State v. Williams
| Decision Date | 29 October 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. A03A1664.,A03A1664. |
| Citation | 264 Ga. App. 199,590 S.E.2d 151 |
| Parties | The STATE v. WILLIAMS. |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Penny A. Penn, Dist. Atty., Sandra A. Partridge, James A. Dunn, Asst. Dist. Attys., for appellant.
Banks, Stubbs Neville & Cunat, Rafe Banks III, for appellee.
The State appeals from the trial court's order granting Thomas Shane Williams's motion to suppress evidence of methamphetamine found by police during a traffic stop and search of a vehicle in which he was a passenger. For the following reasons, we reverse.
Based on evidence of methamphetamine found in the search, Williams and the driver of the vehicle, Robert A. St. John, were jointly charged with possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute. Williams moved to suppress the methamphetamine on the basis that the consent to search the vehicle given by St. John was the product of: (1) an illegal stop, or (2) an illegally expanded detention during a valid stop. After a hearing, the trial court granted Williams's motion finding that the police officer's initial stop of the vehicle was valid, but that the consent to search the vehicle was invalid because it was the product of an unlawful detention during an improper expansion of the scope and duration of the stop.
There being no dispute over the facts relevant to the trial court's ruling, the court's application of the law to the undisputed facts is subject to de novo review. Vansant v. State, 264 Ga. 319, 320, 443 S.E.2d 474 (1994). Testimony produced at the hearing on the motion to suppress showed the following facts. In the early morning hours after midnight, Officer Spriggs of the Forsyth County Sheriff's Department received a call from fellow officer Hunter, who was patrolling in the same area. Hunter told Spriggs that he had just investigated a truck parked on the side of Georgia 400 occupied by two men who had been drinking and who stated they were not going to move the truck. Officer Hunter testified at the hearing that both men in the truck admitted to him they had been drinking, and that he saw the passenger drop an open container of beer. Officer Hunter concluded the driver, St. John, "didn't look that bad," so he advised him to stay there until he thought he could drive. At that point, Officer Hunter said he was unsure whether or not the driver was under the influence of alcohol, but he decided there were no offenses as long as the truck remained parked. However, Officer Hunter radioed Officer Spriggs with the information about his encounter with the truck, and told Spriggs to be on the lookout if he saw the truck on the road. A short time later, Officer Spriggs saw a similar truck being driven on Georgia 400 and stopped it for a traffic violation because the tag was improperly displayed in the rear window and was partially obscured. After Officer Spriggs stopped the truck, Officer Hunter arrived and confirmed it was the same truck.
Officer Spriggs approached the truck in which St. John was the driver and Williams was the sole passenger and asked both men for identification, and both men produced a driver's license. The officer took the licenses to his patrol car to run a computer check on the status of St. John's driver's license and to check for the existence of outstanding warrants on both men. Although no outstanding warrant was found on Williams, the computer showed an outstanding Forsyth County warrant on St. John. The officer immediately radioed his dispatch center to confirm the existence of the warrant and to have it pulled from the files, but dispatch center personnel informed the officer they were unable to locate the warrant. Because of the delay caused by this process, about 17 minutes passed before Officer Spriggs returned to the truck. When the officer returned to the truck, he asked St. John to step out of the vehicle because he had been "moving around kind of frantically inside the car," for reasons the officer could not determine, and the officer wanted to "put distance between him and the passenger." The officer told St. John about the Forsyth County warrant and informed him that he was not going to arrest him on the warrant because he could not confirm whether or not it was valid. He recommended to St. John that he later contact the sheriff's department to clear up the matter. In response, St. John volunteered to the officer that he might also have an outstanding warrant on him in Stephens County. The officer then radioed the dispatch center to check on the possible existence of an outstanding Stephens County warrant on St. John.
