGROUND

While patrolling one night after dark, two police officers saw an automobile traveling in the opposite direction with its headlights off and its passenger door open. The officers began pursuit and had just activated their patrol car's overhead lights when the other vehicle slowed and the passenger exited the still-moving vehicle in the middle of the roadway. The officers stopped to talk to the passenger, who said that he had disembarked because he had been in an argument with his girlfriend, the driver. After determining that the passenger was unhurt, the officers again pursued the car, which had continued down the road and then turned onto a side street. The officers found the car lawfully parked on the shoulder. Its lights and engine were off, and the windows and doors were closed.

Initially, the officers did not see anyone in the area, but upon looking into the vehicle they saw Irwin curled up on the floor behind the front seats. One of the officers later testified that he could not see Irwin's hands. He testified that, given the traffic violations he had witnessed, together with the appearance that Irwin was trying to hide from the officers, he wanted to see her hands in order to ensure officer safety. He also wanted to prevent Irwin from moving the vehicle in an effort to elude or injure the officers, and was concerned that she might have been injured in the fight with her boyfriend. Therefore, he opened the passenger side door of the two-door vehicle and ordered Irwin to come out. After several commands, Irwin complied, and an officer helped her out of the vehicle. Upon being questioned, Irwin indicated that she was not hurt and admitted she had been driving.

The officers became suspicious that Irwin had been driving under the influence and asked her to take field sobriety tests. She failed several of these and refused to submit to a breath test. She was then arrested for DUI, Idaho Code § 18-8004, and the officers took her driver's license pursuant to I.C. § 18-8002 for refusing to submit to a breath test.

This incident generated two cases: a felony DUI case and a civil proceeding on the suspension of Irwin's license for refusal of the breath test. In the DUI case, Irwin moved to suppress all evidence obtained after the officer opened the door of the vehicle. The district court granted this motion, holding that the officer's opening of the door constituted an illegal search. Irwin also initiated a license suspension hearing under I.C. § 18-8002(4)(b). At the hearing she asserted that her license ought not be suspended because the police had violated her civil rights when they opened her vehicle door. The magistrate disagreed and therefore ordered the suspension of Irwin's driver's license. Irwin appealed this decision to the district court, which reversed. The State now appeals in both cases, arguing that the officer's action was constitutional.

II. ANALYSIS

A. Suppression of Evidence in the Felony Case

A traffic stop is a seizure of the vehicle occupants and is therefore subject to the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures, Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979); State v. Atkinson, 128 Idaho 559, 561, 916 P.2d 1284, 1286 (Ct.App. 1996). The presumptive rule is that searches and seizures conducted without a warrant are unreasonable, and thus unlawful, unless an exception to the warrant requirement is applicable. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967); State v. Zapp, 108 Idaho 723, 726, 701 P.2d 671, 674 (Ct.App.1985). In determining whether a search was consistent with constitutional standards, we are guided by the tenet that the fundamental right protected by the Fourth Amendment is the individual's reasonable expectation of privacy. Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 177, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984); Katz, 389 U.S. at 361, 88 S.Ct. 507; State v. Foldesi, 131 Idaho 778, 780, 963 P.2d 1215, 1217 (Ct.App. 1998). Because of the mobility and highly-regulated nature of automobiles, persons traveling in them have a lesser expectation of privacy than they have in their homes. California v. Carney, 471 U.S. 386, 391, 105 S.Ct. 2066, 85 L.Ed.2d 406 (1985).

Routine traffic stops for investigation of possible traffic violations or other crimes are governed by the well-known standards for investigative detentions set forth in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). See Prouse, 440 U.S. at 653-54, 99 S.Ct. 1391. Thus, an officer may stop a vehicle and question its occupants if the officer has reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, including suspicion that the vehicle is being operated contrary to traffic laws. Id. at 661, 99 S.Ct. 1391; State v. Patterson, 140 Idaho 612, 614, 97 P.3d 479, 481 (Ct.App. 2004).

The United States Supreme Court has further held that once an officer has lawfully stopped a motor vehicle for a traffic violation, ordering the driver to get out of the vehicle does not offend the Fourth Amendment. Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 111 n. 6, 98 S.Ct. 330, 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977). In Mimms, an officer stopped a driver for an expired license plate. Although the officer could not point to objective facts suggesting that the occupants posed a threat to his safety, the officer instructed the driver to step out of the vehicle. When the driver complied, the officer noticed a large bulge under the driver's clothing. A subsequent search revealed that the driver was carrying an unlawfully concealed weapon. The driver sought suppression of that evidence on the basis that the officer's order to exit the vehicle was an illegal seizure. The United States Supreme Court disagreed. It first noted that the heart of Fourth Amendment analysis "is always `the reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of a citizen's personal security,'" Id. at 109, 98 S.Ct. 330 (quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 19, 88 S.Ct. 1868), and that such reasonableness depends "on a balance between the public interest and the individual's right to personal security free from arbitrary interference by law officers." Id. (quoting United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 878, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975)). The Court therefore weighed the driver's personal liberty interest against the serious risk faced by police officers when they approach a person seated in an automobile, even in routine traffic stops. The Court determined that after a lawful traffic stop, the additional intrusion of ordering a driver out of a vehicle

can only be described as de minimis. The driver is being asked to expose to view very little more of his person than is already exposed. The police have already lawfully decided that the driver shall be briefly detained; the only question is whether he shall spend that period sitting in the driver's seat of his car or standing alongside it. Not only is the insistence of the police on the latter choice not a "serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person," but it hardly rises to the level of a "`petty indignity.'" Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. at 17. What is at most a mere inconvenience cannot prevail when balanced against legitimate concerns for the officer's safety.

Mimms, 434 U.S. at 111, 98 S.Ct. 330.

The Court reiterated this position in Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 117 S.Ct. 882, 137 L.Ed.2d 41 (1997), where it held that an officer's authority to order a driver out of a lawfully stopped vehicle extends to passengers as well. Based on Mimms and Wilson, we have expressed the general rule that as a matter of course in a valid traffic stop, a police officer may order the occupants of a vehicle to exit or to remain inside. See State v. Butcher, 137 Idaho 125, 131, 44 P.3d 1180, 1186 (Ct.App.2002); State v. Parkinson, 135 Idaho 357, 363, 17 P.3d 301, 307 (Ct.App. 2000).

In this case, there is no question that the officers possessed reasonable suspicion to detain Irwin for traffic violations they had witnessed.¹ Given this, the officers also were entitled to order her out of her vehicle. The question presented is whether by opening the door before giving this command the officers violated the Fourth Amendment. Irwin asserts that it constituted an impermissible search for the officer to open a door without first orally ordering her out of the vehicle and giving her the opportunity to come out on her own volition.

Irwin's argument presents an issue of first impression in Idaho, but courts from other jurisdictions have responded to similar or related arguments and, so far as we have found, none has held that a Fourth Amendment violation occurred because an officer opened a vehicle door...