Court Opinion

ID: 9575573
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:14:57.108601+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:48:33.267265
License: Public Domain

BENTON, Judge,
dissenting.
What is not at issue in this appeal is Officer Yarema’s authority initially to order Calvin Leon Hamlin to exit the car and to perform a pat-down search upon the officer’s articulable suspicion that Hamlin was armed. Hamlin concedes that Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 117 S.Ct. 882, 137 L.Ed.2d 41 (1997), gives the officer that authority. Rather, the issue is the lawfulness of the officer’s conduct following the pat-down search that failed to produce evidence that Hamlin possessed weapons. I agree with the majority opinion that from this point Hamlin “was being detained in his own right, and not simply incidental to the traffic stop.” I disagree, however, that the officer’s further detention of Hamlin was lawful.
“[Shopping an automobile and detaining its occupants constitute a ‘seizure’ within the meaning of [the Fourth Amendment], even though the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief.” Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1396, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979). The United States Supreme Court has never held that a police officer may detain a passenger during the period the driver is being detained, merely because the driver has committed a traffic offense. Recognizing that “there is not the same basis for ordering the passengers out of the car as there is for ordering the driver out,” the Court merely ruled that in requiring a passenger to exit the car, “the additional intrusion *504on the passenger is minimal.” Wilson, 519 U.S. at 414-15, 117 S.Ct. at 886. The Court further noted as follows:
[T]he case for the passengers is in one sense stronger than that for the driver. There is probable cause to believe that the driver has committed a minor vehicular offense, but there is no such reason to stop or detain the passengers. But as a practical matter, the passengers are already stopped by virtue of the stop of the vehicle. The only change in their circumstances which will result from ordering them out of the car is that they will be outside of, rather than inside of, the stopped car. Outside the car, the passengers will be denied access to any possible weapon that might be concealed in the interior of the passenger compartment.
Id. at 418-14, 117 S.Ct. at 886.
The Supreme Court expressly declined to address the issue of a detention of a passenger beyond that inherent in the initial stop and the additional “minimal” intrusion when the passenger is ordered out of the vehicle. See id. at 415 n. 3, 117 S.Ct. at 886 n. 3. The Court held in Wilson only “that an officer making a traffic stop may order passengers to get out of the car pending completion of the stop.” Id. at 415, 117 S.Ct. at 886 (emphasis added). Ordering a passenger out of the car pending completion of the stop is a significantly less intrusive process than ordering the passenger to remain at or in the car after the passenger has been ordered to leave the car. Clearly, any further detention of the passenger must be governed by Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).
Applying Terry principles, the officer had no basis to order Hamlin to enter the car and remain there after he determined that Hamlin possessed no weapons. See id. at 30, 88 S.Ct. at 1884-85. The officer testified that he took Hamlin’s identification and that Hamlin was not free to leave. The officer had no reasonable basis, however, to take Hamlin’s identification. He testified that he took Hamlin’s identification to begin “running it ... for an information check” because Hamlin “was under investigative detention for the open alcoholic beverage con*505tainer in the vehicle.” He also testified, however, that he never charged Hamlin with any offense connected with the alcoholic beverage. Indeed, the officer’s seizure of Hamlin for possessing the alcoholic beverage was unlawful because the officer had no reasonable basis to detain Hamlin. No city ordinance or state law bars a passenger in a vehicle from having an alcoholic beverage in an open container. The Commonwealth concedes this point but argues that “[a]t most, the officer may have made a ‘mistake of law5 ” and did not act in “bad faith.”
An officer’s detention of an individual based on a mistaken view that he or she has witnessed a violation of law is not objectively reasonable, however, and, therefore, is unlawful. See United States v. Lopez-Valdez, 178 F.3d 282, 288-89 (5th Cir.1999) (holding that an officer’s detention of the accused for what the officer mistakenly believed was a violation of the Code was unreasonable). An officer’s good intentions cannot convert an objectively unreasonable view of the law into a lawful detention. “ ‘[G]ood faith on the part of the arresting officer is not enough.... ’ If subjective good faith alone were the test, the protections of the Fourth Amendment would evaporate, and the people would be ‘secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, only in the discretion of the police.’ ” Terry, 392 U.S. at 22, 88 S.Ct. at 1880 (quoting Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 97, 85 S.Ct. 223, 229, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964)) (internal quotations and citations omitted). “[I]f officers are allowed to stop [individuals] based upon their subjective belief that ... laws have been violated even where no such violation has, in fact, occurred, the potential for abuse of ... infractions as pretext for effecting [detentions] seems boundless and the costs to privacy rights excessive.” Lopez-Valdez, 178 F.3d at 289.
“If the initial traffic stop was illegal or the officers exceeded the stop’s proper scope, the seized contraband is excluded under the ‘fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine.’” United States v. Rusher, 966 F.2d 868, 875 (4th Cir.1992) (citing Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 484, 83 S.Ct. 407, 415-16, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963)). The officer detained Hamlin under the *506pretense that he was investigating Hamlin for possessing in a car an open alcoholic beverage container, a non-existent offense. Furthermore, the officer exceeded the proper scope of the stop by unlawfully detaining Hamlin and the other passenger “for an information check.”
Officer Yarema unlawfully seized Hamlin when he ordered Hamlin to return to the automobile and remain there while the officer checked the status of his identification. See Deer v. Commonwealth, 17 Va.App. 730, 736-37, 441 S.E.2d 33, 37-38 (1994). Hamlin’s continuing presence in the automobile was the direct result of the officer’s command that he remain in the automobile — an unlawful detention. Thus, any claim that this case merely concerns a seizure of an item in plain view fails. The officer’s seizure of the cocaine was a fruit of the unlawful detention because it was a derivative of the initial illegality. See id. Any evidence obtained as a result of the continued seizure was inadmissible as the fruit of the poisonous tree.
For these reasons, I would hold that the trial judge erred in denying the motion to suppress. I dissent.