Outstanding work on behalf of our Los Angeles Leos. Another drug threat off the streets. I wonder who that punk justice was that voted against admitting this legally seized evidence.
Good post!
One can only hope that you are arrested under this kind of pretense soon.
Here is the punk justice in the case below:
"I respectfully dissent.
The majority hold that the search of appellant was valid based on his arrest pursuant to Vehicle Code section 40302.2 They are persuaded that the issue of whether the officer was entitled to arrest appellant is resolved by the majority decision in People v. Monroe (1993) 12 Cal.App.4th 1174. They find no flaw in its reasoning and fail to recognize the paradoxical consequences to its application here.
As the majority accurately recite, the arresting deputy sheriff observed appellant at 6 p.m. on June 19, 1999, riding a bicycle in the wrong direction on a residential public street. The deputy initiated a stop intending to issue appellant a citation for violation of section 21650.1.3 Appellant stopped the bicycle. The deputy approached him and asked “if [appellant] had any identification on him.” Appellant responded that “he didn’t have any I.D. on him.” However, appellant did tell the deputy his name and birthdate. At that point the deputy arrested appellant pursuant to section 40302. Appellant was handcuffed, searched, and placed in the back of the patrol car.
Before leaving the location where appellant had been arrested, the deputy accessed the computer in his patrol car and verified that appellant was, in fact, who he said he was. The information corresponded to the address appellant had given the deputy and to appellant’s height, weight, and race. No citation for any vehicular offense was issued and the deputy dropped off the bicycle at the location that appellant had told him was his destination. Appellant remained in custody and was criminally charged based on the result of the search conducted after he was placed under arrest.
The problem with the application of section 40302 as a basis for arrest is that appellant was not required to have a motor vehicle license (or its functional equivalent). Therefore, the rationale of the Monroe court is irrelevant if not erroneous. The court in People v. Monroe, supra, 12 Cal.App.4th 1174, 1183, observed that, “Though courts have considered the application of section 40302 in a variety of contexts, there has been no definitive interpretation of the phrase ‘satisfactory evidence of his identity,’ nor any explanation of the procedure to be followed by an officer who seeks to obtain such evidence.” The Monroe court proceeded to interpret the statute and concluded that a person detained for a traffic violation may not avoid arrest and cannot simply sign a promise to appear unless a driver’s license or its functional equivalent is produced for examination. (Id. at p. 1188.) Monroe further held that section 40302 only requires the deputy to inquire if the person detained has a driver’s license or “some form of written identification which is its equivalent.” (Id. at p. 1188.) Any other inquiry is optional and may or may not be sufficient to allow the person detained to be cited and released on a promise to appear.
I respectfully suggest that Monroe fails both to consider the application of section 40302 to bicycle riders and pedestrians and to recognize the implication of its application to passengers in a car. Where is it written that anyone other than an operator of a motor vehicle is required to have on his person a driver’s license? Where is the law that requires anyone who want to use the public streets to obtain an identification card issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles, optionally available pursuant to section 13000 et seq.? What requires one who is merely a passenger in a car to carry identification? There are no such requirements.
Monroe went astray when it failed to consider certain provisions for statutory construction which it recites. “The words should be construed in context, and should be given such ‘interpretation as will promote rather than defeat the general purpose and policy of the law.’ [Citation.] Where uncertainty exists, consideration should be given to the consequence that will flow from a particular interpretation; the result of the interpretation should be reasonable, and where several constructions are possible, that which leads to the more reasonable result should be adopted. [Citations.]” (Id. at p. 1184.)
The obvious purpose of section 40302 is to avoid the inconvenience and intrusion of an arrest where only a minor traffic violation occurs. The Monroe court acknowledges that is the general understanding of the law. (Id. at pp. 1184-1185.) Therefore, a less restricted application would impose a minimal duty to inquire if the person detained can provide other information of identity to avoid an arrest by having the officer issue a citation and the detainee execute a promise to appear. In other words, a less restricted application would lead to a more reasonable result.
The dissent in Monroe recognized that information of identity is easily verified. “In today’s computer age the officer in the field has a host of readily available methods of verifying the identity of a person who does not happen to have written identification in his possession.” (Id. at p. 1199 [dis. opn. of Smith, Acting P.J.]; see also State v. Walker (Tenn. 2000) 12 S.W.3d 460.) Certainly the facts here prove that is so. If the deputy had resorted to the computer in his patrol car before arresting and searching appellant, appellant would have been issued a citation and allowed to sign a promise to appear. If the deputy’s inquiry otherwise provided information bearing on the probability of appellant’s not appearing as promised, then the deputy could exercise his discretion to arrest appellant. That too would be reviewable, but against circumstances that would not depend on appellant having “official papers” for the deputy to examine.
A pinched interpretation of section 40302 is simply contrary to a free society’s notion of individual liberty. As the United States Supreme Court put it, “[p]olice powers in many countries are exercised in ways that we would find intolerable and indeed violative of constitutional rights. To take only one example, a large number of nations do not share our belief in the freedom of movement and travel, requiring persons to carry identification cards at all times.” (Foley v. Connelie (1978) 435 U.S. 291, 300, fn. 9.)
The motion to suppress should have been granted." VOGEL (C.S.), P.J.