Court Opinion

ID: 9746238
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:09:42.446076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:43.809258
License: Public Domain

SMITH, Acting P. J.
I respectfully dissent. The majority interpret section 40302 of the Vehicle Code (all further undesignated references are to that code) in such a manner that a person cited for a simple traffic infraction may, at the election of the citing officer, be handcuffed and involuntarily transported to a distant booking station solely because he lacks what they call “presumptively satisfactory” written identification. This result is not only inconsistent with the intent behind the identification statute, but opens the door for arbitrary treatment under the guise of routine police procedure.
I
At the outset it is important to clarify what was said in the critical exchange between Officer Brown and Monroe. Brown stated that Monroe was still seated in the car when he asked him his name; Monroe gave the name “Erik Monroe.” According to Brown, within “five to ten seconds” of this initial contact he noticed a Big Gulp cup containing beer on the floorboard and smelled alcohol. Brown then testified: “I asked him if he had identification. [IQ Q. Was Mr. Monroe able to produce any identification to you? [f] A. Well, I also asked him to step from the vehicle. He complied. He stepped from the vehicle, and he said, T don’t have any I.D. with me.’ ” (Italics added.)
On the next page of the transcript the officer offhandedly referred to Monroe’s reply as “I don’t have any I.D.” Defense counsel, however, alert to the important distinction, later asked the officer to clarify the discrepancy. *1197Officer Brown confirmed that the first version he gave was correct: “Q. Officer, when you asked Mr. Monroe for identification, he said that he didn’t have any with him, is that right? A. He said he didn’t have any, yeah, or any with him, yes.” (Italics added.)
Although credibility is a matter for the trial court and we cannot interfere with its resolution of conflicts in the evidence (People v. Leyba (1981) 29 Cal.3d 591, 596 [174 Cal.Rptr. 867, 629 P.2d 961]), there is no conflict where an apparent inconsistency is ultimately resolved by the witness himself. Secondly, our duty to view the evidence most favorable to the ruling below carries with it the simultaneous duty to resolve the issue in light of the whole record, not based on “ ‘isolated bits of evidence’ ” favorable to the prosecution. (People v. Johnson (1980) 26 Cal.3d 557, 577 [162 Cal.Rptr. 431, 606 P.2d 738, 16 A.L.R.4th 1255], quoting People v. Bassett (1968) 69 Cal.2d 122, 138 [70 Cal.Rptr. 193, 443 P.2d 777].) The obvious import of the officer’s testimony and a proper reading of the record compels the conclusion that Monroe’s reply to the officer’s request for identification was: “I don’t have any I.D. with me.”
Here, Monroe had already given the officer his name and showed cooperation by immediately complying with the request to step out of the car. Monroe’s response “I don’t have any I.D. with me” was the equivalent of saying “I don’t have any documentary evidence in my possession,” or more colloquially, “I left my wallet at home.” This statement simply informs the officer that the person forgot to bring along written identification.
II
As the majority correctly note, California has a multitiered system in dealing with persons who are stopped and cited by law enforcement officers for minor traffic violations, a scheme which “in effect presumes that in the vast majority of cases the violator will not be taken into custody . . . .” With certain exceptions, the officer will “prepare a written notice to appear (i.e., a citation or ‘ticket’), and . . . release the violator ‘forthwith’ when the latter in turn gives his written promise that he will appear as directed . . . .” (People v. Superior Court (Simon) (1972) 7 Cal.3d 186, 199 [101 Cal.Rptr. 837, 496 P.2d 1205] (Simon).)
Section 40302, subdivision (a) (section 40302(a)), sets out one exception to the officer’s normal duty to cite and release a person stopped for a minor traffic violation. Unlike companion statutes which truly grant the officer the option of taking the citee into custody in more serious cases (§ 40303 [person arrested for certain enumerated offenses “shall, in the judgment of *1198the arresting officer,” either be given a notice to appear or be taken without unnecessary delay before a magistrate]; § 40304 [whenever person is arrested by highway patrol officer for misdemeanor not specified in the Vehicle Code, “he shall, in the judgment of the arresting officer,” either be issued a citation or be brought before a magistrate]), section 40302(a) is couched strictly in mandatory terms. It declares that when a person is cited for a violation of the Vehicle Code not declared to be a felony, he “shall be taken without unnecessary delay before a magistrate” when he “fails to present his driver’s license or other satisfactory evidence of his identity for examination.” (§ 40302(a), italics added.)
As noted in Simon, section 40302 is procedural not penal in nature and cannot itself form the basis for a lawful custodial arrest. Nevertheless a person “who is actually taken into police custody for transportation before a magistrate pursuant to section 40302 ... is ‘under arrest’ in the traditional sense of the term. [Citations.]” (Simon, supra, 7 Cal.3d at pp. 200-201.)
