Title: P. v. McKay

State: california

Issuer: California Supreme Court

Document:

1
Filed 3/4/02
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA
THE PEOPLE,
)
)
Plaintiff and Respondent,
)
)
S091421
v.
)
)
Ct.App. 2/4 B137511
CONRAD RICHARD McKAY,
)
)
Los Angeles County
Defendant and Appellant.
)
Super. Ct. No. YA040916
__________________________________ )
California has, in various statutes, limited the circumstances in which a
peace officer may effect a custodial arrest for minor offenses.  (E.g., Pen. Code,
§§ 818, 827.1, 853.5, 853.6; Pub. Resources Code, § 5782.26; Veh. Code,
§§ 40302, 40302.5, 40303, 40303.5, 40304, 40305, 40305.5.)  California also has,
by the passage of Proposition 8 in 1982, limited the circumstances in which a trial
court may exclude relevant evidence as a sanction for the violation of these state
statutes.  (Cal. Const., art. I, § 28, subd. (d).)  As we have previously observed,
state statutes limiting police discretion are not inconsistent with the state
constitutional provision limiting the exclusion of evidence as a sanction for their
violation.  The “substantive scope” of state statutes governing the ability of peace
officers to effect a custodial arrest for minor offenses “remains unaffected by
Proposition 8.”  (In re Lance W. (1985) 37 Cal.3d 873, 886.)  “What Proposition 8
does is to eliminate a judicially created remedy for violations of the search and
seizure provisions of the federal or state Constitutions, through the exclusion of
2
evidence so obtained, except to the extent that exclusion remains federally
compelled.”  (Id. at pp. 886-887.)
In this case, the only remedy defendant Conrad Richard McKay seeks is the
exclusion of a baggie of methamphetamine that was found in his sock during a
search incident to his arrest for the infraction of riding his bicycle in the wrong
direction on a residential street.  Defendant argues that a custodial arrest for a fine-
only offense, such as a traffic infraction, violates the Fourth Amendment
prohibition on unreasonable seizures.  He also argues, in the event the Fourth
Amendment does not bar such arrests categorically, that his custodial arrest
nonetheless violated the federal Constitution by the deputy’s failure to comply
with Vehicle Code section 40302, subdivision (a) (section 40302(a)), the state
statute that governs the arrest procedure for this infraction.
We conclude, in accordance with United States Supreme Court precedent,
that custodial arrests for fine-only offenses do not violate the Fourth Amendment
and that compliance with state arrest procedures is not a component of the federal
constitutional inquiry.  We also conclude, in the alternative, that the arrest here
complied with section 40302(a).  Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the
Court of Appeal.
I
BACKGROUND
Around 6:00 p.m. on June 19, 1999, Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff
Valento observed defendant riding a bicycle in the wrong direction on a residential
street.  Deputy Valento initiated a traffic stop, intending to issue defendant a
citation for violating Vehicle Code section 21650.1.1  The deputy asked defendant
                                                
1 
Unless otherwise indicated, all further statutory references are to the
Vehicle Code.
3
for identification.  Defendant said he did not have any identification with him and
instead told the deputy his name and date of birth.  Deputy Valento took defendant
into custody, pursuant to section 40302(a), based on his failure “to present his
driver’s license or other satisfactory evidence of his identity for examination.”
During a search incident to that arrest, Deputy Valento found, in defendant’s left
sock, a baggie containing an off-white substance he believed to be
methamphetamine.
After placing defendant in the back of the patrol car, Deputy Valento
entered the name and date of birth defendant had provided into the patrol car’s
computer and received an address that matched the address defendant had given
him and a general description that was consistent with defendant’s appearance.
Defendant was charged with possession of methamphetamine (Health &
Saf. Code, § 11377, subd. (a)) and alleged to have suffered a prior strike
conviction.  He moved to suppress the evidence, pointing out that he had given his
name and date of birth to Deputy Valento, who was subsequently able to “check it
out through the computer.”  After the trial court denied the motion to suppress,
relying on People v. Monroe (1993) 12 Cal.App.4th 1174 (Monroe), defendant
pleaded guilty, admitted the prior, and was sentenced to the doubled term of 32
months.  A divided panel of the Court of Appeal, once again relying on Monroe,
affirmed his conviction.
II
Defendant was arrested for violating section 21650.1, which requires a
bicycle to be operated “in the same direction as vehicles are required to be driven
upon the roadway.”  This infraction is punishable by a fine not to exceed $100.
(§§ 40000.1, 42001, subd. (a)(1).)  There is no dispute that Deputy Valento was
justified in stopping defendant based on this violation.  Rather, defendant argues
that a custodial arrest for such a minor offense violated the Fourth Amendment.  If
4
such arrests are valid, he then argues that once he provided his name and date of
birth, the deputy lacked authority to effect a custodial arrest under section
40302(a) and that this asserted violation of state law thereby violated the federal
Constitution.
A
Appellant’s first contention, he now concedes, is foreclosed by Atwater v.
City of Lago Vista (2001) 532 U.S. 318 (Atwater), which upheld a custodial arrest
for a violation of Texas’s seatbelt law, an offense punishable by a fine of not less
than $25 nor more than $50.  (Id. at p. 323.)  Under Atwater, all that is needed to
justify a custodial arrest is a showing of probable cause.  “If an officer has
probable cause to believe that an individual has committed even a very minor
criminal offense in his presence, he may, without violating the Fourth
Amendment, arrest the offender.”  (Id. at p. 354.)  We must therefore conclude
that there is nothing inherently unconstitutional about effecting a custodial arrest
for a fine-only offense.  (United States v. McFadden (2d Cir. 2001) 238 F.3d 198,
204 [upholding search incident to arrest for riding a bicycle on the sidewalk].)
B
Although Atwater permits the police to effect custodial arrests for even the
most minor of offenses, many states—including California—have sought to limit
this broad discretion by statute, local ordinance, or departmental regulation.
Defendant relies in particular on section 40302(a), which requires the officer to
effect a custodial arrest for nonfelony Vehicle Code offenses when the offender
fails to present a driver’s license “or other satisfactory evidence of . . . identity for
examination.”  Defendant claims that his oral statements to the deputy constituted
“satisfactory evidence of . . . identity” under section 40302(a), rendering his arrest
unauthorized under California law.  The Attorney General, on the other hand,
5
contends that the deputy complied with California law in that section 40302(a)
requires an officer to accept only a driver’s license or its functional equivalent.
1
Before we resolve the dispute over the construction of section 40302(a),
though, we must first determine whether compliance with state arrest procedures
affects the validity of an arrest under the federal Constitution.  Neither the
majority nor the dissent below considered this threshold issue, nor did the majority
and dissent in Monroe.  The issue, however, cannot be ignored.  With the passage
of Proposition 8, we are not free to exclude evidence merely because it was
obtained in violation of some state statute or state constitutional provision.  “ ‘Our
state Constitution . . . forbids the courts to order the exclusion of evidence at trial
as a remedy for an unreasonable search and seizure unless that remedy is required
by the federal Constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court.’ ”
(People v. Camacho (2000) 23 Cal.4th 824, 830, quoting In re Tyrell J. (1994) 8
Cal.4th 68, 76.)2
Thus, in order to prevail, defendant must show as an initial matter that a
Los Angeles County deputy sheriff’s compliance with state procedure is pivotal to
the validity of an arrest under the federal Constitution.  We requested
supplemental briefing to determine whether defendant’s arrest, notwithstanding its
constitutionality under Atwater, became unconstitutional because it assertedly was
not authorized by section 40302(a).3
                                                
2 Although Justice Brown apparently views it as “[u]nfortunate[],” we are
nonetheless bound to follow “the Supreme Court’s modern Fourth Amendment
jurisprudence.”  (Conc. & dis. opn., post, at p. 5.)
3 Justice Werdegar contends, mistakenly, that settled principles of judicial restraint
direct us to refrain from resolving this issue.  (See conc. opn., post, at pp. 2-3.)
But the cases invoking the principle of judicial restraint to avoid deciding a
(footnote continued on next page)
6
                                                                                                                                                
(footnote continued from previous page)
constitutional issue involve constitutional issues that are parallel to the statutory
issues in the case. Thus, in Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Prot. Assn. (1988)
485 U.S. 439, where the Native American respondents argued that the proposed
governmental action would violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First
Amendment and certain federal statutes, the courts were directed “to determine,
before addressing the constitutional issue, whether a decision on that question
could have entitled respondents to relief beyond that to which they were entitled
on their statutory claims.  If no additional relief would have been warranted, a
constitutional decision would have been unnecessary and therefore inappropriate.”
(Id. at p. 446; accord, Santa Clara County Local Transportation Authority v.
Guardino (1995) 11 Cal.4th 220, 228, 230-231 [where tax was challenged as
violative of state law and the state constitution, it was proper to begin with the
statutory challenge]; see also Pearl v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (2001) 26
Cal.4th 189, 196, fn. 3 [having determined the statute was “inapplicable,” it was
unnecessary to determine whether the statute unconstitutionally interfered with
vested pension rights]; Thompson v. Department of Corrections (2001) 25 Cal.4th
117, 128 [addressing the statutory grounds first, when independent statutory and
constitutional grounds are asserted]; College Hospital, Inc. v. Superior Court
(1994) 8 Cal.4th 704, 720-721 [same].)  By contrast, the constitutional issue here,
rather than being parallel to the statutory issue, is a predicate for it.
The appropriate jurisprudential approach, in our view, can be derived from
the qualified immunity case law, which deems the existence of the asserted
constitutional right a predicate to the determination whether the right allegedly
implicated was clearly established at the time the officer acted.  (Wilson v. Layne
(1999) 526 U.S. 603, 609.)  The rationale for this approach is a practical one:  “if
the policy of avoidance were always followed in favor of ruling on qualified
immunity whenever there was no clearly settled rule of primary conduct, standards
of official conduct would tend to remain uncertain, to the detriment both of
officials and individuals.  An immunity determination, with nothing more,
provides no clear standard, constitutional or nonconstitutional.”  (County of
Sacramento v. Lewis (1998) 523 U.S. 833, 841, fn. 5.)  Similar practical concerns
are present here.  After Atwater, it is apparent that the federal Constitution
imposes few limits on police discretion to arrest for the most minor of offenses.
The task of cabining officer discretion in this state must therefore be shouldered
by statutes enacted by the Legislature, local government ordinances, and police
department regulations and guidelines.  If the responsible decisionmakers are
under the misapprehension that these efforts to guide officer discretion are
freighted with the harsh sanction of excluding relevant evidence for their violation,
(footnote continued on next page)
7
This is a rickety foundation on which to base a federal constitutional
argument.  It is a well-settled part of “ ‘Our Federalism’ ” that “the National
Government will fare best if the States and their institutions are left free to
perform their separate functions in their separate ways.”  (Younger v. Harris
(1971) 401 U.S. 37, 44.)  “[A]nxious though it may be to vindicate and protect
federal rights and federal interests,” the federal government “always endeavors to
do so in ways that will not unduly interfere with the legitimate activities of the
States.”  (Ibid.)  For this reason, the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly
resisted efforts to invoke the federal Constitution to force state officials to comply
with state law.  (See Woolhandler, The Common Law Origins of Constitutionally
Compelled Remedies (1997) 107 Yale L.J. 77, 161 [“Such a decision seems
inevitable if there is any continuing wish to maintain a federal system”].)  Rather,
where state officials have been derelict under state law, the high court has
reminded us that the illegality of such conduct “under the state statute can neither
add to nor subtract from its constitutional validity.  Mere violation of a state
statute does not infringe the federal Constitution.  [Citation.]  And state action,
                                                                                                                                                
