COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 

Present: Judges Willis, Annunziata and Senior Judge Cole 

Argued at Richmond, Virginia 

LLOYD JORDAN BYERS, JR. 

v. Record No. 0064-95-2 MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY 

 JUDGE ROSEMARIE ANNUNZIATA 

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA JANUARY 30, 1996 

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF POWHATAN COUNTY 

Thomas V. Warren, Judge 

 Michael J. Brickhill, for appellant. 

 H. Elizabeth Shaffer, Assistant Attorney 

General (James S. Gilmore, III, Attorney 

General, on brief), for appellee. 

 Following a bench trial, the appellant, Lloyd J. Byers, Jr. 

("Byers"), was convicted of operating a motor vehicle after 

having been declared an habitual offender. The court sentenced 

Byers to six months in jail, suspending all but sixty days, and a 

$100.00 fine. On appeal, Byers contends that the police violated 

his Fourth Amendment rights by detaining and questioning him as a 

passenger in a motor vehicle stopped for speeding. Finding no 

error, we affirm Byers' conviction. 

 On the morning of May 27, 1994, Captain Vernon Poe ("Poe") 

and Detective Gregory Neal ("Neal") of the Powhatan County 

Sheriff's Department were conducting narcotics surveillance on 

the high school parking lot. The officers were watching for 

school-age children involved in illegal activity. The officers 

 

 *Pursuant to Code § 17-116.010 this opinion is not 

designated for publication. 
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noticed a car with Georgia plates parked across the street at a 

car wash. Byers appeared to be working under the car's hood, 

while a woman sat inside the car. The officers had not seen any 

school children around the car, but the out-of-state vehicle 

seemed unusual to them. 

 Shortly thereafter, the car rapidly left the car wash. The 

officers decided to follow the car, intending to ascertain its 

owner. Neal testified that he saw Byers driving. 

 The officers lost sight of the car for a minute or so, but 

Poe soon spotted it, paced it at sixty-five miles per hour in a 

fifty-five mile per hour zone, and stopped the driver for 

speeding. Poe identified the driver as the woman who had been 

with Byers at the car wash. Poe confined his investigation to 

the woman and the car. 

 Neal approached Byers and asked to see his license. Since 

Byers was then in the passenger seat, Neal suspected that he had 

been driving without a license. Byers complied, and Neal ran a 

license check which determined that Byers was an habitual 

offender in Virginia. Neal arrested Byers and advised him of his 

Miranda rights. Byers signed a waiver and told Neal that his 

girlfriend's car had been acting up and that he only drove it a 

short distance to see if it was running properly. 

 Byers objected to the evidence obtained from the stop, 

arguing that the stop was invalid under the Fourth Amendment and 

that the police were not justified in interrogating the car's 
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passenger. However, the court concluded that Poe executed a 

valid stop and that Neal was justified in questioning Byers 

because of the apparent seat switch. 

 On appeal, Byers concedes that the stop of the vehicle in 

which he was a passenger was lawful. However, he argues that 

Neal's questioning of him was an unlawful seizure, the evidence 

from which should have been suppressed. The Commonwealth argues 

that the seizure was legitimate since Neal had reasonable 

suspicion to believe that Byers had violated the law. 

 An officer needs only an "articulable and reasonable 

suspicion that [the] motorist is unlicensed . . . or an occupant 

is otherwise subject to seizure for [a] violation of [the] law." 

Brown v. Commonwealth, 17 Va. App. 694, 697-98, 440 S.E.2d 619, 

621 (1994) (quoting Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 663 (1979), 

and citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)). In determining 

whether Neal had a reasonable suspicion that Byers was unlicensed 

or otherwise violating the law, this Court looks at the totality 

of the circumstances, viewing the "facts objectively through the 

eyes of a reasonable police officer with the knowledge, training, 

and experience of the investigating officer." Murphy v. 

Commonwealth, 9 Va. App. 139, 144, 384 S.E.2d 125, 128 (1989). 

We must take "into account that `trained law enforcement officers 

may be able to perceive and articulate meaning in given conduct 

which would be wholly innocent to the untrained observer.'" 

Brown, 17 Va. App. at 698, 440 S.E.2d at 621 (quoting Castaneda 
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v. Commonwealth, 7 Va. App. 574, 580, 376 S.E.2d 82, 85 (1989) 

(en banc)). 

 Although Neal did not actually see Byers switch from the 

driver's seat to the passenger's seat, he knew the switch had 

occurred and articulated this observation as the basis for his 

suspicion, stating "I knew that he had been driving and now that 

he wasn't driving, I suspected him not to have a license." We 

conclude that Neal had reasonable suspicion to warrant the 

seizure and that Byers was lawfully detained and questioned about 

his driver's license. 

 Accordingly, Byers' conviction is affirmed. 

Affirmed.