Court Opinion

ID: 9529594
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:52:18.589325+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:27:51.331038
License: Public Domain

FRIEDLANDER, Judge,
concurring with opinion
Indiana’s Seatbelt Enforcement Act (the Seatbelt Law) carries with it the potential for significant incursion upon the rights against unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, section 11 of the Indiana Constitution. While concurring fully in the majority opinion, I write separately to add my voice to the chorus of those who have expressed the need for vigilance in cases involving both a traffic stop in which a violation of the Seatbelt Law is alleged, and a subsequent search of the vehicle or its occupants.
Our supreme court has recognized the potential for misuse of the Seatbelt Law as a vehicle for pretextual traffic stops. See Baldwin v. Reagan, 715 N.E.2d 332 (Ind.1999). Apparently recognizing this danger as well, the Indiana General Assembly drafted a 1998 amendment to the statute to insure that such stops would not be permitted. See id. That amendment states:
“A vehicle may be stopped to determine compliance with this chapter. However, a vehicle, the contents of a vehicle, the driver of a vehicle, or a passenger in a vehicle may not be inspected, searched, or detained solely because of a violation of this chapter.”
Ind.Code Ann. § 9-19-10-3 (West Supp. 1999) (as amended by P.L. 116-1998, § 2). Pursuant to the 1998 amendment, after making a traffic stop to determine compliance with the Seatbelt Law, police are strictly prohibited from determining anything else, even if another law would permit it. See Baldwin v. Reagan, 715 N.E.2d 332.
The Indiana Attorney General expressed his agreement with the expressed concerns of both the General Assembly and our supreme court in this regard by emphasizing the point during oral argument in Baldwin. According to the supreme court, the Attorney General stated his opinion that the statute could be read to prohibit a police officer making a seat belt stop from even asking the driver for consent to search the vehicle or its occupants. The supreme court agreed with that interpretation and held that the Seatbelt Law, as amended, was intended to provide motorists with protection from the pretextual seat belt searches and seizures that might be authorized under Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996). Therefore, all three branches of government seem to be in accord that challenges to searches arising under -the Seatbelt Law must be considered with this heightened risk of erosion of freedom in mind.
Turning now to the instant case, Officer Huskins stopped Morris because he observed that Morris was not wearing his seatbelt. While subsequently performing a routine check of Morris’s driver’s license, the officer learned that Morris’s license was suspended. I agree that the routine driver’s license check, along with the events that ensued after the discovery that Morris’s license was suspended, were authorized under the rationale espoused in Trigg v. State, 725 N.E.2d 446. In my view, neither Trigg nor its application to the particular facts of this case represents the first step down the slippery slope that might lead to the erosion of Fourth Amendment and article 1, § 11 liberties.