Court Opinion

ID: 9786763
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:02:18.550343+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:48.467104
License: Public Domain

WERDEGAR, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
The situation is a common one: A police officer stops a driver with the intention to issue a traffic citation for an infraction under state law. We address in this case the question whether an officer making such a stop may conduct a warrantless search of the driver’s vehicle without violating the driver’s right to be free of *88unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The United States Supreme Court has established several ground rules for warrantless vehicle searches: An officer may search a car if he or she is arresting the driver (New York v. Belton (1981) 453 U.S. 454 [101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768]), or if probable cause exists to believe the car contains evidence of a crime or contraband (Maryland v. Dyson (1999) 527 U.S. 465 [119 S.Ct. 2013, 144 L.Ed.2d 442] (per curiam); Carroll v. United States (1925) 267 U.S. 132, 153, 155-156 [45 S.Ct. 280, 285-286, 69 L.Ed. 543, 39 A.L.R. 790]); subject to certain conditions, police also may search a car to inventory its contents when they are impounding it (South Dakota v. Opperman (1976) 428 U.S. 364 [96 S.Ct. 3092, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000]). It is unconstitutional, however, for a state, by statute, to authorize vehicle searches incident to a traffic citation when no arrest is made. (Knowles v. Iowa (1998) 525 U.S. 113 [119 S.Ct. 484, 142 L.Ed.2d 492].)
Unlike both the majority and dissent in this case, I find that whether an officer also may undertake some type of vehicle search when the driver stopped for a traffic infraction is unable to present a valid driver’s license (Veh. Code, § 12951, subd. (b))1 or proof of registration as required by state law (§ 4462, subd. (a))2 are two different matters subject to different analyses and rules. As I explain, I concur in the majority’s opinion insofar as it authorizes warrantless searches of “traditional repositories” for proof of a driver’s vehicle registration. I dissent, however, insofar as the majority holds that the space beneath the driver’s seat is a traditional repository or an otherwise reasonable place to look for a registration document. I dissent also from the majority’s holding that an officer constitutionally can search a vehicle for a driver’s license.
I
Section 2805, subdivision (a) provides that “[f]or the purpose of locating stolen vehicles, [police] may inspect the title or registration of vehicles, in order to establish the rightful ownership or possession of the vehicle.” (See also §§ 4000, subd. (a) [illegal to drive a vehicle unless it has been registered], 4454, subd. (a) [owners must maintain registration card with the vehicle].) Section 2805 thus reflects a legislative intent to permit police officers to determine whether the driver is the rightful owner of a vehicle or, *89alternatively, whether the vehicle has been stolen. Permitting police to conduct a limited search of the traditional locations within a vehicle where drivers normally keep registration documents is consistent with the high court’s decision in New York v. Class (1986) 475 U.S. 106 [106 S.Ct. 960, 89 L.Ed.2d 81], where the court held the overwhelming importance of vehicle identification numbers (VIN’s) in the scheme for identifying vehicles on the road justified the minor intrusion in that case. We so held in People v. Webster (1991) 54 Cal.3d 411 [285 Cal.Rptr. 31, 814 P.2d 1273], noting the officer in that case limited his search “to the visor and glove compartment, traditional repositories of auto registration.” (Id. at p. 431.)
I agree the glove compartment and visor (and, in days past, the steering column) are traditional repositories for vehicle registration documentation, and an officer, faced with a driver who does not produce the required registration, is permitted under the United States Constitution to conduct a limited search of those locations in an attempt to obtain such information. The small intrusion caused by such limited searches is not much different from that occasioned by the VIN search approved by the high court in New York v. Class, supra, 475 U.S. 106. Were that the extent of the majority’s rule, I would concur without comment. But nothing in either New York v. Class or People v. Webster, supra, 54 Cal.3d 411, authorizes police to conduct a warrantless search for a vehicle’s registration documents outside these limited areas. As the dissent explains, failure to place limits on such searches runs the risk of obliterating the rule requiring that exceptions to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement be narrow and well delineated. To the extent the majority holds that the space beneath the driver’s seat {Arturo D.) as well as under the front passenger seat {Hinger) are locations in which a person normally or traditionally keeps his or her auto registration or, indeed, are places where the registration might reasonably be expected to be found, I disagree; I therefore conclude the officers in question were not authorized to search in those locations without probable cause to believe they would discover contraband.
n
