Opinion ID: 1074
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Questioning of Fernandez

Text: Fernandez concedes the lawfulness of the traffic stop, which initiated the seizure of him and the two other occupants of the car. Officer Pistolese asked the driver and both passengers for their identifying information at the same time, and he then returned to his cruiser to check for active warrants. So far as the record shows and Fernandez does not argue otherwise Pistolese discovered the active warrant for Fernandez as part of the same radio communication in which he learned that neither of the other two men had backgrounds requiring further action. [4] Hence, neither the request for Fernandez's identitypermissible under the precedent cited abovenor the records check prolonged the duration of the original stop. The encounter was extended only after the active warrant was discovered, at which point the further detention of Fernandez was independently justified. In these circumstances, no Fourth Amendment violation occurred. Our decision in United States v. Henderson, 463 F.3d 27 (1st Cir.2006), is not to the contrary. In Henderson, an officer also obtained a passenger's driver's license during a traffic stop, but, in a significant departure from the facts here, the ensuing criminal history check of the passenger, Henderson, lasted approximately twenty minutes. Id. at 46. The officers testified that the detention was extended solely to accomplish the check of Henderson's records. Id. We concluded that prolonging the stop without any particularized rationale for investigating Henderson violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Id. at 46-47. We similarly distinguished Henderson in Chaney, emphasizing that the officer who conducted the traffic stop in Chaney had quickly developed reasonable suspicion to investigate further after asking a passenger, Chaney, for his identification. 584 F.3d at 26. [5] Anticipating the decision that we reach here, we concluded that the officer's interaction with Chaney was reasonable throughout the stop, beginning with the request for identification that the officer testified was based on safety concerns. 584 F.3d at 25. We explained: [The officer's] initial few questions concerning Chaney's identification were allowable officer safety measures, not themselves requiring any individualized suspicion of Chaney, but rather justified based on the inherent dangers of the motor vehicle stop and the officer's need to orient himself to who and what he may be dealing with. His actions thereafter were each justified by reasonable suspicion warranting further investigation and were related in nature and scope to dispelling the officer's legitimate concerns. Id. at 27 (emphasis added). This case differs from Chaney because Officer Pistolese did not invoke the officer safety function, id., but instead testified that he requested Fernandez's identification so that he could issue a seat belt citation. That difference in the asserted justification for the inquiry is not, however, of consequence. So long as the request did not measurably extend the duration of the stop, Johnson, 129 S.Ct. at 788, Pistolese did not need an independent justification to ask Fernandez for identification. Mena, 544 U.S. at 101, 125 S.Ct. 1465. It makes no sense to say that his belief that he possessed such a justification, if incorrect, would make an otherwise permissible inquiry unlawful. Indeed, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that [s]ubjective intentions play no role in ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis. See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996). [6] Other circuits had concluded before Johnson that officers could properly ask a passenger for identification in circumstances similar to those before us, and Johnson 's discussion of the permissible scope of a traffic stop has only strengthened such precedent. See, e.g., United States v. Diaz-Castaneda, 494 F.3d 1146, 1152 (9th Cir.2007) (stating, in the context of a passenger inquiry, that [t]he police may ask people who have legitimately been stopped for identification without conducting a [separate] Fourth Amendment search or seizure) (citing Hiibel, 542 U.S. at 185, 124 S.Ct. 2451); United States v. Soriano-Jarquin, 492 F.3d 495, 500 (4th Cir.2007) (If an officer may `as a matter of course' and in the interest of personal safety order a passenger physically to exit the vehicle, he may surely take the minimally intrusive step of requesting passenger identification.) (citing Wilson, 519 U.S. at 410, 117 S.Ct. 882); United States v. Rice, 483 F.3d 1079, 1084 (10th Cir.2007) ([B]ecause passengers present a risk to officer safety equal to the risk presented by the driver, an officer may ask for identification from passengers and run background checks on them as well.) (citing Wilson, 519 U.S. at 413-414, 117 S.Ct. 882). We therefore hold that, based on the record before us, no Fourth Amendment violation occurred. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of conviction. So ordered.