(footnote continued from previous page)
few will endeavor to create them.  (See United States v. Caceres (1979) 440 U.S.
741, 755-756 [“we cannot ignore the possibility that a rigid application of an
exclusionary rule to every regulatory violation could have a serious deterrent
impact on the formulation of additional standards to govern prosecutorial and
police procedures. . . .  [T]he result might well be fewer and less protective
regulations”].)
Finally, we find it telling that the United States Supreme Court has not
adopted Justice Werdegar’s understanding of judicial restraint in analogous
situations involving the interplay between state law and the Fourth Amendment
(e.g., California v. Greenwood (1988) 486 U.S. 35, 43 (Greenwood); Sibron v.
New York (1968) 392 U.S. 60-62 & fn. 20 (Sibron)), nor did any of the federal or
state courts that have addressed this precise issue.
8
even though illegal under state law, can be no more and no less constitutional
under the Fourteenth Amendment than if it were sanctioned by the state
legislature.”  (Snowden v. Hughes (1944) 321 U.S. 1, 11.)
To assert (as defendant does) that state law can transform constitutional
police conduct into its opposite would unravel our federal system, since treating a
state law violation as a violation of the Constitution “is to make the federal
government the enforcer of state law.”  (Archie v. City of Racine (7th Cir. 1988)
847 F.2d 1211, 1217 (in bank).)  This, of course, is precisely what the federal
Constitution forbids.  “A federal court’s grant of relief against state officials on the
basis of state law, whether prospective or retroactive, does not vindicate the
supreme authority of federal law.  On the contrary, it is difficult to think of a
greater intrusion on state sovereignty than when a federal court instructs state
officials on how to conform their conduct to state law.”  (Pennhurst State Sch. &
Hosp. v. Halderman (1984) 465 U.S. 89, 106.)  “If the alchemist’s wand can
transmute a violation of state law into a violation of the Constitution, Pennhurst
will be for naught, federal enforcement of state law the order of the day.”  (Archie
v. City of Racine, supra, 847 F.2d at p. 1217.)
It will come as no surprise, then, that the United States Supreme Court has
never ordered a state court to suppress evidence that has been gathered in a
manner consistent with the federal Constitution but in violation of some state law
or local ordinance.4  To the contrary, the high court has repeatedly emphasized
                                                
4 
“[T]he fact of the matter is . . . that the Supreme Court has never taken the
position that an arrest made on probable cause violates the Fourth Amendment
merely because a taking of custody was deemed unnecessary (as a matter of state
law or otherwise).”  (1 LaFave, Search and Seizure:  A Treatise on the Fourth
Amendment (3d ed. 1996) § 1.5(b), p. 141.)
9
that the Fourth Amendment inquiry does not depend on whether the challenged
police conduct was authorized by state law.
In Cooper v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 58 (Cooper), for example, the
defendant complained that the search of his vehicle was not authorized by
California’s forfeiture statute and was thus unconstitutional.  The court found
instead that the state law inquiry and the constitutional inquiry were distinct:  “the
question here is not whether the search was authorized by state law.  The question
is rather whether the search was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”  (Id. at
p. 61; see also Sibron, supra, 392 U.S. at p. 61.)  More recently, the court has
observed that although individual states may construe their own laws as imposing
more stringent constraints on police conduct than does the federal Constitution,
“[w]e have never intimated . . . that whether or not a search is reasonable within
the meaning of the Fourth Amendment depends on the law of the particular State
in which the search occurs.”  (Greenwood, supra, 486 U.S. at p. 43.)  “In
determining whether there has been an unreasonable search and seizure by state
officers, a federal court must make an independent inquiry, whether or not there
has been such an inquiry by a state court, and irrespective of how any such inquiry
may have turned out.  The test is one of federal law, neither enlarged by what one
state court may have countenanced, nor diminished by what another may have
colorably suppressed.”  (Elkins v. United States (1960) 364 U.S. 206, 223-224
(Elkins).)
Our determination of the validity of the search under the federal
Constitution thus does not depend on whether “it was authorized by state law”
(Cooper, supra, 386 U.S. at p. 61) or “the law of the particular State in which the
search occurs” (Greenwood, supra, 486 U.S. at p. 43).  According to Elkins,
supra, 364 U.S. at page 224, the test “is one of federal law”—and, in this case,
10
was disposed of by Atwater.  Therefore, we need not consider whether defendant’s
arrest complied with section 40302(a).
Defendant, however, argues that a different line of Supreme Court authority
makes state procedure relevant to the constitutional calculus.  He begins with
United States v. Di Re (1948) 332 U.S. 581 (Di Re).  Di Re was convicted in
federal court of knowingly possessing counterfeit gasoline coupons, which were
found on his person following his arrest “by a state officer accompanied by federal
officers who had no power of arrest.”  (Id. at p. 591.)  The government sought to
justify the search as incident to the arrest.  The court stated that because “[n]o act
of Congress lays down a general federal rule for arrest without warrant for federal
offenses” (ibid.), the rule would be that “the law of the state where an arrest
without warrant takes place determines its validity.”  (Id. at p. 589.)  The law of
New York, where the arrest occurred, permitted an arrest where “a felony has in
fact been committed” and the officer “has reasonable cause for believing the
person to be arrested to have committed it.”  (Id. at p. 589, fn. 7.)  Finding no
probable cause to effect the arrest, the court affirmed the order suppressing the
evidence seized during the search incident.  (Id. at pp. 593-595.)
Drawing on Di Re’s adoption of state law as a general federal rule of arrest,
defendant submits that Di Re compels us to measure the constitutionality of this
warrantless arrest under California law in general and under section 40302(a) in
particular.  If Di Re had grounded its adoption of state law on the federal
Constitution, defendant’s submission would be sound.  Unfortunately for
defendant, the court did not do so.
A review of Di Re reveals that its adoption of state arrest procedure was a
matter of statutory construction, not constitutional compulsion.  The court derived
its rule for arrests without a warrant from congressional enactments for arrests
with a warrant.  “By one of the earliest acts of Congress, the principle of which is
11
still retained, the arrest by judicial process for a federal offense must be ‘agreeably
to the usual mode of process against offenders in such State.’  There is no reason
to believe that state law is not an equally appropriate standard by which to test
arrest without warrant, except in those cases where Congress has enacted a federal
rule.  Indeed the enactment of a federal rule in some specific cases seems to imply
the absence of any general federal law of arrest.”  (Di Re, supra, 332 U.S. at pp.
589-590.)  The court thus was faced with an issue squarely within its supervisory
power:  the choice of law by which to measure the validity of arrests in federal
prosecutions.  Nowhere in its discussion did the court rely on or even mention the
federal Constitution.  Rather, the high court, in a federal prosecution, exercised its
supervisory role over the federal courts—as the lower federal courts and other
state courts have concluded.  (E.g., United States v. Wright (6th Cir. 1994) 16 F.3d
1429, 1435 (Wright); Fields v. City of South Houston, Texas (5th Cir. 1991) 922
F.2d 1183, 1189-1190, fn. 7; Street v. Surdyka (4th Cir. 1974) 492 F.2d 368, 372,
fn. 7; People v. Dyla (1988) 142 A.D.2d 423, 434-435 [536 N.Y.S.2d 799, 806].)
Commentators, too, have noted Di Re’s nonconstitutional foundation.  (E.g., 1
LaFave, Search & Seizure:  A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment, supra, § 1.5(b),
p. 138 [“a close inspection of the Di Re decision indicates that the use of state law
there was ‘based on nonconstitutional considerations’ ”]; 2 Ringel, Searches &
Seizures, Arrests and Confessions (2d ed. 1979) § 23.9, p. 23-71 [“Suppression of
evidence resulting from the illegal, but not unconstitutional, arrest is not
mandated”].)  Accordingly, the high court has cited this aspect of Di Re only in
other federal prosecutions.  (See United States v. Watson (1974) 423 U.S. 411,
12
420-421, fn. 8; Miller v. United States (1958) 357 U.S. 301, 305-306; Johnson v.
United States (1948) 333 U.S. 10, 15 & fn. 5.) 5
Without Di Re, defendant is left only with dicta.  In Ker v. California
(1963) 374 U.S. 23, a plurality of the high court observed that “the lawfulness of
arrests for federal offenses is to be determined by reference to state law insofar as
it is not violative of the Federal Constitution.  [Citations.]  A fortiori, the
lawfulness of these arrests by state officers for state offenses is to be determined
by California law.”  (Id. at p. 37 (lead opn. of Clark, J.).)  Since the police had
complied with California law (id. at p. 38), the plurality’s observation was dictum.
In Michigan v. DeFillippo (1979) 443 U.S. 31 (DeFillippo), the court stated
that “whether an officer is authorized to make an arrest ordinarily depends, in the
first instance, on state law.”  (Id. at p. 36.)  This statement is as true as it is
unremarkable—state law “is relevant to the validity of the arrest and search only
as it pertains to the ‘facts and circumstances’ we hold constituted probable cause
for arrest.”  (Id. at p. 40; accord, Ryan v. County of DuPage (7th Cir. 1995) 45
F.3d 1090, 1093 [“the legality under the Fourth Amendment of an arrest for
violating state law depends on that law in the following sense:  there must be
probable cause to believe that a state crime has been committed”].)  In any event,
this statement too was dictum, since (as the court immediately noted) “Respondent
does not contend . . . that the arrest was not authorized by Michigan law.”
(DeFillippo, supra, at p. 36.)
When we balance it against the forceful reasoning of Pennhurst, Elkins,
Cooper, and Greenwood, we cannot accept the dicta in these two opinions as a
                                                
5 
It is also worth noting that the statute relied on by Di Re “has been
amended and no longer requires that an arrest be agreeable to the usual state
process.”  (Wright, supra, 16 F.3d at p. 1435, citing 18 U.S.C. § 3041.)
13
pronouncement from the United States Supreme Court that compliance with state
arrest procedures is a prerequisite to the validity of an arrest under the federal
Constitution.  Had the court intended to condition the constitutionality of an arrest
on state law, it had ample opportunity to say so in Atwater.  But Atwater nowhere
rested its holding on the circumstance that Texas had by statute authorized a
custodial arrest for a seatbelt offense.  Indeed, the court’s announcement of its
holding betrayed no reliance on state law:  “If an officer has probable cause to
believe that an individual has committed even a very minor criminal offense in his
presence, he may, without violating the Fourth Amendment, arrest the offender.”
(Atwater, supra, 532 U.S. at p. 354, italics added.) 6
As for the federal courts of appeal, “[n]early every circuit to address the
issue is in accord.”  (United States v. Le (10th Cir. 1999) 173 F.3d 1258, 1264,
fn. 2.)  The First,7 Second,8 Fourth,9 Fifth,10 Sixth,11 Seventh,12 Eighth,13 Ninth,14
and Tenth15 Circuits have each held that, once the officer has probable cause to
                                                
6 
Nor does anything in Knowles v. Iowa (1998) 525 U.S. 113 “reconfirm that
a court must consider state law in determining whether a search incident to an
arrest satisfies the mandates of the Fourth Amendment.”  To the contrary, Knowles
addressed “whether the search at issue, authorized as it was by state law,
nonetheless violates the Fourth Amendment.”  (Id. at p. 116, italics added.)  The
court then held that the exception for a search incident to a custodial arrest could
not be applied where no custodial arrest had occurred.  (Id. at pp. 114-116.)  No
one disputes the fact of the custodial arrest here, merely its validity.
7 
Vargas-Badillo v. Diaz-Torres (1st Cir. 1997) 114 F.3d 3, 6 (violation of
state law cannot support a claim for illegal arrest under 42 United States Code
section 1983).
8 
United States v. Santa (2d Cir. 1999) 180 F.3d 20, 25; id. at pages 30-31
(conc. opn. of Newman, J.) (upholding an arrest based on a warrant that had
previously been vacated, citing Arizona v. Evans (1995) 514 U.S. 1, even though
an arrest based on a vacated warrant is invalid under New York law).
14
believe a violation of law has occurred, the constitutionality of the arrest does not
depend upon compliance with state procedures that are not themselves compelled
by the Constitution.  So have a number of state courts.  (E.g., State v. Jolin (Me.
1994) 639 A.2d 1062, 1064 [“evidence obtained from an extraterritorial arrest
based on probable cause should not per se be excluded”]; Commonwealth v. Lyons
                                                                                                                                                
