Title: Moore v. Commonwealth
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 052619
State: Virginia
Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court
Date: November 3, 2006

Present:  Hassell, C.J., Lacy, Keenan, Kinser, Lemons, and Agee, 
JJ., and Carrico, S.J. 
 
DAVID LEE MOORE 
 
 
 
OPINION BY 
v.  Record No. 052619 
SENIOR JUSTICE HARRY L. CARRICO 
 
 
 
November 3, 2006 
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
This appeal implicates Code § 19.2-74(A)(1).  In pertinent 
part, this Code section provides that when a police officer 
detains a person for a Class 1 misdemeanor, the officer “shall  
. . . issue a summons . . . to appear at a time and place to be 
specified in such summons,” and “[u]pon the giving by such 
person of his written promise to appear at such time and place, 
the officer shall forthwith release him from custody.”  The Code 
section also contains several exceptions allowing a warrantless 
arrest pursuant to Code § 19.2-82 “if any such person shall fail 
or refuse to discontinue the unlawful act” or “if any person is 
believed by the arresting officer to be likely to disregard a 
summons . . . or . . . cause harm to himself or to any other 
person.” 
 
On February 20, 2003, two City of Portsmouth detectives, 
responding to a radio message that a motorist was operating a 
motor vehicle on a suspended license, stopped a vehicle being 
driven by the defendant, David Lee Moore.  The officers 
ascertained that Moore was in fact operating on a suspended 
license.  Although the offense is a Class 1 misdemeanor, Code   
§ 46.2-301(C), the officers did not issue Moore a summons but 
arrested him, handcuffed him, and placed him in a police 
vehicle.  They gave him the Miranda1 warnings and secured his 
signature on a consent to search his room at the hotel where he 
was staying.  They then took him to the hotel room. 
 
Because of a “miscommunication” between the officers, they 
did not search Moore at the time he was arrested.  Upon reaching 
his hotel room, they searched his person and found approximately 
16 grams of crack cocaine in his jacket pocket and $516.00 in 
cash in his pants pocket.  He admitted the cocaine was his. 
 
Moore was indicted for possession of cocaine with intent to 
distribute.  Code § 18.2-248.  He then moved to suppress all the 
evidence obtained in the search of his person,2 asserting that 
the seizure of the evidence violated the provisions of the 
Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution of the 
United States. 
 
The trial court denied the motion to suppress.  In a bench 
trial, the court convicted Moore of possession with intent to 
                     
 
1 Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). 
 
2 In the hearing on the motion to suppress, one of the 
arresting officers was asked why Moore was arrested rather than 
given a summons.  The officer replied, that it was “[j]ust our 
prerogative, we chose to effect an arrest.” 
 
 
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distribute cocaine and sentenced him to serve five years in the 
penitentiary, with one year and six months suspended. 
 
Moore appealed his conviction to the Court of Appeals of 
Virginia.  A divided panel of the court reversed Moore’s 
conviction, finding the search of Moore “in violation of the 
Fourth Amendment.”  Moore v. Commonwealth, 45 Va. App. 146, 155, 
609 S.E.2d 74, 79 (2005).  However, upon rehearing en banc, a 
majority affirmed the conviction, finding that Moore’s arrest 
did not violate his Fourth Amendment rights.  Moore v. 
Commonwealth, 47 Va. App. 55, 64, 622 S.E.2d 253, 258 (2005).  
We awarded Moore this appeal. 
 
On appeal, Moore argues that Code § 19.2-74 requires that 
the police issue a summons to a person detained for a Class 1 
misdemeanor and to forthwith release him from custody upon his 
promise to appear at a specified time and place, unless he is 
subject to one or more of the exceptions listed in the statute.  
Moore asserts that none of the exceptions apply in this case.3  
                     
 
3 The Court of Appeals found that “[b]ecause the record is 
devoid of any evidence to suggest Moore failed to discontinue 
the unlawful act, or that the facts could render a reasonable 
belief that Moore would fail to comply with the summons or cause 
harm to himself or others, . . . the arrest violated the express 
provisions of Code § 19.2-74.”  Moore, 47 Va. App. at 63, 622 
S.E.2d at 257.  The Commonwealth has not assigned cross-error to 
this finding.  Accordingly, we will not consider the 
Commonwealth’s argument that “[i]nasmuch as there was no one 
else to drive Moore’s vehicle, the officers were within their 
statutory authority to arrest Moore; otherwise, he would have 
been unable to ‘discontinue the unlawful act’ of driving on a 
 
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Moore says that “[w]hen a person is unlawfully detained, as [he] 
was when he was arrested rather than being given a citation, the 
fruits of the unlawful detention must be suppressed.”  Moore 
concludes that the Court of Appeals en banc erred in holding 
that his “arrest and search did not violate the Fourth 
Amendment.” 
 
