Court Opinion

ID: 9951014
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-15 15:18:15.526651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:35:54.252066
License: Public Domain

RENDERED: MARCH 8, 2024; 10:00 A.M.
                        NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

                Commonwealth of Kentucky
                          Court of Appeals
                             NO. 2022-CA-0596-DG

JOSHUA BANISTER                                                      APPELLANT

                   ON DISCRETIONARY REVIEW FROM
v.                      MEADE CIRCUIT COURT
                  HONORABLE BRUCE T. BUTLER, JUDGE
                        ACTION NO. 21-XX-00003

COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY                                               APPELLEE

                                   OPINION
                                  AFFIRMING

                                  ** ** ** ** **

BEFORE: ACREE, CALDWELL, AND CETRULO, JUDGES.

ACREE, JUDGE: Joshua Banister, Appellant, appeals the Meade Circuit Court’s

April 29, 2022 Opinion Affirming the Meade District Court’s November 16, 2018

Order denying Appellant’s suppression motion. Appellant entered a conditional

guilty plea to appeal the denial of his motion, arguing a Kentucky State Trooper
lacked the requisite reasonable suspicion of illegal activity when he observed

Appellant pulling a trailer on a public roadway with a woman riding on the trailer.

                This Court granted discretionary review. We affirm.

                                    BACKGROUND

                On September 9, 2017, Trooper Richard Ellis encountered a GMC

Suburban pulling a trailer. He noticed a woman riding on the trailer rather than

within the safe confines of the vehicle and stopped the Suburban.

                Trooper Ellis smelled a strong odor of alcohol when he approached

the vehicle. He administered field sobriety tests to Appellant who was driving the

Suburban. Testing revealed he was intoxicated. Trooper Ellis arrested Appellant

for driving under the influence of alcohol.

                In the district court, Appellant filed a motion to suppress the evidence

of his offense arguing the female passenger riding in the trailer did not constitute a

violation of KRS1 189.125, Kentucky’s seatbelt statute. Accordingly, he argued,

Trooper Ellis did not have a reasonable and articulable suspicion of illegal activity

necessary to support the traffic stop. Following a suppression hearing, the district

court denied the motion. The court concluded the circumstances did support

Trooper Ellis’s reasonable and articulable suspicion sufficient to stop Appellant’s

1
    Kentucky Revised Statutes.

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vehicle. The district court determined a person riding on a trailer constitutes a

violation of KRS 189.125(6).2 The appeal centers on this ruling.

                                            ANALYSIS

                 Where, as here, there are no facts in dispute and the appeal raises only

legal questions, the appellate court undertakes a de novo review. In considering

the applicable law, we start with Appellant’s Fourth Amendment protections.

                 “In order to uphold the protections of the Fourth Amendment, an

officer conducting an investigatory stop must have a reasonable suspicion, based

on objective and articulable facts, that criminal activity has occurred, is occurring,

or is about to occur.” Commonwealth v. Morgan, 248 S.W.3d 538, 540 (Ky. 2008)

(footnote omitted) (citing Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 51, 99 S. Ct. 2637, 2641,

61 L. Ed. 2d 357 (1979)).

                 As Appellant argues, Trooper Ellis could not have reasonably

suspected criminal activity was afoot because the seatbelt statute did not apply to

the woman who rode on Appellant’s trailer. Accordingly, Appellant and the

Commonwealth respectively urge us to define the scope of KRS 189.125 narrowly

or broadly. Appellant insists the statute does not apply to those riding in cargo

areas, such as a pickup bed or a trailer. The Commonwealth asserts that all

passengers must wear a seatbelt, no matter their location.

2
    Procedurally, the case was a bit more circuitous, but in ways that do not affect the outcome.

                                                  -3-
             However, we need not determine this specific question. There is a

simpler and more direct resolution. “[R]easonable suspicion can rest on a mistaken

understanding of the scope of a legal prohibition . . . .” Heien v. North Carolina,

574 U.S. 54, 60, 135 S. Ct. 530, 536, 190 L. Ed. 2d 475 (2014). This is because

reasonableness is “the ultimate touchtone” of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

Id. (quoting Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 381, 134 S. Ct. 2473, 2482, 189 L.

Ed. 2d 430 (2014)). “To be reasonable is not to be perfect, and so the Fourth

Amendment allows for some mistakes on the part of government officials[.]” Id. at

60-61, 135 S. Ct. at 536 (citing Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176, 69 S.

Ct. 1302, 1311, 93 L. Ed. 1879 (1949)).

             This extends to police officers’ reasonable suspicions: “Reasonable

suspicion arises from the combination of an officer’s understanding of the facts

and his understanding of the relevant law.” Id. at 61, 135 S. Ct. at 536. A police

officer may hold a “reasonably mistaken” understanding under either category. Id.