The next issue is what constitutes “satisfactory” evidence of identification. The majority conclude that every citizen of this state must, to ensure that he or she will not be taken into custody for a vehicular infraction, carry what they term “presumptively satisfactory” documentary identification—either a driver’s license or its functional equivalent. (Maj. opn., ante pp. 1186-1187.) Lacking that, say the majority, a citizen stopped for a minor traffic offense may either be cited and released or hauled down to the police station to be brought before a magistrate, at the option of the citing officer. This remarkable conclusion goes far beyond the statutory purpose behind section 40302.
The citation and release system “is essentially an honor system, requiring the good faith and cooperation of the person cited.” (Simon, supra, 7 Cal.3d at p. 201.) Clearly, when an officer stops a person for a traffic offense it is important that the citee properly identify himself, since a promise to appear without evidence that the person signing it is who he says he is “signifies little.” (People v. Mercurio (1970) 10 Cal.App.3d 426, 430 [88 Cal.Rptr. 750].) Section 40302 is designed to satisfy that concern.
The identification statute requires that the citee present “for examination” either a driver’s license or other satisfactory evidence of identity. In the words of Justice Mosk, he must be able to convince the officer—“either by exhibiting his driver’s license or by ‘other satisfactory evidence’—that the name he is signing on the written promise to appear corresponds to his true identity. [Citation.]” (Simon, supra, 1 Cal.3d at p. 201.) Since “other satisfactory evidence” is defined by reference to a driver’s license, it follows that documentary evidence which constitutes the functional equivalent of an *1199operator’s license should be accepted by the officer, absent some reason to doubt its authenticity.1
It does not follow, however, that unless a citizen carries such identification at all times, he risks being transported against his will to answer for a vehicular infraction. There is nothing in section 40302 which implies that such punitive measures might flow from a failure to carry written identification. It is not uncommon for law-abiding individuals to occasionally leave home without taking along a driver’s license or other written evidence of identity. The majority’s interpretation gives the police the power to impose onerous sanctions on forgetfiil persons who have committed trivial violations of the law.
In today’s computer age the officer in the field has a host of readily available methods of verifying the identity of a person who does not happen to have written identification in his possession. For example, a licensee who forgot his license will still be able to give a full name, address and date of birth and may even be able to recite his driver’s license number from memory. In a matter of minutes, the officer can relay this data into a central computer and discover whether the record on file matches the description of and information given by the person he has stopped. A person who does not have a driver’s license may be tested on certain information he gives regarding his residence, telephone number and/or place of employment. The officer may be able to ask another person at the scene whose identity has been verified to vouch for the citee’s identity. Arrest and parole records are other sources of verifiable information.
The statute’s use of the term “examination” does not, as the majority infer, preclude satisfactory proof of identification by oral means. The dictionary defines “examine,” as “to inquire into carefully,” and “to test by questioning in order to determine . . . fitness, or knowledge.” (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dict. (1984) p. 431.) By exhibiting identifying documents, by orally presenting the officer with verifiable identifying information, or through a combination of both, a detainee may be able to provide satisfactory evidence of his identity.
Oral evidence as an alternative means of identification necessarily forms an integral part of the honor system which the Legislature intended to create in establishing the cite and-release procedure for minor traffic offenses. No *1200state interest is served by punishing a person for not having adequate written identification. The “satisfactory evidence” requirement is there for the sole purpose of providing reasonable assurance that the cited person will fulfill his promise to appear to answer for the infraction. It follows that as an alternative to producing a valid driver’s license or its equivalent, the detainee should be allowed to convince the officer by other satisfactory proof that the name he is signing on the promise to appear corresponds to his true identity. Indeed, it appears to be an already common practice among law enforcement officers to exhaust nondocumentary methods of confirming identity before taking a traffic citee into custody. (E.g., People v. Grant (1990) 217 Cal.App.3d 1451, 1455, 1459 [266 Cal.Rptr. 587]; People v. Long (1987) 189 Cal.App.3d 77, 88, fn. 4 [234 Cal.Rptr. 271].)
I conclude that under section 40302(a), a cited person must be allowed to identify himself to a law enforcement officer through either the presentation of a valid driver’s license or by offering other competent proof. “Other satisfactory evidence” in this context includes written evidence of identity and/or verification by oral means. Accordingly, an officer who cites a person for a minor traffic offense has a duty to question him in a manner which encompasses both of these prongs of section 40302(a) before taking that person into custody for failure to present satisfactory identification. The officer need not recite any magic words, as long as he gives the detainee a reasonable opportunity to identify himself. Once proper inquiry has been made, the burden passes to the citee to convince the officer of his identity through satisfactory means.