On the other hand, the Commonwealth argues that the search 
of Moore was valid.  The Commonwealth maintains that “the police 
officers had probable cause to arrest Moore because he committed 
a misdemeanor in their presence,” and the “search incident to an 
arrest . . . did not violate the Fourth Amendment.” 
 
In support of his position, Moore cites the decision of the 
Supreme Court of the United States in Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 
113 (1998), and this Court’s decision in Lovelace v. 
Commonwealth, 258 Va. 588, 522 S.E.2d 856 (1999).  In Knowles, 
an Iowa statute allowed a police officer to arrest a person for 
a traffic offense and immediately take him before a magistrate 
or to issue a citation in lieu of arrest.  The statute further 
provided that the issuance of a citation in lieu of arrest “does 
not affect the officer’s authority to conduct an otherwise 
lawful search.”  525 U.S. at 115 (citing and quoting Iowa Code 
Ann. § 805.1(4)). 
                                                                  
suspended license.”  See Commonwealth v. Cary, 271 Va. 87, 90 
n.1, 623 S.E.2d 906, 907 n.1 (2006). 
 
4
 
An Iowa policeman stopped Knowles for speeding and issued 
him a citation rather than arresting him.  The officer then 
conducted a full search of the vehicle without either Knowles’ 
consent or probable cause, found marijuana and a “pot pipe,” and 
placed Knowles under arrest.  Knowles moved to suppress the 
evidence.  The trial court denied the motion and Knowles was 
found guilty.  The Supreme Court of Iowa affirmed, upholding the 
constitutionality under a bright-line “search incident to 
citation” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant 
requirement.  Id. at 115. 
 
The Supreme Court of the United States reversed.  Noting 
that the officer had issued Knowles a citation rather than 
arresting him, the Court stated that the “[t]he question 
presented is whether such a procedure authorizes the officer, 
consistently with the Fourth Amendment, to conduct a full search 
of the car.”  The Court answered the question “no.”  Id. at 114. 
 
The Court explained that in United States v. Robinson, 414 
U.S. 218 (1973), it had recognized a search incident to arrest 
exception to the Fourth Amendment, which allows a full field-
type search of the person incident to a lawful custodial arrest.  
The Court noted that the exception was based upon “two 
historical rationales for the ‘search incident to arrest’ 
exception: (1) the need to disarm the suspect in order to take 
him into custody, and (2) the need to preserve evidence for 
 
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later use at trial.”  Knowles, 525 U.S. at 116.  However, the 
Court found that “neither of these underlying rationales for the 
search incident to arrest exception is sufficient to justify the 
search in the present case.”  Id. at 117. 
 
The Court also said that while the concern for officer 
safety in a routine traffic stop “may justify the ‘minimal’ 
additional intrusion of ordering a driver and passengers out of 
the car, it does not by itself justify the often considerably 
greater intrusion attending a full field-type search.”   Id.  
The Court also said that Iowa had not shown a need to discover 
and preserve evidence.  Id. at 118.  Although asked to do so, 
the Court declined to extend the bright-line search incident to 
arrest exception to the Fourth Amendment recognized in Robinson 
to include a search incident to citation, a situation, the Court 
concluded, “where the concern for officer safety is not present 
to the same extent and the concern for destruction or loss of 
evidence is not present at all.”  Id. at 119. 
 
The Commonwealth argues that Knowles is not dispositive 
because the defendant there was not arrested and the decision in 
Knowles “holds that a search incident to a citation cannot be as 
expansive under the Fourth Amendment as one incident to an 
arrest.”   We cannot find such a holding in Knowles.  In any 
event, it is clear that what the Court actually held in Knowles 
was that the Fourth Amendment forbids expansion of the search 
 
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incident to arrest exception to include a search incident to 
citation.  Id. at 118-19. 
 