Notwithstanding the majority’s conflation of registration documentation and a driver’s license as “regulatory documentation” (e.g., maj. opn., ante, at pp. 76, 79), a driver’s license differs from a vehicle registration document and requires a different analysis. A driver is required by law to carry a valid driver’s license (§ 12951, subd. (a)) and to present it to a police officer upon demand {id., subd. (b)). Failure to do so is an infraction. (§ 40303.5.)3 But nothing—not the Constitution, nor any statute, nor the cases cited by the *90majority—authorizes police to conduct a warrantless vehicle search in an attempt to discover the license of a driver who asserts he or she does not have it in the car. Nor does common sense support the majority’s analysis. Drivers’ licenses of themselves, unlike registration papers, are not traditionally placed on visors or in glove compartments, much less under seats. The most “traditional repository” of a driver’s license is an individual’s wallet, usually worn on his person if a man, or carried in her purse if a woman. Given this fact, consistency would require the majority likewise to sanction a patdown search of a male driver, or a search of a female driver’s purse, to search for his or her wallet and, finding a wallet in either place, would further authorize the officer to open and inspect its contents. Clearly this is not the law.
Nor does any asserted need to identify the driver support the majority’s rule.4 By what logic would a police officer believe that searching a vehicle for a person’s driver’s license would be fruitful when the driver has just informed the officer that he does not have a license in his possession? In neither case before the court, nor in any case of which I am aware, did the officer’s search yield the license the driver declared he was without. (Cf. People v. Webster, supra, 54 Cal.3d at p. 431 [where this court observed that the officer who searched the vehicle for registration papers “had every reason to believe that the occupants, who disclaimed ownership, would not be able to find or produce the registration on their own”]; accord, People v. Turner (1994) 8 Cal.4th 137, 182 [32 Cal.Rptr.2d 762, 878 P.2d 521].) Is it reasonable to believe that a driver—just stopped by police for violating a traffic law—has actually secreted his driver’s license somewhere in the car and prefers to deny its presence and risk arrest rather than produce it and hope for release pursuant to a traffic citation? The majority’s assertion that taking the driver at his word and therefore subjecting him to arrest with its attendant inconveniences would subject the driver to “considerably greater intrusion” than would the search the majority authorizes, and that such a search is “ ‘most logically calculated to get [the driver] on his way and the officer back to ferreting out more serious criminals in the least amount of time’ ” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 77, fn. 17), is patently fallacious—unless, of course, the majority is speaking only of forgetful drivers who have their licenses, but have forgotten that they do. More realistically, if a law-abiding driver has proper identification he will produce it; if, on the other hand, as in the cases before us, the driver states he lacks the requested license, either he in fact does lack it or the information is in some way incriminating. But that *91criminals stopped for traffic infractions might occasionally lie about having a license in their possession is insufficient reason to carve out, as the majority does, a blanket exception to the warrant requirement to authorize police officers to conduct warrantless vehicle searches in all cases where stopped drivers profess to be without their licenses.
The purpose of requiring a driver to present a license is to assure a citation is not being issued to a “ ‘phantom.’ ” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 87, fn. 27.) If the driver fails to produce a license, the officer has several choices: run the driver’s name on the computer in an attempt to determine his or her true identity (as the officer did in Hinger via his police radio), ask the driver to submit a thumbprint (§ 40500, subd. (a)), accept other evidence of identification (§ 40302, subd. (a)), or arrest the driver (ibid.; see Knowles v. Iowa, supra, 525 U.S. at p. 118 [119 S.Ct. at p. 488]). All these options address the concern that the officer know to whom he or she is issuing the traffic citation, thereby providing some guarantee the infractor will appear in court or pay the required fine. No court has ever sanctioned the alternative the majority endorses here: searching the driver’s vehicle (and by logical implication, the driver’s person) for the missing driver’s license. To the extent the majority endorses such warrantless searches, I dissent.

Vehicle Code section 12951, subdivision (b) provides: “The driver of a motor vehicle shall present his or her license for examination upon demand of a peace officer . . . All further undesignated statutory references are to the Vehicle Code.

Section 4462, subdivision (a) states: “The driver of a motor vehicle shall present the registration or identification card or other evidence of registration of any or all vehicles under his or her immediate control for examination upon demand of any peace officer.”

Refusal to present one’s license is a misdemeanor. (§ 40000.11, subd. (h).)

I agree, however, with the dissent that such asserted need is irrelevant under Knowles v. Iowa, supra, 525 U.S. at page 118 [119 S.Ct. at page 488], “given its observation that an officer dissatisfied with a driver’s proffered identification may arrest rather than merely cite the driver.” (Dis. opn. of Kennard, J., post, at p. 96.)