US Supreme Court: Police Have Reasonable Suspicion to Stop Car Where Owner Has Revoked Driver’s License
Zak Goldstein Criminal Lawyer
The United States Supreme Court has decided the case of Kansas v. Glover, holding that a Kansas deputy sheriff had reasonable suspicion to pull over a car after running the car’s license plate and learning that the registered owner had a revoked driver’s license. This is an absolutely disastrous decision for privacy and civil rights as it almost goes without saying that the mere fact that the car is registered to a particular owner tells the police absolutely nothing about whether or not the owner is actually driving the car or whether the driver of the car has a valid driver’s license. This decision continues a trend of anti-fourth amendment rulings from the United States Supreme Court in the context of automobile stops.
The Facts of Glover
Glover had an unusual set of facts in that instead of actually calling live witnesses for a motion to suppress hearing, the parties stipulated to a certain set of facts. In this case, the defendant was charged with driving as a habitual violator under a Kansas traffic law. He moved to suppress all evidence obtained during the stop of his car. At the motion to suppress, the parties stipulated to the following facts:
Deputy Mark Mehrer is a certified law enforcement officer employed by the Douglas County Kansas Sheriff’s Office.
On April 28, 2016, Deputy Mehrer was on routine patrol in Douglas County when he observed a 1995 Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck with Kansas plate 295ATJ.
Deputy Mehrer ran Kansas plate 295ATJ through the Kansas Department of Revenue’s file service. The registration came back to a 1995 Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck.
Kansas Department of Revenue files indicated the truck was registered to Charles Glover Jr. The files also indicated that Mr. Glover had a revoked driver’s license in the State of Kansas.
Deputy Mehrer assumed the registered owner of the truck was also the driver, Charles Glover Jr.
Deputy Mehrer did not observe any traffic infractions, and did not attempt to identify the driver [of] the truck. Based solely on the information that the registered owner of the truck was revoked, Deputy Mehrer initiated a traffic stop.
The driver of the truck was identified as the defendant, Charles Glover Jr.
Obviously, this is not the normal way that a motion to suppress is litigated. Normally, the Commonwealth or Government would be held to the burden of proving that a stop occurred in a constitutional manner. In order to do so, the Government would have to call live witnesses to testify as to what happened, and the credibility and observations of those witnesses would be subject to attack on cross-examination. Here, the parties agreed to the above stipulations, leaving only the narrow legal issue of whether the officer had reasonable suspicion to stop a car where the registered owner’s license was suspended and where the officer had not seen anything to suggest that the driver was not in fact the owner.
The trial court granted the motion to suppress, the Court of Appeals reversed, and the Kansas Supreme Court reversed again, finding that the officer did not have reasonable suspicion without taking any steps to determine who the actual driver was before pulling over the car.
The United States Supreme Court’s Decision
The United States Supreme Court accepted the appeal and reversed again, finding that the sheriff had reasonable suspicion to stop the car despite the fact that the sheriff based his decision solely on the fact that the driver’s license of the registered owner was listed as revoked. The sheriff had obtained no other evidence, did not know who was actually driving the car, and had seen no other traffic violations. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court found that it was reasonable for the sheriff to assume that Glover was driving the car and make the stop.
This is a terrible decision. Reasonable suspicion typically requires an individualized, reasonable belief based on all of the facts and circumstances that some sort of criminal activity is afoot. Here, the sheriff clearly did not have that because he had not seen who was driving the car and any number of people could have borrowed Glover’s car. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court ruled against the defendant.
Despite this ruling, there are still ways to litigate a motion to suppress in Philadelphia, PA based on similar facts. First, the Supreme Court left open the possibility that reasonable suspicion would not have existed had the officer observed that someone else was driving the car or that the person driving the car could not have been Grover based on age, race, or other physical characteristics. Second, the concurrence noted that reasonable suspicion existed in this case in part due to the nature of the Kansas statute which led to Glover’s license revocation. Glover’s license had been revoked due to repeated violations of Kansas’s traffic laws, which may give rise to an inference that he is the type of person who is likely to continue driving despite having a suspended license. Had the license been revoked solely for one traffic infraction, reasonable suspicion may not have existed. This inference also could have been challenged through the user of statistics regarding the likelihood of driving with this type of suspended license in that jurisdiction. Finally, Pennsylvania law and the Pennsylvania Constitution provide greater privacy protections than the United States Constitution. Therefore, a criminal defense attorney in Pennsylvania should make sure to bring a motion to suppress under both the federal and state constitutions as a Pennsylvania appellate court could (and previously has) find that the Pennsylvania Constitution does not allow this type of stop.
The ultimate mistake here by the criminal defense lawyer was likely not conducting any cross-examination of the sheriff. Had the defense lawyer litigated a normal motion to suppress, he or she may have been able to establish that the sheriff knew or should have known that it was not Glover driving the car or that the officer had credibility issues which would have provided an alternative basis for granting the motion to suppress. Nonetheless, this is a very bad decision for privacy and Fourth Amendment rights.
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