The Commonwealth also argues that the Supreme Court’s 
subsequent decision in Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 
318 (2001), is controlling rather than Knowles and supports its 
position that the officers had probable cause to arrest Moore 
because he committed a misdemeanor in their presence. In 
Atwater, a police officer observed that Gail Atwater was driving 
her pickup truck with her young son and daughter in the front 
seat, all without seat belts.  This conduct was prohibited by a 
Texas statute providing for a fine of not less than $25.00 nor 
more than $50.00.  Id. at 323-24. 
 
The officer pulled Atwater over, handcuffed her, placed her 
in his squad car, and drove her to the local police station, 
where she was placed in a jail cell for about one hour, after 
which she was taken before a magistrate and released on bond.  
She ultimately pleaded no contest to the seat belt charges and 
paid a $50.00 fine.  Id. at 324. 
 
Atwater and her husband then filed an action in state court 
for damages against the officer, the City of Lago Vista, and the 
City’s chief of police, alleging that the defendants had 
violated Gail Atwater’s Fourth Amendment rights.  The action was 
removed to federal court.  The Atwaters were unsuccessful in the 
lower courts, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari “to 
 
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consider whether the Fourth Amendment, either by incorporating 
common-law restrictions on misdemeanor arrests or otherwise, 
limits police officers’ authority to arrest without warrant for 
minor criminal offenses.”  Id. at 326.  The Court held that 
“[i]f 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 354. 
 
Atwater, however, provides little support for the 
Commonwealth’s position in this case.  The Texas statute 
“expressly authorizes ‘any peace officer [to] arrest without 
warrant a person found committing a violation’ of [the Texas] 
seatbelt laws, [Tex. Transp. Code Ann.] § 543.001, although it 
permits police to issue citations in lieu of arrest.”  Id. at 
323.  The authority to effect such an arrest is lacking from our  
§ 19.2-74, the statute at issue in this case.  Furthermore, 
Atwater only involved the legality of an arrest; it did not 
involve any question about a search incident to the arrest. 
 
Lovelace v. Commonwealth, 258 Va. 588, 522 S.E.2d 856 
(1999), the other case cited by Moore in support of his 
position, came to this Court upon remand from the Supreme Court 
of the United States.  John David Lovelace had been convicted in 
the Circuit Court of Halifax County for possession of marijuana 
and possession with intent to distribute cocaine.  He appealed, 
 
8
alleging that the trial court had erred in denying his motion to 
suppress evidence that was seized from him during a search of 
his person.  The Court of Appeals of Virginia affirmed the 
convictions.  Lovelace v. Commonwealth, 27 Va. App. 575, 500 
S.E.2d 267 (1998).  This Court refused Lovelace’s petition for 
appeal and his subsequent petition for rehearing.  Thereafter, 
the Supreme Court of the United States granted Lovelace a writ 
of certiorari, vacated the judgment of this Court, and remanded 
the case to this Court for further consideration in light of its 
decision in Knowles.  Lovelace v. Virginia, 526 U.S. 1108 
(1999). 
 
The Lovelace case implicated Code § 19.2-74(A)(2), which 
provides that “[w]henever any person is detained by . . . an 
arresting officer for a violation . . . of any provision of this 
Code, punishable as a Class 3 or Class 4 misdemeanor or any 
other misdemeanor for which he cannot receive a jail sentence, 
. . . the arresting officer shall take the name and address of 
such person and issue a summons . . . [and] shall forthwith 
release him from custody.” 
 
About ten o’clock at night, two deputy sheriffs observed 
Lovelace and several other men standing with open bottles of 
beer in their hands on the parking lot of a store in an area 
described as an “ ‘open air drug market.’ ”  Lovelace had a 
green bottle up to his mouth and appeared to be drinking from 
 
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it.  The men were ordered to lie face down on the ground after 
the deputies saw a bottle fly through the air and strike a car 
but could not see who threw it, although it came from the area 
where Lovelace had been standing.  258 Va. at 591, 522 S.E.2d at 
857. 
 
