Opinion ID: 2341921
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Removal of the passenger from the car

Text: Once Anthony Smith, the passenger, stepped out of the car, Sergeant Hargrove was able to see a white rock-like substance on the floor in front of the passenger seat which he believed to be cocaine. See, e.g., Umanzor v. United States, 803 A.2d 983, 999 (D.C.2002) (when the occupants stepped out, the officer was legally standing in a position to view the items on the floorboard and the back seat). Appellant argues that the police had no right to order Smith out of the car in the first place, since there was at that point no articulable suspicion, and the police have no automatic right to order occupants out of a car. Had Smith remained in the car, appellant maintains, the white rock would never have come into the officers' plain view. Appellant has no standing, however, to argue that the recovery of the marijuana from his jacket stemmed from the allegedly unlawful seizure of his passenger ( i.e., asking the passenger to get out of the car). Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights which ... may not be vicariously asserted. Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 174, 89 S.Ct. 961, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1967) (citations omitted); accord, e.g., Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 133-134, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978). This court has consistently applied this principle in a number of cases. See, e.g., Belton v. United States, 647 A.2d 66, 70 (D.C.1994); Lewis v. United States, 594 A.2d 542, 544 (D.C.1991); Moore v. United States, 468 A.2d 1342, 1344 (D.C. 1983). [4] On this point our decision in Mayes v. United States, 653 A.2d 856 (D.C.1995), is dispositive. The two defendants in that case, Mayes and Graves, were passengers in a car that was double-parked with the motor running. The police asked all five occupants to get out of the car, and then proceeded to frisk Mayes, who had been in the back seat. A handgun was found in Mayes' pocket, which prompted the police to search the car and to frisk Graves and the other occupants. That frisk led to the discovery of another handgun in Graves' possession. We held that the frisk of Mayes was unlawful, [5] but that the discovery of the gun in Mayes' possession gave the officers a valid reason to frisk Graves, his companion. Because the unlawful search was directed toward Mayes rather than Graves, the fruit of Graves' search did not need to be suppressed. As we described it, there was a critical (though fortuitous) difference between their situations. When the police frisked Mayes, they had no legal basis for doing so. By the time it was Graves' turn, they did. Mayes, 653 A.2d at 866. Accordingly, we reversed Mayes' conviction, but affirmed that of Graves because he had no standing to challenge the unlawful frisk of Mayes. See also United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 731-733, 100 S.Ct. 2439, 65 L.Ed.2d 468 (1980); United States v. Meadows, 885 F.Supp. 1, 3-4 (D.D.C.1995). The same rationale applies here. Even assuming that the police were not justified in asking the passenger to get out of the car  an issue we do not decide because Smith's case is not before us  the fact is that they did so, and as a result they saw the white rock that ultimately led to appellant's arrest. Whether asking the passenger to alight from the car was an unlawful invasion of the passenger's Fourth Amendment rights is an issue that only the passenger can raise. Like the co-defendant Graves in the Mayes case, appellant does not have standing to argue that his motion to suppress should have been granted because of the asserted illegal seizure of his passenger.