Contrary to the majority’s suggestion, nothing in this analysis requires an officer to accept oral assurances of identity. The individual officer may still weigh the sufficiency of the identification which has been provided. But this “discretion,” if one may use that term, is not the complete unbounded discretion of which the majority speak. It is a discretion which can be abused if the officer acts unreasonably or arbitrarily. Since the honor system embodied in section 40302 presumes that most violators will be cited and released, an officer should have some specific articulable reason to doubt that the cited person has accurately identified himself before taking him into custody. (Cf. People v. Grant, supra, 217 Cal.App.3d at pp. 1455, 1459; People v. Long, supra, 189 Cal.App.3d 77, 88, fn. 4.)
The majority’s concerns that requiring the officer to allow the cited person the opportunity to identify himself orally would saddle the court with the task of “requir[ing] some specific inquiry” or would relieve the citee of his burden of producing identification (maj. opn., ante, p. 189, italics omitted) are unfounded. The statute refers to “other satisfactory evidence” of identity. *1201My conclusion that such evidence may take oral as well as written form and that the citee must be given a chance to produce either or both provides an easily workable standard for the officer and in no way infringes upon the precept that it is still the citee’s burden to identify himself and the officer’s prerogative to determine the adequacy of the identification.
Here, Officer Brown’s request for identification was met with the response that Monroe had no documentary proof in his possession. Clearly, Monroe had the ability to identify himself orally (thereby providing assurance that his promise to appear would be honored) as shown by the parole number and other information he gave to the officer following his arrest. Instead, without giving Monroe the opportunity to identify himself by alternative means, Officer Brown effectuated an immediate custodial arrest. Only after Monroe was handcuffed and searched did Officer Brown ask identity-related questions which, as it turned out, were answered quite truthfully.
The majority harp on an imagined demand by this dissent that the police officer conduct some Miranda-like interrogation before an arrest can take place. That assumption is without justification. The problem here is not that Brown failed to utter any “magic words” but that he spoke no words at all to indicate to the citee that he could offer “other satisfactory evidence” to prove his identity. In other words, the officer, without tracking the language of section 40302(a) and contrary to the purpose of that section, leapt at the opportunity to arrest Monroe.
Because Monroe was taken into custody solely on the basis of his statement that he possessed no written identification and without having been afforded the chance to offer nondocumentary proof of his identity, the custodial arrest was unlawful. And since the only justification for the search advanced by the People was a search incident to the custodial arrest, it follows that the warrantless search violated Monroe’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Ill
The majority’s conclusion not only misreads the legislative intent behind the statute, it poses constitutional problems. Courts have a duty to construe a statute in a manner which will preserve its constitutionality and avoid challenges for vagueness. (Pryor v. Municipal Court (1979) 25 Cal.3d 238, 253-254 [158 Cal.Rptr. 330, 599 P.2d 636]; In re Kay (1970) 1 Cal.3d 930, 942 [83 Cal.Rptr. 686, 464 P.2d 142].) “[A] statute must provide sufficiently definite guidelines for the police in order to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. ‘A vague law impermissibly delegates basic policy *1202matters to policemen, judges and juries for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory application.’ ” (People v. Superior Court (Caswell) (1988) 46 Cal.3d 381, 390 [250 Cal.Rptr. 515, 758 P.2d 1046], citing Grayned v. City of Rockford (1972) 408 U.S. 104, 108 [33 L.Ed.2d 222, 227-228, 92 S.Ct. 2294].)
In Kolender v. Lawson (1983) 461 U.S. 352 [75 L.Ed.2d 903, 103 S.Ct. 1855] (Kolender) the United States Supreme Court held void for vagueness Penal Code former section 647, subdivision (e), which required an individual to provide “credible and reliable” identification when requested by a police officer who had reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to justify a Terry detention. The court held the statute was unconstitutionally vague because it “vests virtually complete discretion in the hands of the police to determine whether the suspect has satisfied the statute,” (Kolender, supra, 461 U.S. at p. 358 [75 L.Ed.2d at p. 909]) and “encourages arbitrary enforcement by failing to describe with sufficient particularity what a suspect must do in order to satisfy the statute.” (Id., at p. 361 [75 L.Ed.2d at p. 911].)
The majority imbue section 40302(a) with the same constitutionally offensive attributes described by the Supreme Court in Kolender. If the cited person does not present a driver’s license or a document of equal value “satisfactory evidence” is, according to the majority, whatever the citing officer decides it is. One person may present the officer with copious, verifiable nondocumentary evidence of identification and be arrested, searched and booked. Another may simply tell the officer that he is John Doe of 123 Roe Street and be released. Allowing the result to turn solely on the personal predilections of the officer “furnishes a convenient tool for harsh and discriminatory enforcement by local prosecuting officials, against particular groups deemed to merit their displeasure. . . . [Citations.]” (Kolender, supra, 461 U.S. 352, 360 [75 L.Ed.2d 903-911], internal quotation marks omitted.)
