Source: http://www.joeldufresnecase.com/supreme-court-opinions-federal/fourth-amendment/new-york-v-class
Timestamp: 2019-01-21 12:09:49
Document Index: 416348453

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 375', '§ 265', '§ 571', '§ 565', '§ 155', '§ 140', '§ 156', '§ 140']

New York v. Class - Joel Dufresne Case
On the afternoon of May 11, 1981, New York City police officers Lawrence Meyer and William McNamee observed respondent [p108] Benigno Class driving above the speed limit in a car with a cracked windshield. Both driving with a cracked windshield and speeding are traffic violations under New York law. See N.Y.Veh. & Traf.Law §§ 375(22), 1180(d) (McKinney 1970). Respondent followed the officers' ensuing directive to pull over. Respondent then emerged from his car and approached Officer Meyer. Officer McNamee went directly to respondent's vehicle. Respondent provided Officer Meyer with a registration certificate and proof of insurance, but stated that he had no driver's license.
After the state trial court denied a motion to suppress the gun as evidence, respondent was convicted of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree. See N.Y. Penal Law § 265.02(4) (McKinney 1980). The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court upheld the conviction without opinion. 97 App.Div.2d 741, 468 N.Y.S.2d 892 (1983). The New York Court of Appeals reversed. It reasoned that the police officer's "intrusion . . . was undertaken to obtain [p109] information and it exposed . . . hidden areas" of the car, and "therefore constituted a search." 63 N.Y.2d 491, 495, 472 N.E.2d 1009, 1011 (1984). Although it recognized that a search for a VIN generally involves a minimal intrusion because of its limited potential locations, and agreed that there is a compelling law enforcement interest in positively identifying vehicles involved in accidents or automobile thefts, the court thought it decisive that the facts of this case "reveal no reason for the officer to suspect other criminal activity [besides the traffic infractions] or to act to protect his own safety." Id. at 495-496, 472 N.E.2d at 1012. The state statutory provision that authorizes officers to demand that drivers reveal their VIN "provided no justification for the officer's entry of [respondent's] car." Id. at 497, 472 N.E.2d at 1013. If the officer had taken advantage of that statute and asked to see the VIN, respondent could have moved the papers away himself, and no intrusion would have occurred. In the absence of any justification for the search besides the traffic infractions, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that the gun must be excluded from evidence.
The opinion of the New York Court of Appeals mentions the New York Constitution but once, and then only in direct conjunction with the United States Constitution. 63 N.Y.2d at 493, 472 N.E.2d at 1010. Cf. Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1043 (1983). The opinion below makes use of both federal and New York cases in its analysis, generally citing both for the same proposition. See, e.g., 63 N.Y.2d at 494, 495, 472 N.E.2d at 1011. The opinion lacks the requisite "plain statement" that it rests on state grounds. [p110] Michigan v. Long, supra, at 1042, 1044. Accordingly, our holding in Michigan v. Long is directly applicable here:
The VIN consists of more than a dozen digits, unique to each vehicle and required on all cars and trucks. See 49 CFR § 571.115 (1984). The VIN is roughly analogous to a serial number, but it can be deciphered to reveal not only the place of the automobile in the manufacturer's production run but also the make, model, engine type, and place of manufacture of the vehicle. See § 565.4.
One has a lesser expectation of privacy in a motor vehicle because its function is transportation and it seldom [p113] serves as one's residence or as the repository of personal effects. A car has little capacity for escaping public scrutiny. It travels public thoroughfares where both its occupants and its contents are in plain view.
The factors that generally diminish the reasonable expectation of privacy in automobiles are applicable a fortiori to the VIN. As we have discussed above, the VIN plays an important part in the pervasive regulation by the government of the automobile. A motorist must surely expect that such regulation will on occasion require the State to determine the VIN of his or her vehicle, and the individual's reasonable expectation of privacy in the VIN is thereby diminished. This is especially true in the case of a driver who has committed a traffic violation. See Delaware v. Prouse, supra, at 659 ("The foremost method of enforcing traffic and vehicle safety regulations . . . is acting upon observed violations. Vehicle stops for traffic violations occur countless times each day; and on these occasions, licenses and registration papers are subject to inspection and drivers without them will be ascertained") (emphasis added). [p114] In addition, it is unreasonable to have an expectation of privacy in an object required by law to be located in a place ordinarily in plain view from the exterior of the automobile. The VIN's mandated visibility makes it more similar to the exterior of the car than to the trunk or glove compartment. The exterior of a car, of course, is thrust into the public eye, and thus to examine it does not constitute a "search." See Cardwell v. Lewis, supra, at 588-589. In sum, because of the important role played by the VIN in the pervasive governmental regulation of the automobile and the efforts by the Federal Government to ensure that the VIN is placed in plain view, we hold that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in the VIN.
The evidence that respondent sought to have suppressed was not the VIN, however, but a gun, the handle of which the officer saw from the interior of the car while reaching for the papers that covered the VIN. While the interior of an automobile is not subject to the same expectations of privacy that exist with respect to one's home, a car's interior as a whole is nonetheless subject to Fourth Amendment protection [p115] from unreasonable intrusions by the police. We agree with the New York Court of Appeals that the intrusion into that space constituted a "search." 63 N.Y.2d at 495, 472 N.E.2d at 1011. Cf. Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. at 653 ("[S]topping an automobile and detaining its occupants constitute a ‘seizure' . . . even though the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief"). We must decide, therefore, whether this search was constitutionally permissible.