(footnote continued from previous page)
9 
United States v. Van Metre (4th Cir. 1998) 150 F.3d 339, 347 (“That the
arrest may or may not have been conducted in accordance with Tennessee state
law is irrelevant to our analysis”); Street v. Surdyka, supra, 492 F.2d at page 372
(“The states are free to impose greater restrictions on arrests, but their citizens do
not thereby acquire a greater federal right”).
10 
United States v. Walker (5th Cir. 1992) 960 F.2d 409, 415 (“the proper
inquiry in determining whether to exclude the evidence at issue is not whether the
state officials’ actions in arresting him were ‘lawful’ or ‘valid under state law’ ”).
11 
Wright, supra, 16 F.3d at page 1437 (“The fact that the arrest, search, or
seizure may have violated state law is irrelevant as long as the standards
developed under the Federal Constitution were not offended”).
12 
Gordon v. Degelmann (7th Cir. 1994) 29 F.3d 295, 301 (“Because Misrac
followed the procedures the Constitution prescribes for making arrests, his failure
to afford Gordon additional procedures established by state law does not matter—
not, at least, to a claim under the fourth amendment and [42 U.S.C.] § 1983”).
13 
United States v. Bell (8th Cir. 1995) 54 F.3d 502, 504 (“An arrest by state
officers is reasonable in the Fourth Amendment sense if it is based upon probable
cause. . . .Thus, the district court should not have looked to Iowa law in deciding
the lawfulness of Bell’s arrest”).
14 
United States v. Mota (9th Cir. 1992) 982 F.2d 1384, 1387 (“state law
governing an arrest is irrelevant to determining whether the arrest deprived an
individual of rights secured by the federal constitution or a federal statute”).
15 
United States v. Miller (10th Cir. 1971) 452 F.2d 731, 733 (affirming the
denial of the suppression motion, even though the arrest violated Oklahoma law;
“the test of reasonableness in relation to Fourth Amendment protected rights must
be determined by Federal law even though the police actions are those of state
police officers”).
15
(1986) 397 Mass. 644 [492 N.E.2d 1142, 1144-1146] [refusing to suppress a
photograph taken following an arrest that was illegal under state law]; People v.
Burdo (1974) 56 Mich.App. 48 [223 N.W.2d 358, 360] [“defendant’s arrest was
not constitutionally invalid, but rather merely statutorily illegal; therefore the per
se exclusionary rule is not applicable” (fn. omitted)]; State v. Eubanks (1973) 283
N.C. 556 [196 S.E.2d 706, 709] [“We hold that nothing in our law requires the
exclusion of evidence obtained following an arrest which is constitutionally valid
but illegal for failure to first obtain an arrest warrant”]; State v. Droste (1998) 83
Ohio St.3d 96 [697 N.E.2d 620, 623] [“We have stated on many occasions that
absent a violation of a constitutional right, the violation of a statute does not
invoke the exclusionary rule”]; State v. Rodriguez (1993) 317 Or. 27 [854 P.2d
399, 409] [“Because the arrest in this case did not violate the Fourth Amendment,
the guns discovered in the subsequent consent search were not subject to
suppression under the Fourth Amendment, even if the arrest violated Article I,
section 9, of the Oregon Constitution”]; Penn v. Commonwealth (1992) 13
Va.App. 399 [412 S.E.2d 189, 193-194] [“the fact that Virginia has adopted a
more stringent statutory requirement for warrantless misdemeanor arrests
committed outside the officer’s presence does not mean that Penn has acquired a
constitutional right”], affd. (1992) 244 Va. 218 [420 S.E.2d 713]; but see State v.
Martin (Minn. 1977) 253 N.W.2d 404, 405-406.)16
                                                
16 
Some jurisdictions have held that the commission of a civil infraction
cannot support a custodial arrest.  (E.g., Barnett v. United States (D.C.App. 1987)
525 A.2d 197, 198-199 & fns. 2, 5; Thomas v. Florida (Fla. 1993) 614 So.2d 468,
470-471.)  In California, however, traffic infractions have not been decriminalized.
(See People v. Carlucci (1979) 23 Cal.3d 249, 257-258; Tracy v. Municipal Court
(1978) 22 Cal.3d 760, 765 & fn. 4; compare §§ 40000.1 and 42001 with §§ 40200
and 40203.5, subd. (b) [defining parking fines as “civil penalties”].)  Other states
(footnote continued on next page)
16
The majority view is sound.  What would be gained, after all, by invoking
the federal Constitution to exclude evidence seized following an arrest merely
because, in violation of state law, a nonuniformed police officer failed to display a
badge (e.g., Drewitt v. Pratt (4th Cir. 1993) 999 F.2d 774, 777 [the violation of
Virginia law “did not rise to a violation of a federal constitutional magnitude”]), a
uniformed officer effected an arrest beyond the officer’s territorial limit (e.g.,
People v. Wolf (Colo. 1981) 635 P.2d 213, 217-218 [denying the suppression
motion “[d]espite the fact that the Denver police violated the statutes governing
their authority to arrest”]), or a deputy’s commission suffered from technical
administrative deficiencies (e.g., United States v. Jones (5th Cir. 1999) 185 F.3d
459, 462-463 [state law deficiency “does not affect our analysis” of the
constitutional issue])?  “The exclusionary rule was created to discourage violations
of the Fourth Amendment, not violations of state law.”  (United States v. Walker,
supra, 960 F.2d at p. 415.)  Constitutionalizing the myriad of technical state
procedures that govern arrests would not only trivialize Fourth Amendment
protections but would discourage states from even enacting such rules.  (Cf.
United States v. Caceres, supra, 440 U.S. at pp. 755-756.)
Against this array of authority, defendant has identified only one court that
has excluded evidence under the authority of the federal Constitution for an
officer’s failure to comply with state arrest procedures.  In United States v. Mota,
supra, 982 F.2d 1384 (Mota), the Ninth Circuit held that the failure of state police
officers to comply with state procedures rendered the arrest unreasonable under
                                                                                                                                                
