Court Opinion

ID: 9456920
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:05:57.25858+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:08.599767
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(concurring):
I concur in the court’s opinion, but because of the importance of the rules relating to searches incident to sham arrests,1 I think it is important to emphasize the narrowness of the holding in this ease.
Officer Herring had grounds to be suspicious that this car may have been stolen because he observed that a proper registration sticker was missing and that the right vent window was broken. Because absence of the registration sticker is a traffic code violation, Officer Herring had the authority to stop the car, ask the driver for his license and registration, and issue a summons. The request for license and registration would have resolved his suspicions about whether the car was stolen; that this may have been his motive for stopping the car for the traffic violation does not by itself make the stop a sham. I believe Hill and Tag-lavore would compel a different result, however, where the officer stopped a car for a traffic violation in the hopes of turning up evidence of another crime in the course of a thorough frisk for weap*1246ons or in the course of any other search permitted by law. There is no evidence in this case that Officer Herring had such an intention.
Defense counsel and the trial judge fo-cussed their attention on testimony to the effect that the narcotics capsules were sighted after Johnson was placed under arrest. I agree with the court’s opinion that the evidence at the hearing nevertheless compels the conclusion that the capsules came into plain view because of Johnson’s action in getting out of his ear when approached by Officer Herring and not because of a “search” incident to the arrest. Given that it was proper to stop Johnson’s car, therefore, Officer Herring was validly in a position to see the capsules whether or not he lawfully placed Johnson under arrest.

. Hill v. United States, 135 U.S.App.D.C. 233, 418 F.2d 449 (1968); Taglavore v. United States, 291 F.2d 262 (9th Cir. 1961).