While Officer Spriggs was waiting for a response on the possible Stephens County warrant, he informed St. John that he had stopped him for an improperly displayed tag. St. John launched into an explanation in which he told Officer Spriggs how he had previously been stopped for not displaying the tag, and related how the officer at the prior stop had allowed him to produce the tag and temporarily fix it in the rear window without issuing him a ticket. At that point, based on information Officer Spriggs had obtained from Officer Hunter about the prior encounter with the truck, Spriggs also asked St. John if he had been drinking and if there were any open containers of alcohol in the truck. St. John responded that Officer Hunter may have seen Williams drop a bottle of beer in the truck, and he told Officer Spriggs there was a bottle of "Grand Marnier" alcoholic beverage in the truck. Based on this admission and the officer's prior knowledge that both occupants of the vehicle had been drinking, Officer Spriggs requested that St. John take an alco-sensor test (which he passed) and asked for and obtained St. John's consent to search the truck for intoxicants. The ensuing search, which took place about 26 minutes after the vehicle was stopped, produced a bag of methamphetamine.
Under the Fourth Amendment, searches and seizures by government agents must be reasonable. Because a routine traffic stop, even one based on probable cause of a traffic code violation, is a type of seizure more akin to an investigative stop under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), than a formal arrest, we apply the principles of Terry when analyzing the Fourth Amendment requirement that the scope and duration of the investigation conducted during a valid stop must be reasonable under the circumstances. Vansant, 264 Ga. at 320,443 S.E.2d 474. Moreover, when police make a traffic stop, as a practical matter, not only the driver of the stopped vehicle but also any passengers are detained during the stop and are considered "seized" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 809-810, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996); United States v. Roberson, 6 F.3d 1088, 1091 (5th Cir.1993). Accordingly, as a passenger in the stopped vehicle, Williams was entitled to the benefit of Fourth Amendment reasonableness requirements applicable to the temporary seizure of his person.1
It is undisputed that Officer Spriggs made a valid traffic stop based on his observation that the vehicle had an improperly displayed tag in violation of OCGA § 40-2-41. Under Terry, an officer's actions taken during a valid traffic stop must be reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the stop in the first place, and limited in duration to the time reasonably necessary to accomplish the purpose of the stop. Terry, 392 U.S. at 18-20, 88 S.Ct. 1868; State v. Gibbons, 248 Ga.App. 859, 547 S.E.2d 679 (2001); Bell v. State, 248 Ga.App. 254, 256-257, 546 S.E.2d 34 (2001); Almond v. State, 242 Ga.App. 650, 652, 530 S.E.2d 750 (2000). Of course, during a valid traffic stop, an officer may ask questions not reasonably related to the circumstances which justified the stop where such questions are supported by reasonable suspicion of other criminal activity. Bell, 248 Ga.App. at 257, 546 S.E.2d 34. In the present case, the trial court suppressed evidence of methamphetamine found in the consent search on the basis that the license check and outstanding warrant checks run by the officer on St. John and Williams unreasonably expanded the scope and duration of the traffic stop in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and that St. John's consent was invalid as the product of this violation.
To the contrary, we find that neither the scope nor the duration of the stop was unreasonably expanded by the officer's computer checks to determine the status of St. John's driver's license and to determine whether St. John or Williams had outstanding warrants against them. We have recognized that it does not unreasonably expand the scope or duration of a valid traffic stop for an officer to prolong the stop to immediately investigate and determine if the driver is entitled to continue to operate the vehicle by checking the status of the driver's license, insurance, and vehicle registration. Sutton v. State, 223 Ga.App. 721, 723, 478 S.E.2d 910 (1996); Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 657-659, 663, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979). We find it was also reasonable for the officer to request identification from Williams, the passenger, and to run a computer check on St. John and Williams for outstanding warrants.
Checking for outstanding warrants or criminal histories on the occupants of a vehicle at a valid traffic stop is justified by concern for officer safety during the stop. Police officers put their lives at risk when they approach occupied vehicles at routine traffic stops, and every year officers are the victims of shootings and other assaults by motorists at these stops. Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 413, 117 S.Ct. 882, 137 L.Ed.2d 41 (1997); United States v. Holt, 264 F.3d 1215, 1221-1223 (10th Cir.2001); United States v. Purcell, 236 F.3d 1274, 1278 (11th Cir.2001). The...
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