(footnote continued from previous page)
have relied on their own constitutions to bar evidence seized in violation of state
law.  (E.g., State v. Hehman (1978) 90 Wn.2d 45 [578 P.2d 527, 529].)
17
the Fourth Amendment and suppressed the fruits of a subsequent search incident
to the arrest.  (Id. at pp. 1388-1389.)  The Mota brothers were arrested for
operating a food cart without a business license in violation of a Santa Ana
municipal ordinance.  A search incident to arrest uncovered 41 counterfeit $20
bills.  (Id. at pp. 1386-1387.)  California law, however, did not authorize a
custodial arrest for this infraction unless the arrestee had refused to present
satisfactory evidence of identity or sign a written promise to appear.  (Id. at pp.
1388-1389.)
In suppressing the evidence based on this violation of state procedure, the
Ninth Circuit acknowledged its prior rulings that application of the exclusionary
rule is a matter of federal law (Mota, supra, 982 F.2d at p. 1387) and that “in the
context of a suit brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, . . . state law governing an arrest
is irrelevant to determining whether the arrest deprived an individual of rights
secured by the federal constitution or a federal statute” (ibid., citing Barry v.
Fowler (9th Cir. 1990) 902 F.2d 770, 772 (Barry)).  Conceding that other circuits
had ruled otherwise, the court nonetheless deemed itself bound by Di Re,
DeFillippo, and Ker (which it failed to note was a plurality opinion) to exclude the
evidence.  (Mota, supra, at pp. 1387-1388.)  We find Mota unpersuasive.
First, as discussed above, Di Re, DeFillippo, and Ker do not
constitutionalize state arrest procedures.  Much more on point, we think, are
Cooper and Greenwood (which were not cited in Mota) and Atwater (which was
decided after Mota), all of which emphasize that state procedures are irrelevant to
the Fourth Amendment inquiry.
Second, Mota’s holding that the custodial arrest was constitutionally
unreasonable because it failed to comply with state procedure is utterly
inconsistent with the Ninth Circuit’s earlier holding in Barry that “state law
governing an arrest is irrelevant to determining whether the arrest deprived an
18
individual of rights secured by the federal constitution or a federal statute.”
(Mota, supra, 982 F.2d at p. 1387.)
Defendant attempts to reconcile these inconsistent rulings by quoting
Professor LaFave as suggesting “that the Ninth Circuit ‘might have more precisely
said that though the arrest was constitutional despite the violation of state law, the
incidental search was not because [United States v.] Robinson [(1973) 414 U.S.
218] imposes as a prerequisite not just a constitutional arrest but, more
demandingly, a “lawful custodial arrest.” ’ ”  (1 LaFave, Search & Seizure:  A
Treatise on the Fourth Amendment, supra, § 1.5(b), p. 141.)  What defendant fails
to include is Professor LaFave’s cogent rebuttal to this alternative interpretation:
“[I]t must be asked whether the court was correct in reaching the essential
conclusion that the Robinson test mandates ‘reference to state law governing the
arrest.’  That is, when the Court in Robinson said ‘lawful custodial arrest,’ did the
Court really mean an arrest which is lawfully custodial in a state law sense?  Some
of the Supreme Court’s language suggests otherwise.  Just before the ‘lawful
custodial arrest’ holding, there appears this sentence:  ‘A custodial arrest of a
suspect based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the Fourth
Amendment; that intrusion being lawful, a search incident to the arrest requires no
additional justification.’  That seems to say that ‘lawful’ refers not to the
limitations of state law but rather to an overarching principle that all it takes to
make a custodial arrest reasonable in a Fourth Amendment sense is that it be based
on probable cause.  And thus it must be concluded that both of the alternative
interpretations of the Mota holding are open to question.”  (Id. at  § 1.5(b), pp.
141-142; cf. United States v. Caceres, supra, 440 U.S. at pp. 751-755 [refusing to
suppress taped conversations that were obtained in violation of Internal Revenue
Service regulations that were not themselves compelled by the Constitution].)
19
Conditioning a search incident to arrest on the degree to which an otherwise
constitutional arrest complies with state procedure, moreover, makes no sense.
The justification for a search incident to arrest rests on “(1) the need to disarm the
suspect in order to take him into custody, and (2) the need to preserve evidence for
later use at trial.”  (Knowles v. Iowa, supra, 525 U.S. at p. 116.)  Neither the need
to disarm the suspect nor the need to preserve evidence depends upon the arrest’s
compliance with state law.
 Third, Mota’s reliance on Welsh v. Wisconsin (1984) 466 U.S. 740 is
misplaced.  Welsh held that “an important factor to be considered whether any
exigency exists [to effect a warrantless arrest in the home] is the gravity of the
underlying offense for which the arrest is being made.”  (Id. at p. 753.)  In that
case, the offense was “a noncriminal violation” subject to a civil forfeiture
proceeding.  (Id. at p. 746.)  Welsh, however, nowhere suggests that the validity of
a warrantless arrest not based on exigent circumstances depends on a weighing of
“the state’s assessment of the gravity of the offense justifying the arrest” or “the
state’s expression of disinterest in allowing warrantless arrests for mere
infractions.”  (Mota, supra, 982 F.2d at pp. 1388-1389.)  Any doubt on this score
was resolved by Atwater, in which the court said:  “we confirm today what our
prior cases have intimated:  the standard of probable cause ‘applies to all arrests,
without the need to “balance” the interests and circumstances involved in
particular situations.’ ”  (Atwater, supra, 532 U.S. at p. 354.)
Last, Mota’s analogy between inventory searches and arrests is faulty.
Mota sought guidance from another Ninth Circuit decision, United States v.
Wanless (9th Cir. 1989) 882 F.2d 1459, which construed South Dakota v.
Opperman (1975) 428 U.S. 364 and Colorado v. Bertine (1987) 479 U.S. 367
(Bertine) to require compliance with local police department procedures to uphold
an inventory search.  Leaving to one side the issue of whether the high court’s
20
directive that inventory searches “be conducted in accordance with standardized
criteria” (Bertine, supra, 479 U.S. at p. 374, fn. 6) necessarily requires compliance
to the letter with every local procedure, those cases cannot be read to undermine
an arrest that—unlike an inventory search, an administrative inspection, or a
random traffic stop—is justified by probable cause.  (See Whren v. United States
(1996) 517 U.S. 806, 811-812, 817-818.)  The absence of standardized local
procedures is not fatal to an arrest or a search incident thereto.  As the United
States Supreme Court explained in upholding the search incident to an arrest for
another minor traffic violation, “Though the officer here was not required to take
the petitioner into custody by police regulations . . . and there did not exist a
departmental policy establishing the conditions under which a full-scale body
search should be conducted, we do not find these differences determinative of the
constitutional issue.  [Citation].  It is sufficient that the officer had probable cause
to arrest the petitioner and that he lawfully effectuated the arrest and placed the
petitioner in custody.”  (Gustafson v. Florida (1973) 414 U.S. 260, 265
(Gustafson).)
In sum, we find Cooper, Elkins, Gustafson, Greenwood, and Atwater more
persuasive and conclude that so long as the officer has probable cause to believe
that an individual has committed a criminal offense, a custodial arrest—even one
effected in violation of state arrest procedures—does not violate the Fourth
Amendment.  In this case, then, it is of no moment that defendant’s arrest
assertedly violated the procedures set forth in section 40302(a) since (as defendant
concedes) Deputy Valento had probable cause to believe defendant had violated a
provision of the Vehicle Code.
By this decision, we in no way countenance violations of state arrest
procedure.  As we explained at the outset, Proposition 8 left intact the substantive
scope of state statutory and constitutional rights against arrest for minor offenses.
21
Violation of those rights exposes the peace officers and their departments to civil
actions seeking injunctive or other relief.  (Garrett v. City of Bossier City
(La.Ct.App. 2001) 792 So.2d 24, 26-28 [although the arrest for a seatbelt offense
was constitutional under Atwater, the arrest’s failure to comply with state
procedure supported a private civil suit]; see generally People v. Mayoff (1986) 42
Cal.3d 1302, 1318 (plur opn. of Grodin, J.).)  Violation of those state rights also
may subject the offending officer to an internal investigation, additional training,
and departmental discipline.  (See Heffernan, Foreword:  The Fourth Amendment
Exclusionary Rule as a Constitutional Remedy (2000) 88 Geo. L.J. 799, 865 [“A
direct sanction imposed on individual officers—internal police discipline, for
example—is likely to channel police behavior into patterns of legal conduct far
more effectively than does the indirect sanction of exclusion”].)  What we cannot
do, out of respect for the Supremacy Clause and Proposition 8, is “ ‘impose such
greater restrictions as a matter of federal constitutional law when [the United
States Supreme] Court specifically refrains from imposing them.’ ”  (Arkansas v.
Sullivan (2001) 532 U.S. 769, ___ [121 S.Ct. 1876, 1878], quoting Oregon v. Hass
(1975) 420 U.S. 714, 719.)
Moreover, by removing the threat that relevant evidence will be excluded
for violation of their rules, our decision today may have the salutary effect of
encouraging state and local governments as well as individual police departments
to seize the opportunity Atwater presents to craft careful and detailed regulations
governing the ability of officers to arrest for minor offenses.  (See People v.
Mayoff, supra, 42 Cal.3d at pp. 1318-1319; cf. County of Sacramento v. Lewis,
supra, 523 U.S. at p. 841, fn. 5.)  Thus, eliminating the sanction of exclusion does
not mean that affected individuals or the public generally are without remedy
against a wayward officer.  “We, the judiciary, cannot claim that we and we alone
22
wield the only power or possess the only wisdom to enforce rules.”  (People v.
Hoag (2000) 83 Cal.App.4th 1198, 1215 (conc. opn. of Morrison, J.).)
2
Even if compliance with state procedure were a predicate to the
constitutionality of defendant’s arrest under the Fourth Amendment, he still would
not be entitled to relief in this proceeding, since (as we conclude) his arrest did not
violate section 40302(a).
Our state law authorizes custodial arrests for violations of the Vehicle
Code, but not in all circumstances.  If the violation is declared to be felony, the
offender is to be dealt with in like manner “as upon the arrest for the commission
of any other felony.”  (Veh. Code, § 40301; see Pen. Code, § 836.)  For certain
enumerated nonfelony offenses, the officer has the discretion to take the offender
to “the nearest or most accessible” magistrate with jurisdiction over the offense or
to issue a citation and, upon the offender’s signature of a promise to appear,
release the offender.  (§§ 40303, 40304.)  For the remaining offenses (except
driving under the influence), the officer must follow the cite-and-release
procedure, unless the offender fails to present a driver’s license or other
satisfactory evidence of identity for examination, refuses to give a written promise
to appear in court, or demands an immediate appearance before a magistrate, in
which case the officer must take the offender to the magistrate.  (§ 40302; People
v. Superior Court (Simon) (1972) 7 Cal.3d 186, 199-200.)  The Legislature thus
“in effect presumes that in the vast majority of cases the violator will not be taken
into custody.”  (Simon, supra, at p. 199.)
The parties agree that the arrest here is governed by section 40302, which
states in pertinent part: “Whenever any person is arrested for any violation of this
code, not declared to be a felony, the arrested person shall be taken without
unnecessary delay before a magistrate within the county in which the offense
23
charged is alleged to have been committed and who has jurisdiction of the offense
and is nearest or most accessible with reference to the place where the arrest is
made in any of the following cases:  [¶]  (a) When the person arrested fails to
present his driver's license or other satisfactory evidence of his identity for
examination.”  The parties disagree over whether Deputy Valento complied with
this provision.  The Attorney General argues that defendant’s custodial arrest was
justified under section 40302(a) by his failure “to present his driver’s license or
other satisfactory evidence of his identity for examination.”  Defendant, on the
other hand, argues that section 40302(a) cannot be used to justify his arrest
because he told the officer his name and birthdate and thus provided “other
satisfactory evidence of his identity.”  This case therefore turns on the meaning of
the requirement in section 40302(a) that the offender “present his driver’s license
or other satisfactory evidence of his identity for examination.”
One part of the statute requires little construction.  An offender may avoid a
custodial arrest by presenting a driver’s license to the officer for examination.  So
long as the license is current, valid, and raises no suspicion that it has been altered
or falsified, section 40302(a) does not require a custodial arrest.  On this point,
there is no dispute.
There is likewise no dispute that at least one category of identification
qualifies as “other satisfactory evidence of . . . identity”—those forms of
documentary evidence that are the functional equivalent of a driver’s license.  This
would include a state-issued identification card (§ 13005) and other current,
reliable documentary evidence of identity that, like a driver’s license, bears the
person’s photograph, physical description, current mailing address, and signature,
and is serially or otherwise numbered.  (See Veh. Code, § 12811; cf. Civ. Code,
§ 1185, subd. (c) [defining “ ‘satisfactory evidence’ ” to identify the person
acknowledging an instrument before a notary].)
24
Here, of course, defendant did not present a driver’s license or other
documentary evidence of his identity.  He contends, though, that “[n]othing in the
code section provides that the person to be cited must present documentary
evidence of his identity,” merely “satisfactory evidence of . . . identity.”
Defendant offers an incomplete reading of the statute.
“ ‘In analyzing statutory language, we seek to give meaning to every word
and phrase in the statute to accomplish a result consistent with the legislative
purpose . . . .’ ” (California Teachers Assn. v. Governing Bd. of Rialto Unified
School Dist. (1997) 14 Cal.4th 627, 634, quoting Harris v. Capital Growth
Investors XIV (1991) 52 Cal.3d 1142, 1159.)  The statute here directs the offender
to “present his driver’s license or other satisfactory evidence of his identity for
examination.”  (§ 40302, subd. (a), italics added; cf. Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-7-
118(c)(3) [“No citation shall be issued under the provisions of this section if . . .
the person arrested cannot or will not offer satisfactory evidence of identification
. . . .”].)  By the italicized language, the Legislature plainly contemplated that the
evidence of identity be capable of presentation and examination, acts that are
ordinarily performed on tangible objects.  Prior to the 1968 amendment, this
section permitted a custodial arrest “[w]hen the person arrested fails to exhibit his
driver’s license or other satisfactory evidence of identity.”  (Stats. 1963, ch. 1341,
§ 1, p. 2864, italics added.)  The 1968 amendment (Stats. 1968, ch. 647, § 1, p.
1332) was “intended to clarify that either the driver’s license or identification must
be given to the officer rather than merely exhibited, which in some instances has
been complied with by showing it through a closed window.  The license and
identification must be examined to assure validity and the presence of license
restrictions.”  (Cal. Highway Patrol, Enrolled Bill Rep. on Assem. Bill No. 1122
(1968 Reg. Sess.) prepared for Governor Reagan (July 12, 1968), p. 1, italics
added.)
25
This interpretation of section 40302(a)’s requirement that the offender
“present” a license or other evidence of identity “for examination” is consistent
with the Legislature’s use of this language in other statutes.  (See Stillwell v. State
Bar (1946) 29 Cal.2d 119, 123 [“it is a well-established rule of construction that
when a word or phrase has been given a particular scope or meaning in one part or
portion of a law it shall be given the same scope and meaning in other parts or
portions of the law”].)  Section 12951, subdivision (b), for example, provides that
“[t]he driver of a motor vehicle shall present his or her license for examination
upon demand of a peace officer enforcing the provisions of this code.”  Section
4462, subdivision (a) requires the driver to “present the registration or
identification card or other evidence of registration of any or all vehicles under his
or her immediate control for examination upon demand of any peace officer.”
There can be little doubt that in both circumstances the driver is expected to
surrender the specified document to the peace officer for examination, not merely
to recite the information contained therein.  When the Legislature uses the same
language in section 40302(a), we can infer that the same result is intended.
By construing section 40302(a) in this manner, we do not intend to
foreclose the exercise of discretion by the officer in the field in deciding whether
to accept or reject other evidence—including oral evidence—of identification.  It
would be absurd to require an officer to effect a custodial arrest of an offender
who is able to convince the officer, by any means, of his or her identity and
willingness to appear in answer to the citation.  An officer may, for example, be
personally acquainted with the offender or obtain independent corroboration of the
offender’s identity from others present.  In these and other circumstances in which
the officer is convinced of the offender’s identity, a custodial arrest would be
unnecessary.  We therefore hold that an officer has broad discretion to effect a
26
custodial arrest under section 40302(a) unless the offender has presented a current
and valid driver’s license or other reliable documentary evidence of identification.
The question then arises to what extent the officer’s exercise of discretion
can be reviewed by a court.  The mere fact that discretion has been entrusted to the
officer, of course, does not warrant invalidation or revision of the statute.  (United
States v. Trigg (7th Cir. 1989) 878 F.2d 1037, 1041 [“The Court, however, has
never indicated that the discretionary exercise of the arrest power, a power that is
contingent upon a prior determination of probable cause, is constitutionally
significant”].)  Indeed, section 40303 leaves it completely to “the judgment of the
arresting officer” whether to employ the cite-and-release procedure or to effect a
custodial arrest for the offenses listed in subdivisions (a) through (q).  Section
40304 does the same for non-Vehicle Code traffic misdemeanors.  Inasmuch as
California could, consistent with the federal Constitution, authorize a custodial
arrest for all Vehicle Code violations, the fact that it has delegated some discretion
to police officers to evaluate the sufficiency of the proffered evidence of identity
is, despite Justice Brown’s protestations (see conc. & dis. opn., post, at pp. 6, 10-
11), of no constitutional concern.  (See Gustafson, supra, 414 U.S. at p. 265.)  As
with all discretionary enforcement decisions, the officer’s choices may be
challenged as being based on invalid criteria, such as race, religion, or other
arbitrary classification, including the exercise of protected statutory or
constitutional rights.  (See Wayte v. United States (1985) 470 U.S. 598, 608.)17
                                                