However, “[t]he Fourth Amendment tolerates only reasonable mistakes, and those

mistakes – whether of fact or of law – must be objectively reasonable.” Id. at 66,

135 S. Ct. at 539 (emphasis original).

             Such objectively reasonable, but mistaken, understanding of law

existed in Heien, where a law enforcement officer pulled a driver over because one

of the driver’s brake lights was out. Id. at 57, 135 S. Ct. 534. But North Carolina

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law only required one of a vehicle’s brake lights to be functioning, not both. Id.

Though the statute required vehicles to be equipped with “a stop lamp” and not

two or more stop lamps, the statute provided that the stop lamp “may be

incorporated into a unit with one or more other rear lamps.” Id. at 59, 135 S. Ct. at

535 (quoting N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-129(g) (2007)). Another provision of the statute

required that all vehicles “have all originally equipped rear lamps or the equivalent

in good working order[.]” Id. at 68, 135 S. Ct. at 540 (quoting N.C. Gen. Stat. §

20-129(d) (2007)). Accordingly, the Court found it reasonable to conclude that a

stop lamp is a type of rear lamp and, therefore, a vehicle equipped with multiple

stop lamps must have all stop lamps in working order. Id. at 67-68, 135 S. Ct. at

540. The Supreme Court had “little difficulty” in determining the officer held a

reasonable misunderstanding of the law. Id. at 67, 135 S. Ct. at 540.

             It is not necessary to interpret the scope of KRS 189.125 to affirm the

district court. Assuming, arguendo, that Kentucky’s seatbelt statute did not require

passengers riding in trailers or in the beds of pickup trucks to wear seatbelts, it

would be completely reasonable for Trooper Ellis to have misunderstood the law to

prohibit individuals from riding in such areas without seatbelts. The seatbelt

statute, with narrow exceptions irrelevant to this appeal, states: “A person shall not

operate a motor vehicle manufactured after 1981 on the public roadways of this

state unless the driver and all passengers are wearing a properly adjusted and

                                          -5-
fastened seat belt[.]” KRS 189.125(6). While Kentucky’s motor vehicle statute

does define what a “vehicle” is, it does not do so in a manner that would exempt or

include a trailer from the statute’s provisions. See KRS 189.010(19).3 The statute

does not provide a definition of “passenger” at all. See KRS 189.010 et seq. And

we have this from Black’s Law Dictionary:

               vehicle (vee-ə-kəl) n. (17c) 1. An instrument of
               transportation or conveyance. 2. Any conveyance used in
               transporting passengers or things by land, water, or air.
               - motor vehicle. (1890) A wheeled conveyance that does
               not run on rails and is self-propelled, esp. one powered by
               an internal-combustion engine, a battery or fuel-cell, or a
               combination of these.

Vehicle, BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY (11th ed. 2019). We note particularly that

Black’s treats motor vehicles as a subcategory of vehicles in general. The same

distinction is made between KRS 189.010(19)(a) (“vehicle”) and KRS

189.010(19)(b) (“motor vehicle”). And the vehicle in general in this case was

“used in transporting [a] passenger” and that is who drew Trooper Ellis’s attention.

               It was therefore reasonable for Trooper Ellis to believe the passenger

being transported by Appellant was in a vehicle without being restrained by a

seatbelt. Even if we assume Trooper Ellis was wrong about the law when he

stopped Appellant, we cannot say his mistake of the law was unreasonable.

3
 KRS 189.010(19)(a), as relevant, defines a “vehicle” to include “[a]ll vehicles passing over or
upon the highways.” While the statute goes on to list exceptions to this definition in subsection
19(b), a trailer is not one of these exceptions.

                                               -6-
             If Appellant was contesting a conviction under the seatbelt statute

itself, we would then be required to determine whether a person riding in a trailer

without wearing a seatbelt violates KRS 189.125. But, because Appellant instead

challenges the traffic stop which resulted in his arrest for DUI, this analysis is

unnecessary.

             Given the uncontested facts of this case and the ruling in Heien by the

Supreme Court of the United States interpreting the Fourth Amendment, it is

unnecessary for this Court to discern the General Assembly’s intention from the

language of the seatbelt statute.

                                    CONCLUSION

             Based on the foregoing, we affirm the Meade Circuit Court’s April

29, 2022 Opinion Affirming.

             CALDWELL, JUDGE, CONCURS.

             CETRULO, JUDGE, CONCURS IN RESULT ONLY.

 BRIEF FOR APPELLANT:                       BRIEF FOR APPELLEE:

 Larry D. Ashlock                           Daniel Cameron
 Elizabethtown, Kentucky                    Attorney General of Kentucky

                                            Kristen L. Conder
                                            Assistant Attorney General
                                            Frankfort, Kentucky

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