Keeping the driver of a vehicle in the car during a routine traffic stop is probably the typical police practice. See D. Schultz & D. Hunt, Traffic Investigation and Enforcement 17 (1983). Nonetheless, out of a concern for the safety of the police, the Court has held that officers may, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, exercise their discretion to require a driver who commits a traffic violation to exit the vehicle even though they lack any particularized reason for believing the driver possesses a weapon. Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 [p116] U.S. 106, 108-111 (1977) (per curiam). While we impute to respondent no propensity for violence, and while we are conscious of the fact that respondent here voluntarily left the vehicle, the facts of this case may be used to illustrate one of the principal justifications for the discretion given police officers by Pennsylvania v. Mimms: while in the driver's seat, respondent had a loaded pistol at hand. Mimms allows an officer to guard against that possibility by requiring the driver to exit the car briefly. Clearly, Mimms also allowed the officers here to detain respondent briefly outside the car that he voluntarily exited while they completed their investigation.
Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 534-535, 536-637 (1967). And in justifying the particular intrusion, the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with [p117] rational inferences from those facts, justifiably warrant that intrusion.
When the officer's safety is less directly served by the detention, something more than objectively justifiable suspicion is necessary to justify the intrusion if the balance is to tip in favor of the legality of the governmental intrusion. In Pennsylvania v. Mimms, supra, at 107, the officers had personally observed the seized individual in the commission of a traffic offense before requesting that he exit his vehicle. In Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, 693 (1981), the officers had obtained a warrant to search the house that the person seized was leaving when they came upon him. While the facts in Pennsylvania v. Mimms and Michigan v. Summers differ in some respects from the facts of this case, the similarities are strong enough that the balancing of governmental interests against governmental intrusion undertaken in those cases is also appropriate here. All three of the factors involved in Mimms and Summers are present in this case: the safety of the officers was served by the governmental intrusion; the intrusion was minimal; and the search stemmed [p118] from some probable cause focusing suspicion on the individual affected by the search. Indeed, here the officers' probable cause stemmed from directly observing respondent commit a violation of the law.
United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 703 (1983), the conclusion that the search here was permissible follows. As we recognized in Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. at 658, the governmental interest in highway safety served by obtaining the VIN is of the first order, and the particular method of obtaining the VIN here was justified by a concern for the officers' safety. The "critical" issue of the intrusiveness of the government's action, United States v. Place, supra, at 722 (BLACKMUN, J., concurring in judgment), also here weighs in favor of allowing the search. The search was focused in its objective and no more intrusive than necessary to fulfill that objective. The search was far less intrusive than a formal arrest, which would have been permissible for a traffic offense under New York law, see N.Y.Veh. & Traf.Law § 155 (McKinney Supp.1986); N.Y.Crim.Proc.Law § 140.10(1) (McKinney 1981), and little more intrusive than a demand that respondent -- under the eyes of the officers -- move the papers himself. The VIN, which was the clear initial objective of the officer, is by law present in one of two locations -- either inside the doorjamb or atop the dashboard, and thus ordinarily in plain view of someone outside the automobile. Neither of those locations is subject to a reasonable expectation of privacy. The officer here checked both those locations, and only those two locations. The officer did not root about the interior of respondent's automobile before proceeding to examine the VIN. He did not reach into any compartments or open any containers. He did not even intrude into the interior at all until after he had checked the doorjamb for [p119] the VIN. When he did intrude, the officer simply reached directly for the unprotected space where the VIN was located to move the offending papers. We hold that this search was sufficiently unintrusive to be constitutionally permissible in light of the lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy in the VIN and the fact that the officers observed respondent commit two traffic violations. Any other conclusion would expose police officers to potentially grave risks without significantly reducing the intrusiveness of the ultimate conduct -- viewing the VIN -- which, as we have said, the officers were entitled to do as part of an undoubtedly justified traffic stop.
We note that our holding today does not authorize police officers to enter a vehicle to obtain a dashboard-mounted VIN when the VIN is visible from outside the automobile. If the VIN is in the plain view of someone outside the vehicle, there is no justification for governmental intrusion into the passenger compartment to see it. [*]
It is so ordered. [p120]
* Petitioner invites us to hold that respondent's status as an unlicensed driver deprived him of any reasonable expectations of privacy in the vehicle, because the officers would have been within their discretion to have prohibited respondent from driving the car away, to have impounded the car, and to have later conducted an inventory search thereof. Cf. South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364 (1976) (police may conduct inventory search of car impounded for multiple parking violations); Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431 (1984) (discussing the "inevitable discovery" exception to the exclusionary rule). Petitioner also argues that there can be no Fourth Amendment violation here, because the police could have arrested respondent, see N.Y.Veh. & Traf.Law § 156 (McKinney Supp.1986); N.Y.Crim.Proc.Law § 140.10(1) (McKinney 1981), and could then have searched the passenger compartment at the time of arrest, cf. New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981), or arrested respondent and searched the car after impounding it pursuant to the arrest, see Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433 (1973). We do not, however, reach those questions here.