17 
The officer’s subjective belief that a search incident to arrest might uncover
evidence of a crime, however, does not invalidate an arrest under the Fourth
Amendment.  (Arkansas v. Sullivan, supra, 532 U.S. at p. ___ [121 S.Ct. at p.
1878].)
27
Defendant interprets the statute to impose additional limits on an officer’s
discretion.  In his view,  the officer should be required to conduct sufficient
inquiries calculated to elicit satisfactory evidence of identity and to accept
verifiable oral evidence of identity and that the officer’s failure to do so should be
reviewed in the same manner as other police conduct under the Fourth
Amendment.  The fundamental problem with this interpretation, of course, is that
the statute does not require the officer to act as defendant suggests.  Rather, the
statute plainly puts the burden of presenting satisfactory evidence of identity on
the offender.  Once the officer has made some inquiry that has put the offender on
notice to produce evidence of his or her identity, the officer has done all that is
required by the statute.
Moreover, defendant’s proposal that the officer be required to ask a specific
set of questions would facilitate the use of false identities.  If, as defendant asserts,
requiring the officer to ask for the offender’s name, address, and date of birth
“does not impose a heavy or unreasonable burden on the officer in the field,” it
follows that the unscrupulous offender could just as easily memorize those three
bits of information, parrot it back to the officer, and thus evade responsibility for
any number of Vehicle Code offenses, since the physical description available
through a computer database may well be too general to adequately confirm the
offender’s identity.  (See Lee v. Superior Court (2000) 22 Cal.4th 41, 43
[petitioner evaded traffic citation by falsely identifying himself as his deceased
brother]; accord, Cal. Highway Patrol, Enrolled Bill Rep. for Assem. Bill No. 219
(1994-1995 Reg. Sess.) prepared for Governor Wilson (July 3, 1995) p. 1 [“there
have been several occasions where individuals have misrepresented themselves
when they did not have photographic identification to substantiate their identity”].)
If, on the other hand, the essential litany of questions is left undefined, then the
officer is without guidance as to the number of questions that should be sufficient
28
to elicit satisfactory evidence of identity or the quantum of evidence that an officer
should know would be sufficient to establish identity in each instance.  Case-by-
case adjudication to flesh out the prerequisites for compliance with section
40302(a) does not properly credit the state’s “essential interest in readily
administrable rules” or comply with the high court’s directive “to draw standards
sufficiently clear and simple to be applied with a fair prospect of surviving judicial
second-guessing months and years after an arrest or search is made.”  (Atwater,
supra, 532 U.S. at p. 347.)
We likewise conclude that the statute does not support judicial oversight of
officer discretion beyond what we have articulated above. (See People v. Superior
Court (Simon), supra, 7 Cal.3d at p. 201 [“At the very least, he must be able to
convince the officer . . . [of] his true identity . . . .  When he cannot do so the
officer has no assurance the promise will be honored, and under those
circumstances subdivision (a) prohibits the use of the citation procedure.” (Italics
added.)].)  Unlike the cases meriting application of the exclusionary rule, an
officer acting under section 40302(a) is hardly engaged in “ ‘ “the often
competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.” ’ ”  (People v. Amador (2000) 24
Cal.4th 387, 396.)  Indeed, it is in the interest of the police to limit petty-offense
arrests, which carry costs that are simply too great to incur without good reason.
(Atwater, supra, 532 U.S. at p. 352; accord, People v. Grant (1990) 217
Cal.App.3d 1451, 1455 [describing the California Highway Patrol’s policy against
custodial arrests when the driver merely fails to carry a license while driving].)
Defendant’s complaint that “an officer should not be able to ignore readily
available proof of identity” overlooks the fact that the officer has no incentive to
do so.
It is one thing for a court to review an officer’s decision to reject a driver’s
license or other documentary evidence of identification, since the item itself can
29
be brought to the magistrate to support the officer’s belief it had been altered or
falsified.  It is quite another to review an officer’s decision to reject oral evidence
of identification, since that decision will be based entirely on the officer’s
assessment of the offender’s credibility—an assessment involving intangible
factors that may be difficult to reproduce in the courtroom.  There is a world of
difference in making that judgment as a matter of discretion “and making the same
judgment when the question is the validity of the warrantless arrest itself.  It is the
difference between no basis for legal action challenging the discretionary
judgment, on the one hand, and the prospect of evidentiary exclusion or . . .
personal [42 United States Code] § 1983 liability for the misapplication of a
constitutional standard, on the other.”  (Atwater, supra, 532 U.S. at p. 350.)
Furthermore, transferring the locus of discretion from the officer in the field
to the courtroom, as defendant suggests, would have perverse results.  Under
section 40302(a), a custodial arrest is mandatory when the offender fails to present
a driver’s license or other satisfactory evidence of identity.  Under our
construction of the statute, which reserves wide discretion to the officer to
determine what evidence is satisfactory, the officer is authorized to use the cite-
and-release procedure whenever the officer is satisfied with the evidence of
identity the offender has presented.  If, instead, the determination of what evidence
is satisfactory will be made by the magistrate under the case law as it evolves, the
officer will be compelled by section 40302(a) to effect a custodial arrest whenever
the evidence offered by the offender does not meet the standard set forth in the
case law—even if the officer is otherwise convinced of the offender’s identity.
Defendant’s final argument is not without some initial commonsense
appeal:  “If a person is not required by law to carry identification, he cannot be
constitutionally arrested for not doing so.”  The flaw in defendant’s argument,
though, is that he was not arrested because of his failure to carry identification.
30
Rather, he was arrested for committing a Vehicle Code infraction.  A bicyclist is
subject to all provisions of the rules of the road “applicable to the driver of a
vehicle” (§ 21200, subd. (a)) and is subject as well to division 17 of the Vehicle
Code, which includes section 40302.  (§§ 231, 21200, subd. (a).)  Here, of course,
defendant was not arrested merely because he failed to produce a license.  He was
arrested because he violated the Vehicle Code.  At that point, the need to obtain
reliable evidence of identification and ensure compliance with a promise to appear
is equally great for a bicyclist as for a driver of a motorized vehicle.  Although
only the latter is obligated to have a license in his or her possession at all times
while driving on the road (§ 12951, subd. (a)), both are required to produce
satisfactory evidence of identity for examination when stopped for a violation of
the law.  If enforcement of those laws duly enacted by the Legislature is to occur,
it could hardly be otherwise.  (See People v. Mercurio (1970) 10 Cal.App.3d 426,
430 [“The statute obviously is designed to insure that the violator will be held
personally responsible for a Vehicle Code violation”].)
In sum, section 40302(a) entrusts the decision whether to accept
nondocumentary evidence of identity to the discretion of the arresting officer.
Because defendant makes no showing that Deputy Valento exercised his discretion
in an unconstitutional manner, the arrest did not violate the statute.
31
III
DISPOSITION
The judgment of the Court of Appeal is affirmed.
BAXTER, J.
WE CONCUR:
GEORGE, C.J.
KENNARD, J.
CHIN, J.
MORENO, J.
1
C O P Y
PEOPLE v. CONRAD RICHARD McKAY
S091421
CONCURRING OPINION BY WERDEGAR, J.
I concur in the majority’s conclusion that Vehicle Code section 40302,
subdivision (a) (section 40302(a)) permits a police officer to effect a custodial
arrest of a bicyclist who, having been stopped for violating a provision of the
Vehicle Code, lacks satisfactory evidence of his identity.  (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 22
et seq.)  I agree that section 40302(a) contemplates an offender will produce
written or other tangible evidence of identity, but that oral evidence may suffice if,
in the reasonable discretion of the officer, it is “satisfactory” to ensure the citee
will honor his promise to appear.  Moreover, I agree section 40302(a), as
interpreted, does not violate the Fourth Amendment’s protection against
unreasonable searches and seizures.  (Atwater v. Lago Vista (2001) 532 U.S. 318
(Atwater).)  Accordingly, the search incident to the custodial arrest in this case, in
which the officer found a baggie of methamphetamine, was permissible.  (United
States v. Robinson (1973) 414 U.S. 218.)
Unfortunately, the majority does not stop there or, rather, does not start and
stop there, but instead addresses at the outset an unresolved and unnecessary
constitutional question:  whether the law permitting police to conduct a search
incident to an arrest is limited to those situations, as here, in which the arrest is
lawful under state law, or embraces as well an arrest that complies with the
minimum constitutional requirements but violates state law.  Because we conclude
today that defendant’s arrest complied with both statutory (§ 40302(a)) and
2
constitutional (Atwater, supra, 532 U.S. 318) prerequisites, we have no need to
address this further constitutional issue.  The majority’s extensive analysis of the
question is thus no more than obiter dictum.
As the majority knows well,1 “ ‘we do not reach constitutional questions
unless absolutely required to do so to dispose of the matter before us.’  [Citations.]
As the United States Supreme Court reiterated, ‘A fundamental and longstanding
principle of judicial restraint requires that courts avoid reaching constitutional
questions in advance of the necessity of deciding them.’  [Citation.]  Applying that
principle, the high court observed that if statutory relief had been adequate in the
case before it, ‘a constitutional decision would have been unnecessary and
therefore inappropriate.’ ”  (Santa Clara County Local Transportation Authority v.
Guardino (1995) 11 Cal.4th 220, 230-231, quoting Lyng v. Northwest Indian
Cemetery Prot. Assn. (1988) 485 U.S. 439, 445, 446; see also Three Affiliated
Tribes v. Wold Engineering (1984) 467 U.S. 138, 157-158; Ashwander v. Valley
Authority (1936) 297 U.S. 288, 346-347 (conc. opn. of Brandeis, J.); People v.
Williams (1976) 16 Cal.3d 663, 667.)
“Principles of judicial restraint counsel that we not reach out to decide
gratuitously constitutional questions of first impression.  Sound jurisprudence
dictates that such issues be decided only in the context of cases and controversies
actually raising the issue.”  (People v. Bennett (1998) 17 Cal.4th 373, 393 (conc.
opn. of Werdegar, J.).)
                                                
1 
 See Thompson v. Department of Corrections (2001) 25 Cal.4th 117, 128-
129 (maj. opn. of Kennard, J.); College Hospital, Inc. v. Superior Court (1994) 8
Cal.4th 704, 721 (maj. opn. of Baxter, J.); Pearl v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd.
(2001) 26 Cal.4th 189, 196, fn. 3 (maj. opn. of Chin, J.).
3
The majority seeks to evade this basic constitutional tenet by characterizing
the constitutional issue as a “threshold” one (maj. opn., ante, at p. 5) and a
“predicate” (id. at p. 6, fn. 3, italics omitted) to reaching the statutory issue.  By so
reasoning, the majority places the cart before the horse.  In fact, the statutory issue
(Did the arrest violate Vehicle Code section 40302?) is a predicate for the
constitutional issue (If the arrest was bad, was the search nevertheless
constitutional?).  We need never reach the constitutional issue in this case because
we find defendant’s arrest did not violate Vehicle Code section 40302.  Only in a
case involving a statutory violation would we be required to continue the analysis
and decide whether the fruits of a search incident to an illegal arrest nevertheless
fell outside the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule.  I would await such a case.
The majority also finds justification for its approach in its desire to reassure
the Legislature, local governments and police departments that any efforts to craft
laws and regulations guiding police officer discretion when making arrests will not
result in the exclusion of relevant evidence as a sanction for their violation.  (Maj.
opn., ante, at pp. 6-7, fn. 3.)  But as this court has often observed, “ ‘The rendering
of advisory opinions falls within neither the functions nor the jurisdiction of this
court.’ ”  (Salazar v. Eastin (1995) 9 Cal.4th 836, 860.)  We need not reiterate here
the problems associated with providing gratuitous constitutional decisions.2  The
                                                
2 
Contrary to the majority’s suggestion (maj. opn., ante, at p. 7, fn. 3), in
neither California v. Greenwood (1988) 486 U.S. 35 nor Sibron v. New York
(1968) 392 U.S. 40, did the United States Supreme Court render a gratuitous
constitutional decision.  In both cases, the high court resolved a constitutional
issue that was necessary to decide the case.  The qualified immunity cases cited by
the majority (Wilson v. Layne (1999) 526 U.S. 603; County of Sacramento v.
Lewis (1998) 523 U.S. 833; maj. opn., ante, at p. 6, fn. 3) are also inapposite for in
neither case did the high court give priority to a constitutional question in
derogation of a statutory one.
4
ban on advisory opinions has existed from almost the beginning of our republic
(Hayburn’s Case (1792) 2 U.S. 409) to the present day (see, e.g., United States v.
Fruehauf (1961) 365 U.S. 146, 157; Coleman v. Department of Personnel
Administration (1991) 52 Cal.3d 1102, 1126).  Nor does it matter whom the
advisory opinion would benefit.  (Salazar v. Eastin, supra, at p. 860 [declining to
provide advisory opinion to assist the California State Board of Education];
Younger v. Superior Court (1978) 21 Cal.3d 102, 119 [declining to provide
advisory opinion to assist court clerks]; People ex rel. Lynch v. Superior Court
(1970) 1 Cal.3d 910, 912 [declining to provide advisory opinion to assist law
enforcement]; Denny’s, Inc. v. City of Agoura Hills (1997) 56 Cal.App.4th 1312,
1329, fn. 10 [declining to provide advisory opinion to assist a city in drafting a
permissible ordinance].)  Thus, that such constitutional guidance would be
potentially useful to legislative, governmental or law enforcement entities in
discharging their duties is an insufficient reason to disregard the prohibition on
advisory opinions.
Our decision finding defendant’s arrest valid under section 40302(a)
renders it unnecessary to consider whether a search incident to an arrest in
violation of a state law could nevertheless be constitutionally valid.  Accordingly,
I concur in the opinion with the exception of part II.B.1, about which I express no
opinion.
WERDEGAR, J.
1
CONCURRING AND DISSENTING OPINION BY BROWN, J.
As Justice Jackson warned in 1949:  “We must remember that the extent of
any privilege of search and seizure without warrant which we sustain, the officers
interpret and apply themselves and will push to the limit. . . .  [¶]  And we must
remember that the authority which we concede to conduct searches and seizures
without warrant may be exercised by the most unfit and ruthless officers as well as
by the fit and responsible, and resorted to in case of petty misdemeanors as well as
in the case of the gravest felonies.”  (Brinegar v. United States (1949) 338 U.S.
160, 182 (dis. opn. of Jackson, J.).)  From what we know of human nature, this
observation seems unassailable:  for every inch given, a mile will be taken.
This is a case about pushing to the limits and beyond.  The majority
concludes Vehicle Code section 40302, subdivision (a) (section 40302(a))1
permits the full custodial arrest of a bicyclist for failure to produce written or other
tangible proof of identity when the arresting officer, in the exercise of his
unfettered and unreviewable discretion, rejects proffered oral evidence.  I disagree
with the majority’s interpretation of section 40302(a).  Moreover, I am not
convinced the search incident to the custodial arrest—which is authorized solely
as a result of the officer’s decision to reject the offender’s oral identification—is
constitutionally permissible.
Mr. McKay was sentenced to a prison term for the trivial public offense of
riding a bicycle the wrong way on a residential street.  Well . . . not exactly.
                                                