To gloss over the troublesome consequences of their reasoning, as the majority do, by calling the statute “procedural” misses the point. Since a person taken into custody for transportation before a magistrate under section 40302 is “ ‘under arrest’ in the traditional sense of the term” he is deprived of his liberty just as surely as one who has been arrested for a jailable offense. (Simon, supra, 7 Cal.3d 186, 200.) The majority’s trivialization of the intrusion by pointing out that the arrestee is not technically “incarcerated” (maj. opn., ante, p. 1185, fn. 8) is of little comfort to those who are not only subjected to search and seizure but deprived of their freedom of movement for reasons which the police need not explain or justify.
*1203The majority’s use of Sundance v. Municipal Court (1986) 42 Cal.3d 1101 [232 Cal.Rptr. 814, 729 P.2d 80], to authorize limitless discretion by the officer is likewise far off the mark. Sundance involved a police regulation governing whether to keep persons arrested for public drunkenness in jail or release them. An inebriate taken into custody by the police has violated the law and is already subject to incarceration. The only remaining decision is whether to book him or let him go, a matter unquestionably within the realm of prosecutorial discretion. By contrast, the traffic citee has not done anything for which he may be taken into custody or jailed—in fact, incarceration for a person guilty of no more than a traffic infraction is statutorily proscribed. (Pen. Code, § 19.6; see Review of Selected 1968 Code Legislation (Cont.Ed.Bar 1968) pp. 248-251.) Thus, the person stopped for a traffic violation stands in much the same posture as the Terry-stop suspect in Kolender.
I find it inconceivable that the Legislature intended the anomalous result that a person who cannot be deprived of his liberty for a traffic infraction even were he to be found guilty, may nevertheless be subjected to custodial arrest at the option of the officer writing the ticket merely because he does not happen to have written evidence of identity in his possession.3
By imposing a de facto requirement that one present formal documentary evidence of identity upon being cited for a nonjailable violation of the Vehicle Code and granting the officer unbridled authority to search, seize and transport those who do not possess such documentation, the majority encourage arbitrary treatment of our citizens and convert what is essentially a procedural statute into a penal one, conferring virtually unrestrained power on the police to arrest and take into custody persons who have merely forgotten to carry paper identification with them. (See generally Kriiger, *1204Police Demand For Documentary Identification (1992) 13 Crim. Justice. J. 243.)
Equal treatment should be afforded the motorist who has forgotten his driver’s license on a spur-of-the-moment afternoon trip to the suburban hardware store as well as the one returning from a social event at midnight in the inner city. Both should be granted the same right to prove identity by nondocumentary means before undergoing the degrading process of a custodial arrest. Requiring the officer to permit identification by both written and oral methods before depriving the citee of his liberty promotes such fair and evenhanded treatment.
I would reverse the judgment.
A petition for a rehearing was denied February 24,1993. Smith, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted. Appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied April 29, 1993. Mosk, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

Section 12811 requires every California operator’s license to contain the driver’s name, age, mailing address and signature as well as a brief description and photograph of the driver for purposes of identification. Documentation which contains similar identifying material thus provides reasonable assurance that the person has accurately identified himself to the officer.

My conclusion is underscored by the legislative history of Penal Code section 853.5 which addresses itself to the citing procedure to be employed in the case of nonvehicular infractions. That section provides: “In all cases, except as specified in Sections 40302 [and others] of the Vehicle Code, in which a person is arrested for an infraction, a peace officer shall only require the arrestee to present his driver’s license or other satisfactory evidence of his identity for examination and to sign a written promise to appear. Only if the arrestee refuses to present such identification or, refuses to sign such a written promise may the arrestee be taken into custody.” (Italics added.)
The italicized language was inserted into the statute by a 1980 amendment, originating as Assembly Bill No. 2296 (AB 2296). (Stats. 1980, ch. 238, § 1, p. 480). The bill analysis prepared by the Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice states, “AB 2296 is intended to create statewide, uniform treatment of persons cited for infraction violations, permitting custody only under the most specific and necessary of conditions. Proponents indicate that inasmuch as jail would be a prohibited sanction if the person is convicted of an infraction, it makes little sense to incarcerate a person who is merely arrested and charged with the infraction.” (Bill Analysis, Assem. Com. on Criminal Justice, Mar. 17, 1980, p. 1, italics original.)