Court Opinion

ID: 9743271
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:29:43.641426+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:40.246796
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE KNECHT, specially concurring: I concur in the result and commend Justice Myerscough for citing Justice Fitzgerald’s comments in dissent to Harris. I write separately because I believe the decision in Harris is not required by the fourth amendment. Harris is an invitation for officers to jot down the license holder’s name or memorize it and run a warrant check after the traffic stop has concluded and the vehicle has departed. Does the conduct of the officer after the vehicle departs fundamentally change the nature of the stop that occurred but has concluded? Will a later rule prohibit the officer from writing down the occupant’s name and checking it later? Will the officer who has a photographic memory have the advantage because he need not write down pertinent details but simply memorize them for later use? A passenger warrant check is an effective means of locating individuals for whom a judge has issued a warrant. This is not an intrusion. An officer who does not do a warrant check of passengers of a vehicle lawfully stopped at 4 a.m. on a summer night in the circumstances present here is not doing his or her job. A cursory review of appellate cases shows warrant checks on passengers are effective, and those same cases do not show officers abusing their authority, prolonging traffic stops interminably, or attempting to manufacture evidence to justify their conduct. Common sense suggests brief information gathering using a computer does not prolong the detention or change the nature of the stop. The officer was not seeking evidence of wrongdoing — the officer was checking information. The officer’s candor about his training in techniques to conduct a search of a vehicle so as to reduce the level of constitutional scrutiny should not make his every question or action suspicious or impermissible. It is now permissible to search and even dismantle a car’s gas tank as part of drug and other smuggling interdiction at the nation’s borders. This is so even absent any particular reason to suspect that car. It can be done at random. U.S. v. Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. 149, 154-55, 158 L. Ed. 2d 311, 317-18, 124 S. Ct. 1582, 1587 (2004). Such a ruling permits trampling the rights of innocent travelers. I do not endorse the ruling, but it defies logic that such a search would be permissible, and yet an officer is forbidden from running the license and identification information of a passenger in a lawfully stopped vehicle.