1 
All statutory references are to the Vehicle Code unless otherwise indicated.
2
Deputy Valento observed Mr. McKay riding the “wrong way” on a
residential street—a minor violation of the Vehicle Code.2  It was, in fact, such a
minor offense that it hardly seems worth the officer’s time to issue a citation.
There is no indication Mr. McKay was creating any risk or threatening the public
safety in any way.  Not surprisingly, Mr. McKay did not have a driver’s license
with him.  No license is required to operate a bicycle.  He identified himself by
telling the deputy his name and date of birth.  Without making any effort to
confirm McKay’s identity, the officer decided instead to arrest him.  In California
an officer is required to arrest a person who “fails to present his driver’s license or
other satisfactory evidence of his identity for examination” after being arrested for
a violation of the Vehicle Code.  (§ 40302(a).)  Well . . . not exactly.3
So what makes such minor lawbreaking worthy of attention?  What if Mr.
McKay rides a bicycle because he does not have a driver’s license?  What if, being
a dedicated libertarian, he deliberately eschews all forms of government-issued
identification?  What if not being photographed is a tenet of his religious faith?
No matter.  The result according to the majority is that Mr. McKay may be
subjected to a full custodial arrest, have himself and his possessions thoroughly
searched, have contraband unrelated to the observed public offense or to concerns
about officer safety seized and used in the prosecution of a new crime.
                                                
2 
Section 21650.1 provides:  “A bicycle operated on a roadway, or the
shoulder of a highway, shall be operated in the same direction as vehicles are
required to be driven upon the roadway.”
3 
The Legislature recognizes that bike riders need not have a driver’s license.
“When a minor is cited for an offense not involving the driving of a motor vehicle,
the minor shall not be taken into custody pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section
40302 solely for failure to present a driver’s license.”  (§ 40302.5.)  Nor is the
arrest of an adult who does not have a license in his possession mandatory.  “If the
arrestee does not have a driver’s license or other satisfactory evidence of identity
in his or her possession, the officer may require the arrestee to place a right
thumbprint . . . on the notice to appear.”  (§ 40500, subd. (a).)
3
The majority’s approach is flawed in two ways.  First, its interpretation of
Atwater v. City of Lago Vista (2001) 532 U.S. 318 (Atwater) turns a California
procedural rule, enacted to lessen the degree of constitutional intrusion when
people are detained for minor offenses, into a general warrant—a result that
cannot be reconciled with the historical context of the Fourth Amendment.
Second, the majority interpretation of section 40302(a) makes the failure to carry
documentary proof of identification at all times an arrestable public offense—
solely at the officer’s discretion.  Since the failure to carry documentary proof of
identify is not itself a criminal offense, unreviewable discretion of such breadth
cannot be squared with concerns about notice, due process, and discriminatory
enforcement.
Thus, while I agree with the majority’s conclusion in part II.B.1 that
noncompliance with state procedures does not affect the validity of an arrest under
the federal Constitution without an independent violation of the Fourth
Amendment, I conclude that on these facts the arrest and search of defendant were
unreasonable and therefore unconstitutional.
The majority insists this result is compelled by Atwater.  I do not think so.
In Atwater, the high court ruled that an arrest for a very minor criminal offense is
not per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.  (Atwater, supra, 532 U.S.
at pp. 353-354.)  It is also true that the court had previously authorized broad
searches incident to arrest (see United States v. Robinson (1973) 414 U.S. 218
(Robinson); United States v. Gustafson (1973) 414 U.S. 260; New York v. Belton
(1981) 453 U.S. 454 (Belton)), and placed its imprimatur on pretextual traffic
stops (Whren v. United States (1996) 517 U.S. 806 (Whren)).
Nevertheless, the “touchstone” of the Fourth Amendment remains “ ‘the
reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of
a citizen’s personal security.’ ”  (Pennsylvania v. Mimms (1977) 434 U.S. 106,
4
108-109; see also United States v. Ramirez (1998) 523 U.S. 65, 71.)  “The
essential purpose of the proscriptions in the Fourth Amendment is to impose a
standard of ‘reasonableness’ upon the exercise of discretion by government
officials . . . ‘ “to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against
arbitrary invasions.” ’ ”  (Delaware v. Prouse (1979) 440 U.S. 648, 653-654, fn.
omitted (Prouse); Camara v. Municipal Court (1967) 387 U.S. 523, 528.)  “[T]he
central concern of the Fourth Amendment is to protect liberty and privacy from
arbitrary and oppressive interference by government officials.”  (United States v.
Ortiz (1975) 422 U.S. 891, 895.)
The Problem With General Warrants
“It is familiar history that indiscriminate searches and seizures conducted
under the authority of ‘general warrants’ were the immediate evils that motivated
the framing and adoption of the Fourth Amendment [to the United States
Constitution].”  (Payton v. New York (1980) 445 U.S. 573, 583, fn. omitted.)  In
1761, James Otis denounced the general warrant as “ ‘the worst instrument of
arbitrary power’ . . . [because it] placed ‘the liberty of every man in the hands of
every petty officer.’ ”  (Boyd v. U.S. (1886) 116 U.S. 616, 625, fn. omitted.)  John
Adams, after witnessing Otis’s famous oration, declared, “ ‘Then and there’ the
child Independence was born.”  (Ibid.)  At the very least, then and there the Fourth
Amendment was born.
General warrants were objectionable precisely because of their
indiscriminate character, and the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent
indiscriminate searches and seizures conducted by petty officials with unfettered
discretion.  The framers sought to preclude “the petty tyranny of unregulated
rummagers.”  (Amsterdam, Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment (1974) 58
Minn. L.R. 349, 416.)
5
The first clause of the Fourth Amendment issues a global command:  “The
right of the people to be secure in their persons, house, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . .”  The second clause
—specifically prohibiting the issuance of a warrant except “upon probable cause,
supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be seized”—addresses the narrower
compass of traditional search warrants “for contraband, stolen goods, and the
like.”  (Amar, Fourth Amendment First Principles (1994) 107 Harv. L.R. 757,
765, fn. omitted.)  Its purpose was probably not to make warrants mandatory, but
to limit the opportunity of the executive to obtain warrants in the first place.  (See
Taylor, Two Studies in Constitutional Interpretation (1969) pp. 38-50.)
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s modern Fourth Amendment
jurisprudence gives new vigor to petty rummagers.  In analyzing searches incident
to arrest, the court has tended to equate probable cause with reasonableness, but
these terms “serve distinct functions, which are lost by homogenization of the
legal vocabulary.”  (Gramenos v. Jewel Companies, Inc. (7th Cir. 1986) 797 F.2d
432, 442.)  In Whren, supra, 517 U.S. 806, Justice Scalia authored a unanimous
opinion in which the Supreme Court ruled that when a police officer observes a
traffic violation, stopping the vehicle is reasonable and the officer’s subjective
motivation plays no part in the Fourth Amendment analysis.  (Id. at pp. 810, 813.)
Whren essentially legitimized pretextual stops—the sine qua non of unjustified
and arbitrary law enforcement.  A pretext stop occurs when “the justification
proffered by the State for an arrest is legally sufficient, but where the arresting
officer was in fact making the arrest to search the arrestee incident to arrest for a
reason which was legally insufficient to support the arrest.”  (Burkoff, The Pretext
Search Doctrine:  Now You See It, Now You Don't (1984) 17 U. Mich. J.L. Reform
523, 523.)
6
The court has clearly seen the need to curb police discretion only when law
enforcement agents search and seize without probable cause (Prouse, supra, 440
U.S. at p. 663), and when police operate under vague enforcement standards which
confer a virtually unrestrained power to arrest.  (Kolender v. Lawson (1983) 461
U.S. 352, 360 (Kolender).)  In Prouse, an officer randomly stopped the defendant
to check his driver’s license and registration.  The United States Supreme Court
held that subjecting drivers to random checks, without reasonable suspicion, is
unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.  (Prouse, at p. 663.)  The Prouse
court could not “conceive of any legitimate basis upon which a patrolman could
decide that stopping a particular driver for a spot check would be more productive
than stopping any other driver.  [Moreover,] [t]his kind of standardless and
unconstrained discretion is the evil the Court has discerned when in previous cases
it has insisted that the discretion of the official in the field be circumscribed, at
least to some extent.”  (Id. at p. 661.)  Whren distinguished Prouse on the ground
that the spot-checking officer did not have “ ‘probable cause to believe that a
driver [was] violating any one of the multitude of applicable traffic and equipment
regulations’ ” (Whren, supra, 517 U.S. at p. 817), whereas in Whren, the arresting
officer did have probable cause to believe that the defendant had violated a traffic
law.
Probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred does not
adequately distinguish Whren, Atwater and the case at hand from Prouse,
however.  The United States Supreme Court purportedly believes that “ ‘observed
[traffic] violations’ . . . afford the ‘ “quantum of individualized suspicion” ’
necessary to ensure that police discretion is sufficiently constrained.”  (Whren,
supra, 517 U.S. at pp. 817-818.)  In reality, an officer’s discretion in deciding
whom to stop is not constrained at all by a probable cause prerequisite because the
officer need only point to a minor traffic violation to negate a claim of unfettered
7
arbitrariness.  (1 LaFave, Search and Seizure (3d ed. 2002) § 1.4, p. 123.)  Due to
the widespread violation of minor traffic laws, an officer’s discretion is still as
wide as the driving population is large.
In the pervasively regulatory state, police are authorized to arrest for
thousands of petty malum prohibitum “crimes”—many too trivial even to be
honestly labeled infractions.  They are nevertheless public offenses for which a
violator may be arrested.  Since this indiscriminate power to arrest brings with it a
virtually limitless power to search, the result is the inevitable recrudescence of the
general warrant.  (Salken, The General Warrant of the Twentieth Century?  A
Fourth Amendment Solution to Unchecked Discretion to Arrest for Traffic
Offenses (1997) 16 Pace L.Rev. 97, 146.)
An officer’s observation of a very minor offense authorizes him to stop the
car (Whren, supra, 517 U.S. at p. 817) or bicycle (United States v. McFadden (2d
Cir. 2001) 238 F.3d 198), arrest the driver or rider (Atwater, supra, 532 U.S. at
p. 354; McFadden, at p. 204), search the driver or rider (Robinson, supra, 414 U.S.
at p. 235), search the entire passenger compartment of the car including any
package inside (Belton, supra, 453 U.S. at p. 460), impound the car and inventory
all of its contents (Colorado v. Bertine (1987) 479 U.S. 367, 374), and imprison
the offender for up to 48 hours (Atwater, at p. 352; County of Riverside v.
McLaughlin (1991) 500 U.S. 44, 56).
Thus, after Atwater, the notion that “[a]n individual operating or traveling
in an automobile does not lose all reasonable expectation of privacy simply
because the automobile and its use are subject to government regulation” (Prouse,
supra, 440 U.S. at p. 662) is simply no longer true.  In fact, the same rules
apparently apply to those who walk, bicycle, rollerblade, skateboard, or propel a
scooter.  Probable cause is ubiquitous.
8
Given the pervasiveness of such minor offenses and the ease with which
law enforcement agents may uncover them in the conduct of virtually everyone,4
the probable cause requirement is so diluted it ceases to matter, “for . . . there
exists ‘a power that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty
officer,’ ” precisely the kind of arbitrary authority which gave rise to the Fourth
Amendment.  (1 LaFave, Search and Seizure, supra, § 1.4(e), p. 123, quoting 2
Wroth & Zobel, Legal Papers of John Adams (1965) 141-142; see People v.
Superior Court (Simon) (1972) 7 Cal.3d 186, 205-206 (Simon).)
The Problem With Vagueness
The problem of arbitrariness is compounded in circumstances like these
where the enforcement standard is impermissibly vague.  A statute that either
forbids or requires the doing of an act in “terms so vague that men of common
intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application
violates the first essential of due process of law.”  (Connally v. General Const. Co.
(1926) 269 U.S. 385, 391.)  The basic premise of the void-for-vagueness doctrine
is that “[n]o one may be required at peril of life, liberty or property to speculate as
to the meaning of penal statutes.”  (Lanzetta v. New Jersey (1939) 306 U.S. 451,
                                                
