The Right Stop
Driving under the influence of alcohol or intoxicants continues to be a problem, not only in Kentucky, but also throughout the nation.
Yearly, innocent victims lose their lives due to this senseless act. One of the most effective ways to combat this concern is to arrest the impaired driver before he/she can harm themselves or others. Oftentimes, an officer stops a vehicle initially based upon probable cause for a traffic offense. However, in order to make the investigative stop, an officer need only to be able to articulate reasonable suspicion of criminal activity by the driver. The subsequent investigative detention otherwise known as a Terry Stop may lead to probable cause that the driver is operating under the influence of alcohol or other intoxicants.
So, what facts might constitute reasonable suspicion for a valid traffic stop? Would information gleaned from running a vehicle’s license plate qualify? This is the issue the Kentucky Supreme Court addressed in Traft v. Commonwealth, 539 S.W.3d 647 (Ky 2018).
One early morning, Gregory Traft was driving his vehicle in the opposite direction of a Boone County Sheriff’s Deputy when the deputy’s license plate reader camera scanned his plate. The reader alerted the deputy to an active warrant for the registered owner of the vehicle for failure to appear. The deputy stopped the vehicle and confirmed Traft to be the owner, and the same person listed in the warrant. During his investigation, the deputy noticed Traft exhibiting signs of intoxication, so he administered standardized field sobriety tests to him. Traft showed several clues consistent with impairment, admitted to drinking too many beers and blew almost two times the legal limit on the portable breath test. The deputy arrested Traft on probable cause of operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol.
Traft believed the traffic stop, based upon the reading of his license plate and subsequent information gleaned from the plate, violated his Fourth Amendment rights. In an effort to suppress the stop and the arrest flowing therefrom, his counsel filed a motion to be considered by the trial court. The trial court denied the motion, finding Traft’s rights were not violated by the deputy. Eventually, the matter made its way before the Kentucky Supreme Court.
The Court addressed three separate issues in its opinion: whether a reasonable expectation of privacy exists in a license plate as required to prove a Fourth Amendment violation; whether a reasonable expectation of privacy exists in information gleaned from a license plate reader; whether reasonable suspicion exists to stop a vehicle after it is discovered the owner of the vehicle has an active arrest warrant.
“An officer is reasonable in acting upon the commonsense assumption the driver of the vehicle is the registered owner, unless faced with facts indicating otherwise. Evidence gathered as a result of the investigative stop may properly lead to probable cause of other crimes including the crime of driving under the influence.”
The Court’s analysis began by determining if a reasonable expectation of privacy exists in one’s license plate or the personal information flowing therefrom pursuant to the Fourth Amendment. The Court concluded Traft did not possess a reasonable expectation of privacy in the license plate as it was displayed. The Court agreed with the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that the very purpose of the license plate number is to provide identifying information to law enforcement officials and others. Id. at 649, 650 citing United States v. Ellison, 462 F.3d 557, 561 (6th Cir. 2006).
The Court next addressed whether a reasonable expectation of privacy exists in the information obtained through the reading of Traft’s plate number. The Court noted this information is not protected, but rather a matter of public record accessible to anyone. Officers would be able to access the same information had they called the license plate number into dispatch.
Finally, the Court addressed if the active warrant amounted to reasonable suspicion for the deputy to stop the vehicle. Traft claimed that once the information from the plate showed him not to be operating a stolen vehicle, the deputy no longer had reason to believe he was engaged in criminal activity. The Court disagreed. Rather, the Court found Traft not to be a law-abiding citizen that had a right to be left alone, but rather a fugitive from justice. The fact the owner of the vehicle was subject to seizure for a violation of the law created an articulable and reasonable suspicion for an officer to initiate a traffic stop. The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s ruling and upheld the stop and subsequent gathering of evidence leading to Traft’s arrest.
Earlier this year, the United States Supreme Court addressed a similar issue in the case of Kansas v. Glover, 140 S.Ct. 1183 (2020), previously discussed in the Kentucky Law Enforcement magazine on August 20, 2020. Glover concerned a deputy who ran a license plate check on a pickup truck and learned the owner’s driver’s license had been revoked. The deputy stopped the vehicle upon the assumption the owner was driving and subsequently charged him with being a habitual violator. Glover filed a motion to suppress all evidence gathered from the stop, claiming the officer lacked reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment, since he did not know if the registered owner was the driver of the truck. The Court upheld the stop by stating that since the deputy lacked information negating an inference otherwise, reasonable suspicion existed to stop the truck based upon the commonsense inference that a defendant whose license had been revoked was likely the driver. As noted by the Court’s opinion, reasonableness is the touchstone of the Fourth Amendment. Based upon the totality of the circumstances, the Court determined it was reasonable for the deputy to believe the registered owner was driving the vehicle.
Glover supports the Kentucky Supreme Court’s ruling in Traft. In both matters, the courts analyzed the reasonableness of the law enforcement officer’s actions under the Fourth Amendment. In Traft, the Kentucky Supreme Court determined it was reasonable of the deputy to use information obtained from a scan of a license plate to stop a vehicle whose registered owner had an outstanding warrant for failure to appear. In Glover, the United States Supreme Court determined a deputy acted reasonably when stopping a vehicle when the license plate information showed the registered owner to have a revoked license. In light of these cases, a law enforcement official will be deemed to have acted reasonably pursuant to the Fourth Amendment when running a license plate exposed to public view and acting on information gathered therefrom. Furthermore, an officer is reasonable in acting upon the commonsense assumption the driver of the vehicle is the registered owner, unless faced with facts indicating otherwise. Evidence gathered as a result of the investigative stop may properly lead to probable cause of other crimes including the crime of driving under the influence.
Probable cause leading to the arrest of persons operating on Kentucky’s highways while under the influence of alcohol or other intoxicants may stem from a variety of sources. In light of the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision in Traft v. Commonwealth, a possible source of such evidence may begin as the result of information flowing from running a vehicle’s license plate and any subsequent stop of the driver. The Court’s ruling provides yet another tool in law enforcement’s arsenal to combat impaired driving.