One of the deputies, Mike Womack, then approached Lovelace, 
who was lying on the ground as directed, and asked Lovelace his 
name.  Lovelace identified himself but remained silent when 
asked whether he had any guns or drugs.  Womack then performed a 
“patdown” of Lovelace and felt something like a bag in his 
pocket.  The deputy did not know if it was a plastic bag or what 
but he felt some lumps and something “squooshy,” and he reached 
into Lovelace’s pocket and retrieved the bag.  The officer then 
arrested Lovelace and charged him with possession of marijuana 
and possession with intent to distribute cocaine, but not with 
any alcohol-related offense.  The substance in the bag was later 
tested and identified as crack cocaine.  The test also 
identified some marijuana.  Id. at 591-92, 522 S.E.2d at 857. 
 
The Commonwealth argued in Lovelace that the officers had 
probable cause to arrest Lovelace for drinking an alcoholic 
beverage in public and thus could conduct a search incident to 
arrest.  We disagreed, based on Knowles, and stated as follows: 
The encounter between Lovelace and the officers, while not 
involving a traffic offense, was nonetheless similar in 
nature and duration to a routine traffic stop.  We reach 
 
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this conclusion primarily because the initial reason for 
detaining Lovelace was his alleged commission of a Class 4 
misdemeanor for which the issuance of a summons was 
authorized under Code § 19.2-74(A)(2).  Only if Lovelace 
had failed or refused to discontinue the unlawful act could 
the officer have effected a custodial arrest and taken the 
defendant before a magistrate.  Code § 19.2-74(A)(2).  
However, there is no evidence in the record that Lovelace 
acted in such a manner.  The fact that the officers could 
have issued only a summons for the alcohol-related offense 
also negates the Commonwealth’s argument that the existence 
of probable cause to charge Lovelace with drinking an 
alcoholic beverage in public allowed Womack to search him.  
After Knowles, an “arrest” that is effected by issuing a 
citation or summons rather than taking the suspect into 
custody does not, by itself, justify a full field-type 
search. 
 
Id. at 596, 522 S.E.2d at 860 (emphasis added).  We concluded 
that “the search of Lovelace was not consistent with the Fourth 
Amendment,” and we reversed and dismissed both of Lovelace’s 
convictions.  Id. at 597, 522 S.E.2d at 860. 
 
The Commonwealth distinguishes Lovelace by saying that the 
police officer detained Lovelace to issue a citation and did not 
arrest him, give him the Miranda warnings, or inform him he was 
under arrest while, in Moore’s case, he was placed under arrest 
and thus the officers “did not exceed their authority when they 
conducted the search” of Moore. 
 
This is a distinction that makes no difference.  While 
Lovelace was not actually arrested until after Officer Womack 
retrieved the “squooshy” bag from his pocket, Womack insisted in 
his testimony that, initially, he was “detaining the defendant 
because of the open containers of beer, the bottle-throwing 
 
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incident, and the odor of alcohol that he noticed when speaking 
with Lovelace,” id. at 592, 522 S.E.2d at 857, facts indicative 
of the Class 4 misdemeanor of drinking in public.  Code § 4.1-
308.  It was the type of offense for which Womack was detaining 
Lawrence that triggered the operation of Code § 19.2-74 and 
permitted Womack to issue only a summons to Lovelace since none 
of the statute’s exceptions were present.  Because Womack was 
authorized to issue only a summons for the alcohol-related 
offense, he could not lawfully conduct a full field-type search 
incident to an arrest.  Lovelace, 258 Va. at 596, 522 S.E.2d at 
860. 
 
The same conclusion applies to the case at bar.  Our 
statement in Lovelace could have equally been written using 
Moore and his charged offense:  “The fact that the officers 
could have issued only a summons for the [driving on suspended 
license] offense also negates the Commonwealth’s argument that 
the existence of probable cause to charge [Moore] with [driving 
on suspended license] allowed [the officer] to search him.”  Id.
 
The officers were authorized to issue only a summons to 
Moore for the offense of operating a vehicle on a suspended 
license since none of the exceptions in Code § 19.2-74 were 
present.  Thus, under the holding in Knowles, the officers could 
not lawfully conduct a full field-type search.  We find Knowles 
and Lovelace controlling and hold that the search of Moore was 
 
12
not consistent with the Fourth Amendment.  Accordingly, we will 
reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and dismiss the 
indictment against Moore. 
Reversed and dismissed. 
 
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