4 
In a 1993 study conducted by the United States Department of
Transportation, 50 percent of all vehicles monitored (71 percent on urban
interstates and 80 percent on rural interstates) were violating the speed limit.  (U.S.
Dept. of Transportation, National Maximum Speed Limit–Fiscal Year 1993:
Travel Speeds, Enforcement Efforts, and Speed-Related Highway Safety Statistics
(Oct. 1995) tables 1, 3.)  Add to this the traffic enforcement judgment calls—
following too closely, touching lane divider lines, failing to signal, driving too
slowly, and driving exactly the speed limit when an officer deems the speed unsafe
for the conditions—and it becomes clear this is a game the police invariably win.
In fact, driving in accordance with all traffic regulations can also be considered a
suspicious circumstance.  (See, e.g., United States v. Smith (11th Cir. 1986) 799
F.2d 704, 706-707 [criticizing use of drug courier profile that included “driving in
accordance with all traffic regulations” as a factor].)   
9
453.)  In the Fourth Amendment context, constitutional reasonableness should
“encompass procedural regularity as well as substantive fairness” and, as these
facts illustrate, the two are often “tightly intertwined.”  (Amar, Fourth Amendment
First Principles, supra, 107 Harv. L.R. at pp. 808-809.)
In California, a Vehicle Code offender is generally arrested pursuant to
section 40300 et seq.  For most violations, the Vehicle Code, recognizing the
lesser degree of criminality associated with traffic violations, expresses a
preference for citing and releasing the offender.  (§§ 40303, 40304, 40500.)
However, if the offender fails to present his “driver’s license or other satisfactory
evidence of his identity for examination,” the officer may bring the offender
before a magistrate, except in the case of a minor.  (§§ 40302, 40302.5.)  Here,
defendant was arrested pursuant to section 40302 because he failed, in the
majority’s view, to present satisfactory evidence of his identity.
The majority correctly points out that “presenting a driver’s license” or its
functional equivalent avoids an intrusive custodial arrest under section 40302, “so
long as the [identification] is current, valid, and raises no suspicion that it has been
altered or falsified.”  (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 23.)  I disagree, however, with the
majority’s treatment of “ ‘other satisfactory evidence,’ ” namely, proffered oral
identification.  (Id. at pp. 23-26.)  Effectively drafting a blueprint for arbitrary
enforcement, the majority “reserves wide discretion to the officer to determine
what [oral] evidence is satisfactory” and refuses to “review an officer’s decision to
reject oral evidence of identification, since that decision will be based entirely on
the officer’s assessment of the offender’s credibility—an assessment involving
intangible factors that may be difficult to reproduce in the courtroom.”  (Id. at p.
29.)
The principal vice is that the discretion granted to the arresting officer by
the majority is impermissibly vague under Kolender, supra, 461 U.S. 352.  The
10
defendant in Kolender was convicted under Penal Code section 647, subdivision
(e), which required that persons who loiter or wander on the streets provide
“credible and reliable” identification when asked by an officer.  (Kolender, at
p. 353.)  State decisional authority defined “ ‘credible and reliable’ ” identification
as “ ‘carrying reasonable assurance that the identification is authentic and
providing means for later getting in touch with the person who has identified
himself.’ ”  (Id. at p. 357.)  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the
statute violated the Fourth Amendment’s proscription against unreasonable
searches and seizures because it contained “a vague enforcement standard”
susceptible to “arbitrary enforcement” and failed to give “fair and adequate notice
of the type of conduct prohibited.”  (Kolender, at p. 355.)  The United States
Supreme Court agreed, noting the most important aspect of the vagueness doctrine
is not actual notice but the “ ‘other principle element of the doctrine—the
requirement that a legislature establish minimal guidelines to govern law
enforcement.’ ”  (Id. at p. 358.)  The Supreme Court held California’s
interpretation of the statute was unconstitutionally vague under the Fourteenth
Amendment’s due process clause, “ ‘confer[ring] on police a virtually unrestrained
power to arrest and charge persons with a violation.’ ”  (Kolender, at p. 360.)
The majority’s grant of discretion to law enforcement under section 40302
and subsequent refusal to review that discretion fall squarely within the central
concern in Kolender—“the full discretion accorded to the police to determine
whether the suspect has provided a ‘credible and reliable’ identification
necessarily ‘entrust[s] lawmaking “to the moment-to-moment judgment of the
policeman on his beat” ’ . . . [and] ‘furnishes a convenient tool for “harsh and
discriminatory enforcement by local prosecuting officials, against particular
groups deemed to merit their displeasure.” ’ ”  (Kolender, supra, 461 U.S. at p.
360.)
11
The Court of Appeal in People v. Monroe (1993) 12 Cal.App.4th 1174,
1191 (Monroe) rejected a similar vagueness attack on section 40302 by
distinguishing the statute at issue in Kolender on the ground that section 40302 is
procedural, not substantive.  The validity of such a distinction is not self-evident.
(Monroe, supra, 12 Cal.App.4th 1174, 1203-1204 (dis. opn. of Smith, J.).)
Whether a statute is labeled procedural or substantive, it must provide “sufficiently
definite guidelines for the police” to prevent “arbitrary and discriminatory
enforcement.”  (Tobe v. City of Santa Ana (1995) 9 Cal.4th 1069, 1106-1107; cf.
Hudson v. United States (1997) 522 U.S. 93, 99 [in assessing application of ex
post facto prohibition against increased punishment, courts must consider not only
legislative intent to label penalty criminal or civil, but also punitive purpose or
effect].)  Even assuming the procedural/substantive distinction could be
determinative, it should not affect the analysis in this case.  Although some cases
have held that section 40302 is not a substantive criminal statute and cannot
provide probable cause to arrest (Simon, supra, 7 Cal.3d at pp. 200-201), the facts
of this case prove otherwise.  Defendant was not legally required to have a driver’s
license in his possession, since only motor vehicle drivers, not bicyclists, are
obligated to possess a driver’s license while on the roadways.  (§ 12951.)  The
majority asserts that both motor vehicle drivers and bicyclists “are required to
produce satisfactory evidence of identity for examination when stopped for a
violation of the law.”  (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 30.)  The critical difference, however,
is that the motor vehicle driver’s  obligation to possess a driver’s license stems
from substantive law; the bicyclist’s or pedestrian’s obligation derives solely from
section 40302.  In this way, as applied to defendant and any other bicyclist or
pedestrian, section 40302 is both substantive and procedural in nature.  (Cf.
Monroe, supra, 12 Cal.App.4th 1174.)  Therefore, Kolender is problematic to the
majority’s grant of “wide discretion to the officer to determine what evidence is
12
satisfactory.”  (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 29.)  “Although the initial detention is
justified, the State fails to establish standards by which the officers may determine
whether the suspect has complied with the subsequent identification requirement.”
(Kolender, supra, 461 U.S. at p. 361.)
With this in mind, I would adopt an “objective reasonableness” standard
that requires the arresting officer to articulate specific “ ‘facts, which taken
together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant [the
additional] intrusion’ of a full custodial arrest.”  (Atwater, supra, 532 U.S. 318,
366 (dis. opn. O’Connor, J.); see also State v. Walker (Tenn. 2000) 12 S.W.3d
460, 466 & fn. 12 [holding officer lacked objectively reasonable basis for rejecting
oral identification offered by defendant under a cite-and-release statute “similar in
many respects to our own”].)  This does not mean that an officer will be obligated
to accept oral identification any time that it is given.  The officer must still weigh
the sufficiency of the identification with a corroborating source.  If the proffered
oral identification is not corroborated, the identification is unsatisfactory.  “[T]his
‘discretion,’ if one may use that term, is not the complete unbounded discretion of
which the majority speak.  It is a discretion which can be abused if the officer acts
unreasonably or arbitrarily.”  (Monroe, supra, 12 Cal.App.4th 1174, 1200 (dis.
opn. of Smith, J.).)
The Virtue of Reasonableness
In recent years, Fourth Amendment analysis has attained a kind of perverse,
irrational fixity:  probable cause equals reasonableness.  Only by insisting
probable cause and reasonableness are synonymous can courts avoid the socially
costly consequences of the exclusionary rule.  For this false peace, we pay too
high a price.  We are asked to surrender our right to be protected from
unreasonable intrusions.  Ironically, the severe sanction of the exclusionary rule
13
has not discouraged unreasonable searches; it has, instead, shrunk the
constitutional protection against them.  (See, e.g., United States v. Castro (5th Cir.
1999) 166 F.3d 728, 735 (dis. opn. of Politz, J.) [“technical distortions and
expansion of exclusionary rule exceptions threaten to make the fourth amendment
a hollow shell of its former self”].)  The police have a difficult, dangerous and
often thankless job.  Trying to combat crime and violence and protect the public
without losing the public’s trust is a formidable challenge.  In the cause of public
trust, the exclusionary rule has been at best counterproductive and at worst
pernicious.  Looking beyond probable cause and viewing reasonableness as a
mandate of independent vitality restores some measure of constitutional balance.
Probable cause and reasonable conduct are not the same thing.  Requiring the
police to behave reasonably—i.e., to assess their conduct in light of all the
surrounding circumstances—is not asking too much.  It is the same burden we
impose on every adult.  The Constitution demands no less of the government.
The high court has historically applied such a reasonableness test—
balancing the individual’s and the state’s interests—notwithstanding the existence
of probable cause.  In a somewhat analogous case, the court held that a nighttime
entry into a house to arrest a drunk driving suspect was unreasonable even though
the officers had both probable cause and a legitimate claim of exigent
circumstances.  (Welsh v. Wisconsin (1984) 466 U. S. 740.)  The court found the
intrusion unreasonable solely on the basis of the minor nature of the offense.
“[T]he penalty that may attach to any particular offense seems to provide the
clearest and most consistent indication of the State’s interest in arresting
individuals suspected of committing that offense.”  (Welsh, at p. 754, fn. 14.)
Given this expression of the state’s interest, the court ruled a warrantless home
arrest could not be sustained simply because the offender’s blood-alcohol level
might have dissipated while police obtained a warrant.  (Ibid.)
14
A similar traditional Fourth Amendment balancing of the legitimate
governmental interests in arrest against the degree of intrusiveness upon an
individual’s privacy would reveal the unreasonableness of defendant’s arrest and
search in this case.  (See Wyoming v. Houghton (1999) 526 U.S. 295, 300
[balancing “on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes upon an individual's
privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of
legitimate governmental interests”].)5
Here, the state has classified the riding of a bicycle on the wrong side of the
road, like most other Vehicle Code offenses, as an infraction.  “An infraction is
not punishable by imprisonment.”  (Pen. Code, § 19.6.)  It is a fine-only offense
subject to the Vehicle Code’s cite-and-release “honor system, requiring the good
faith and cooperation of the person cited.”  (Simon, supra, 7 Cal.3d at p. 201.)  “If
the State has decided that a fine, and not imprisonment, is the appropriate
punishment for an offense, the State’s interest in taking a person suspected of
committing that offense into custody is surely limited, at best.”  (Atwater, supra,
532 U.S. 318, 365 (dis. opn. O’Connor, J.).)
Nor do I believe that the state’s interest is significantly bolstered in this
case because defendant failed to present documentary identification.  The only
logical reasons to confirm an offender’s identity or guarantee a court appearance
                                                
