Court Opinion

ID: 9486037
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:36:29.468676+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:30.084290
License: Public Domain

NATHANIEL R. JONES, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I join Judge Keith’s dissent and would reverse as stated in the original panel opin*397ion. I write to emphasize my disagreement with the new law created by the en banc court.
As the court recognizes, this circuit has “repeatedly maintained” that the Fourth Amendment requires us to inquire whether a reasonable officer would have made a stop in the absence of an illegitimate motivation, and it is a “new test” that the court announces today. When a court overrules precedent and adopts a new constitutional test, it usually offers good reasons for doing so. Today, the majority does offer some reasons, in the last two paragraphs of section II, part C of its opinion. These reasons well state the neatness and efficiency of the circuit’s new “test.” Disturbingly, they also ignore the Constitution.
The opinion notes in passing that the need to protect against pretextual stops derives from the Fourth Amendment, but it never discusses the rationale underlying that Amendment, making today’s result appear a bloodless exercise in doctrinal manipulation. A reader of the opinion might well conclude that nothing is “lost” by the circuit’s elimination of the law against pretextual stops, as there is no indication that anything could ever have been gained by it in the first place.
I believe much is lost. The Fourth Amendment, everyone agrees, protects a citizen from being stopped for offenses when the authorities do not have, at the least, a reasonable suspicion that the citizen committed the offense. Until today, a police officer in this circuit could not stop a driver to search for illegal drugs on a mere hunch. Now, an officer can apparently act in the following manner, which I base on United States v. Smith, 799 F.2d 704 (11th Cir.1986): 1) The officer sees a driver whom he wants to stop to search for illegal drugs, for no reason other than, perhaps, the driver’s race, looks, or attire; 2) The officer then follows the driver until he can stop him for some minor, and rarely enforced, traffic violation, such as wheels crossing a few inches outside of the traffic lane or a turn signal flashed a few feet too late; 3) The officer searches for drugs pursuant to the valid stop for the traffic offense.1
Such actions drastically reduce the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that an officer have probable cause or reasonable suspicion in order to search for illegal contraband, since presumably almost any driver — whether he in fact turns out to be a drug possessor or not— could be stopped and searched in such a manner if police desired. These pretextual searches are permitted by the new test the court adopts today, which allows a stop to search for drugs so long as there is probable cause for a traffic offense.
In my view, the court errs in focusing narrowly upon whether there is probable cause to support the stop for the traffic offense, rather than making a broader “objective assessment of the officer’s actions in light of the facts and circumstances confronting him at the time.”2 Even in the most egregious case of pretext, I agree that the citizen can be issued the citation for his traffic violation. In the pretextual stop situation laid out above, however, the test for pretext must address whether the objective facts and circumstances in the case support the view that the officer would have stopped the citizen for the traffic offense in the absence of an ulterior motive. Accordingly, the court’s announcement that an automobile *398search remains unconstitutional if the officer did not have probable cause for the traffic offense is well taken but has nothing to do with pretext. A defendant who brings such a claim does not have to produce any facts or circumstances showing that the traffic stop was only an excuse to search for something else but simply makes the familiar claim that he was stopped without probable cause.
The court emphasizes that its allowing of pretextual stops avoids the difficulties in having to apply either the “would” or the “could” tests to stop them. I agree, though I note that the determinations under those tests are no more difficult than those involved in other types of motions to suppress evidence. I also agree with the majority that our old test might “insulate[] from criminal liability” a person whom the police would not have stopped except for their hunch, but this again is a usual and accepted effect of enforcing the Fourth Amendment. In my opinion, the bottom-line difference between my view and the majority’s is that I think our previous effort in applying the Amendment was a worthwhile one needed to properly protect citizens from unreasonable stops, but the majority does not. I believe the occasional decision we issued under the old test was well worth our time in its instruction to officers that they must behave in accordance with the law. Though the majority’s view of the importance of protecting against such pretextual stops obviously differs from mine, I find it disturbing that nothing in the sizeable opinion even acknowledges the reasons why we and other circuits have protected against pretextual stops in the past.
The court’s final reason for allowing pre-textual stops most vividly underscores the opinion’s sad omission of the Fourth Amendment. The opinion says that the new test properly “leaves to the legislatures the job of determining what traffic laws police officers are authorized to enforce and when to enforce them.” We do, of course, defer to the legislatures throughout the broad expanse of normal lawmaking, and, again, no one contests the enforcement of the traffic law in pretext cases. We nevertheless are entrusted with a duty as guardians of the Bill of Rights to apply limitations upon the legislature’s power. If the majority were to have properly emphasized that pretext stop standards are meant to apply Fourth Amendment .values, perhaps this last reason might not fit so seamlessly with the other support for allowing pretextual stops. The majority does not engage in “judicial restraint” merely because it expands the power of the legislature; rather, it does precisely the opposite when it makes policy judgments that lead this court to neglect its solemn duty to enforce — not eviscerate — the Constitution.

. In Smith, 799 F.2d at 706, the officer testified that he wanted to stop a particular individual, that he followed the car until it weaved slightly, and that he then stopped the car and called for a dog to sniff for drugs. See also United States v. Guzman, 864 F.2d 1512, 1515 (10th Cir.1988) ("The classic example [of a pretextual stop], presented in this case, occurs when an officer stops a driver for a minor traffic violation in order to investigate a hunch that the driver is engaged in illegal drug activity”); see generally John M. Burkoff, The Pretext Search Doctrine Returns After Never Leaving, 66 U.Det.L.Rev. 363, 375 n. 56 (1989) (collecting over 50 reported cases from 1980's in which courts suppressed evidence based upon findings of pretext).

. Scott v. United States, 436 U.S. 128, 136, 98 S.Ct. 1717, 1723, 56 L.Ed.2d 168 (1978). It is wrong to assume that the "would” test for pretext must be subjective. See, e.g., Guzman, 864 F.2d at 1518 (“if officers rarely stop seat belt law violators absent some other reason to stop the car, the objective facts involved in this stop suggest that the stop would not have been made but for a suspicion that could not constitutionally justify the stop"). Since announcing the impor*398tance of objective factors in the evaluation of claims involving the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court, while not invalidating a search or seizure based upon pretext, has indicated that the existence of pretext might affect its Fourth Amendment inquiries. See Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602, 621 n. 5, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 1415 n. 5, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989); New York v. Burger, 482 U.S. 691, 716 n. 27, 107 S.Ct. 2636, 2651 n. 27, 96 L.Ed.2d 601 (1987); see also Enriquez-Nevarez v. United States, — U.S.-, 112 S.Ct. 428, 116 L.Ed.2d 448 (1991) (opinion of White, J.) (calling for Court to address on merits “recurring issue” of whether to apply “could” or "would” test to pretextual traffic stop cases).