5 
The Atwater majority suggests that state legislatures are in the best position
to cure concerns about discriminatory enforcement.  They can constrain officer
discretion by statute.  However, the fines and forfeitures collected for minor
violations are a source of revenue for state and local governments.  Whether their
interest is in revenue or aggressive community policing, governments have no
incentive to leave people alone.  That is why we have a Constitution.  “[The
courts] are entrusted with [duties] as guardians of the Bill of Rights to apply
limitations upon the legislature’s power.”  (United States v. Ferguson (6th Cir.
1993) 8 F.3d 385, 398 (dis. opn. of Jones, J.).)
15
in the first place are to ensure that (1) the offender is held personally accountable
for the traffic offense by paying the applicable fine and (2) the state actually
receives the payment.  What the majority fails to acknowledge is that “[i]n today’s
computer age the officer in the field has a host of readily available methods of
verifying the identity of a person” in an objective manner.  (Monroe, supra, 12
Cal.App.4th 1174, 1199 (dis. opn. Smith, J.).)  Attempting to verify oral
identification would also be “[c]onsistent with California Highway Patrol policy”
to avoid arresting a driver for merely failing to have a driver’s license, so requiring
officers to corroborate oral identification before arrest should not be problematic.
(People v. Grant (1990) 217 Cal.App.3d 1451, 1455.)  For instance, patrol cars are
now equipped with laptop computers, enabling an officer to quickly confirm
proffered oral identification.  (See, e.g., U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics, Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics, 1999:
Data for Individual State and Local Agencies of 100 or More Officers (Nov. 2000)
pp. vi, xvi, 157-158, 193-194, 205-206, 242.)  Alternatively, the officer could
relay the information to the dispatcher, who, in turn, could verify the offender’s
identity.  Or, the officer could “ask another person at the scene whose identity has
been verified to vouch for the citee’s identity.”  (Monroe, supra, 12 Cal.App.4th
1174, 1199 (dis. opn. of Smith, J.).)  All of these techniques allow the arresting
officer to corroborate the proffered oral identification or reject it on objective,
rather than subjective, grounds.
Here, defendant furnished his name and date of birth to the officer.  Only
after arresting, handcuffing, searching and placing defendant in the back of the
patrol car did the officer even attempt to corroborate defendant’s oral
identification on the laptop computer mounted in his patrol car.  As it turned out,
defendant’s oral identification was quite accurate.  When the means are readily
available, an officer’s failure to at least attempt to corroborate the proffered oral
16
identification before placing the offender in custodial arrest is unreasonable per se.
(See State v. Satterwhite (Ohio Ct.App. 1997) 704 N.E.2d 259, 261 [holding that
officer’s failure to even attempt to verify the defendant’s identity before making
an arrest under a cite-and-release statute was objectively unreasonable].)
An objective reasonableness standard of review is also in accord with the
Vehicle Code’s cite-and-release “honor system.”  (Simon, supra, 7 Cal.3d at p.
201.)  The entire legislative framework operates on the assumption that the
offender will either honor his “promise to appear” in court or will mail the fine
payment.  (§ 40500 et seq.)  Likewise, when an offender is stopped on a highway,
he is trusted to furnish a valid driver’s license or accurate oral identification.  Oral
identification may be false; documentary evidence may be fraudulent.  In either
case, the officer must, after corroboration, trust the citee’s proffered identification
or be able to articulate an objective reason for disbelieving it.  The absence of  a
license—particularly in circumstances where no license is required—does not
fatally undermine the violator’s credibility.  (See Simon, supra, 7 Cal.3d at p.
195.)
In the unlikely event that the officer has no readily available way to
corroborate the offender’s identity, I, like the majority, would hold that the
officer’s judgment in believing or disbelieving the offender is largely in the
officer’s discretion.
Every court that has approved sweeping search powers in conjunction with
broad authority to arrest for minor offenses has acknowledged the potential for
abuse.  Of course, everyone who has not spent the last 20 years sealed in an ivory
tower knows the problem is real.  (But see Atwater, supra, 532 U.S. at pp. 351,
353 & fn. 12.)  A Gallup Poll released in December 1999 indicated more than half
of the Americans polled believed police actively engage in racial profiling, and 81
percent of them said they disapprove of the practice.  (U.S. Dept. of Justice, A
17
Resource Guide on Racial Profiling Data Collection Systems:  Promising Practices
and Lessons Learned (Nov. 2000) p. 4 (DOJ).)  Anecdotal evidence and empirical
studies confirm that what most people suspect and what many people of color
know from experience is a reality:  there is an undeniable correlation between law
enforcement stop-and-search practices and the racial characteristics of the driver.
(See DOJ, supra, at p. 5; Brazil & Berry, Color of Driver is Key to Stops in I-95
Videos, Orlando Sentinel Tribune (Aug. 23, 1992) p. A1; Harris, The Stories, The
Statistics and the Law:  Why “Driving While Black” Matters (1999) 84 Minn. L.R.
265, 279, 280-281, 295.)
Empirical data on stop-and-search practices in Maryland, New Jersey and
New York also confirm statistically significant disparities between the rates at
which people of color are stopped and searched and the rates for Whites in similar
circumstances.  (DOJ, supra, at pp. 7-9.)  Nor has California been immune.
Questions have been raised about the disparate impact of stop-and-search
procedures of the California Highway Patrol.  (McCormick et al., Racial Bias in
CHP Searches, S.F. Chronicle (July 15, 2001) p. A-1.)  The practice is so
prevalent, it has a name:  “Driving while Black.”
Both the Atwater majority and the majority here suggest pretextual stops
can be adequately remedied by challenging them as “being based on invalid
criteria, such as race, religion, or other arbitrary classification.”6  (Maj. opn, ante,
                                                
6
I am of the opinion that the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness
requirement, when read as broadly as it was written, includes within it a distaste
for the discriminatory evils that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment was designed to prevent.  Moreover, one need not resort to the equal
protection clause to challenge pretextual police conduct, when such inequitable
behavior is inherently “unreasonable” under the Fourth Amendment.  After all,
“[t]he security of one’s privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police—which is
(footnote continued on next page)
18
at pp. 26-27.)  Such a suggestion overlooks the fact that most victims of pretextual
stops will barely have enough money to pay the traffic citation, much less be able
to afford an attorney.  Even if a pretextual stop victim is able to convince an
attorney to handle the case pro bono, the defendant’s chances of even obtaining
discovery are slight, for he must first make “a credible showing of different
treatment of similarly situated persons [of other races]” (United States v.
Armstrong (1996) 517 U.S. 456, 470)—a hurdle that has proved to be higher in the
lower courts than one would initially suspect.  (See, e.g., United States v. Bell (8th
Cir. 1996) 86 F.3d 820, 823 [holding that the defendant did not meet the
Armstrong standard because he did not present evidence about the number of
White bicyclists who ride their bicycles between sunset and sunrise, although he
did show that (1) all persons arrested for riding their bicycle without a headlamp
that month were Black and that (2) 98 percent of all bicycles in the Des Moines,
Iowa, area, populated predominantly by White people, did not have headlamps].)
Such evidence will be hard to come by, not because there is “a dearth of horribles
demanding redress,” but because, logically, such incidents are rarely reported.
(Atwater, supra, 532 U.S. at p. 353.)  Most pretextual stops and searches will
prove fruitless for the police; they will have no evidence to justify an arrest and
will simply release the victim.  Although a cognizable injury has occurred, the
victim will have little incentive to spend the time, money, and energy required to
pursue such a claim.  Additionally, the victim of such an incident may not be
entitled to relief “beyond barring prosecution of the traffic charge.”  (1 LaFave,
                                                                                                                                                
(footnote continued from previous page)
at the core of the Fourth Amendment—is basic to a free society.”  (Wolf v.
Colorado (1949) 338 U.S. 25, 27, italics added.)
19
Search and Seizure (2002 supp.) § 1.4, p. 25.)  Quite simply, the equal protection
clause is of little help to victims of pretextual stops and searches.
“The insult remains.”  (State v. Overby (N.D. 1999) 590 N.W.2d 703, 708
(conc. opn. of Vande Walle, C.J.).)  To dismiss people who have suffered real
constitutional harms with remedies that are illusory or nonexistent allows courts to
be complacent about bigotry while claiming compassion for its victims.  Judges go
along with questionable police conduct, proclaiming that their hands are tied.
(United States v. Herring (D. Or. 1999) 35 F.Supp.2d 1253, 1258.)  If our hands
really are tied, it behooves us to gnaw through the ropes.
CONCLUSION
In the spring of 1963, civil rights protests in Birmingham united this
country in a new way.  Seeing peaceful protesters jabbed with cattle prods, held at
bay by snarling police dogs, and flattened by powerful streams of water from fire
hoses galvanized the nation.  Without being constitutional scholars, we understood
violence, coercion, and oppression.  We understood what constitutional limits are
designed to restrain.  We reclaimed our constitutional aspirations.  What is
happening now is more subtle, more diffuse, and less visible, but it is only a
difference in degree.  If harm is still being done to people because they are black,
or brown, or poor, the oppression is not lessened by the absence of television
cameras.
I do not know Mr. McKay’s ethnic background.  One thing I would bet on:
he was not riding his bike a few doors down from his home in Bel Air, or
Brentwood, or Rancho Palos Verdes—places where no resident would be arrested
for riding the “wrong way” on a bicycle whether he had his driver’s license or not.
Well . . . it would not get anyone arrested unless he looked like he did not
20
belong in the neighborhood.  That is the problem.  And it matters.  “The rule of
law implies justice and equality in its application.”  (Papachristou v. City of
Jacksonville (1972) 405 U.S. 156, 171.)  If we are committed to a rule of law that
applies equally to “minorities as well as majorities, to the poor as well as the rich,”
we cannot countenance standards that permit and encourage discriminatory
enforcement.  (Ibid.)
According to Atwater, a full custodial arrest for a trivial infraction is
constitutionally permissible.  Broad powers to search incident to an arrest have a
long common law and constitutional history.  (Taylor, Two Studies in
Constitutional Interpretation, supra, at pp. 28-29.)  However, if full custodial
arrest is authorized for trivial offenses, the power to search should be constrained.
If broad searches incident to arrest are permitted, the power to effect a full
custodial arrest should be limited.  To permit both full custodial arrest for minor
offenses and virtually unlimited authority to search incident to such an arrest
allows officers to push past the boundaries of the Fourth Amendment.  When
officers may arrest for minor offenses, conduct virtually unlimited searches, and
are granted unbounded and unreviewable discretion to select the target of such
enforcement activity, the resulting search cannot be constitutionally permissible.
It is certainly possible to argue that the rationale of Atwater can be
extended to encompass what happened here.  The question is why we should do
so.  It is clear the Legislature could not authorize the kind of standardless
discretion the court confers in this case.  Why should the court permit officers to
do indirectly what the Constitution directly prohibits?  How can such an action be
deemed constitutionally reasonable?  And if we insist it is, can we make any
credible claim to a commitment to equal justice and equal treatment under law?
Well . . . .  No.  Not exactly.
BROWN, J.
1
See next page for addresses and telephone numbers for counsel who argued in Supreme Court.
Name of Opinion People v. McKay
__________________________________________________________________________________
Unpublished Opinion
Original Appeal
Original Proceeding
Review Granted XXX 82 Cal.App.4th 1279
Rehearing Granted
__________________________________________________________________________________
Opinion No. S091421
Date Filed: March 4, 2002
__________________________________________________________________________________
Court: Superior
County: Los Angeles
Judge: Deanne Smith Myers
__________________________________________________________________________________
Attorneys for Appellant:
Richard L. Fitzer, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Attorneys for  Respondent:
Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, David P. Druliner and Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorneys
General, Marc E. Turchin, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Carol Wendelin Pollack and Pamela C.
Hamanaka, Assistant Attorneys General, Jaime L. Fuster, Steven D. Matthews and Thomas C. Hsieh,
Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
2
Counsel who argued in Supreme Court (not intended for publication with opinion):
Richard L. Fitzer
California Appellate Project
520 South Grand Avenue, 4th Floor
Los Angeles, CA  90017
(213) 243-0300
Thomas C. Hsieh
Deputy Attorney General
300 South Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA  90013
(213) 576-1335