P.
Filed 12/6/13 In re Oscar P. CA5
NOT
TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
California
Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or
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as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This
opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for
purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE
OF CALIFORNIA
FIFTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
In re OSCAR
P., a Person Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law.
THE PEOPLE,
Plaintiff and Respondent,
v.
OSCAR P.,
Defendant and
Appellant.
F067219
(Super.
Ct. No. JW130409-00)
APPEAL from
a judgment of the Superior Court of
Holly
Jackson, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Kamala D.
Harris, Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General,
Michael P. Farrell, Assistant Attorney General, Michael A. Canzoneri and
Heather S. Gimle, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
The court adjudged appellant, Oscar P., a ward of the
court (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 602) after it sustained petition
allegations charging appellant with possession of concentrated cannabis (count
1/Health & Saf. Code, § 11357, subd. (a)) and driving without a valid driver’s
license (count 2/Veh. Code, § 12500, subd. (a)). On appeal, appellant contends the court
abused its discretion when it denied his motion
to suppress. We affirm.
FACTS
On February
5, 2013, Bakersfield Police Officer Jeremy Piper stopped the truck appellant was
driving and arrested him after finding 11.4 grams of concentrated cannabis on
him. Appellant did not have a valid
driver’s license in his possession.
On March 7,
2013, the district attorney filed a petition charging appellant with the two
counts the court sustained.
On March
27, 2013, appellant’s defense counsel filed a motion to suppress alleging that appellant
was unlawfully detained.
On April
24, 2013, the court heard appellant’s suppression motion during appellant’s
adjudication hearing. During the hearing,
Officer Piper testified that on February 5, 2013, at 11:40 a.m., while on patrol,
he drove behind a truck driven by appellant that appeared to have a current
registration sticker on its license plate.
However, when the officer ran a DMV check of the license plate number, he
discovered the registration had expired on October 31, 2011. Officer Piper conducted a traffic stop of the
truck and contacted appellant, who told him he did not have a driver’s license. Officer Piper smelled a strong odor of
marijuana and asked appellant to exit the truck so he could investigate
appellant’s identity and the odor of marijuana.
Officer Piper pat searched appellant and felt a prescription bottle in
his left front pants pocket. The officer
asked for and received permission from appellant to search the pants pocket. As soon as he pulled the bottle out, he saw
it contained marijuana. Officer Piper
asked appellant what the substance was and appellant stated it was hashish.
When
Officer Piper spoke with appellant after placing him in the back of his patrol
car, appellant admitted knowing the registration tab on his license plate was
fake, but he claimed not to know who put it on the truck. Appellant also stated that he used the
hashish for personal reasons and did not sell it.
Except for
driving with an expired registration and a fake tag, Officer Piper did not
observe appellant commit any traffic
violations prior to stopping him.
At the
conclusion of the hearing, the court denied appellant’s suppression motion and
it sustained the two charges alleged in the petition. The court also denied a defense motion to reduce
the possession charge from a felony to a misdemeanor.
On May 8,
2013, the court again denied a defense request to reduce the possession charge to
a misdemeanor and placed appellant on probation not to exceed his 21st
birthday.
DISCUSSION
“‘The
standard of appellate review of a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress
is well established. We defer to the
trial court’s factual findings, express or implied, where supported by
substantial evidence. In determining
whether, on the facts so found, the search or seizure was reasonable under the
exercise our independent judgment.
[Citations.]’ [Citation.]†(People
v. Weaver (2001) 26 Cal.4th 876, 924.)
“[A]n
officer may stop and detain a motorist on reasonable suspicion that the driver
has violated the law. [Citations.] The guiding principle in determining the
propriety of an investigatory detention is ‘the reasonableness in all the
circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of a citizen’s personal
security.’ [Citations.] In making our determination, we examine ‘the
totality of the circumstances’ in each case. [Citations.]†(People
v. Wells (2006) 38 Cal.4th 1078, 1082-1083.) An ordinary traffic stop is treated as a
detention and is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment “only if the facts and circumstances known to the officer support at
least a reasonable suspicion that the driver has violated the Vehicle Code or
some other law.†(People v. Miranda (1993) 17 Cal.App.4th 917, 926.) “When assessing the reasonableness of a
traffic stop, the question is not whether appellant actually violated the
Vehicle Code, but whether there was some ‘“objective manifestation†that [he]
may have’ violated the Vehicle Code. [Citation.]â€
(People
v. Durant (2012) 205 Cal.App.4th 57, 63, italics omitted.)
“With a few
minor exceptions all records of the Department of Motor Vehicles [DMV] relating
to registration of vehicles, information contained on applications for drivers’
licenses, abstracts of convictions and accident reports are public records and
open for inspection. (Veh. Code, §
1808.) There can be little expectation
of privacy when the records are made public by statute.â€
v. Herrera (1981) 124 Cal.App.3d 386, 389.)
Officer
Piper’s search of DMV records did not implicate appellant’s Fourth Amendment
rights because appellant did not have an expectation of privacy in records
relating to his truck’s registration.
Further, the information that the truck registration was not current and
Officer Piper’s observation of what appeared to be fake registration tags on
the truck’s license plate provided the officer with reasonable cause to stop
appellant’s truck. (People v. Bell (1996) 43 Cal.App.4th 754, 760-761;
Cal.App.4th 1311, 1317.)
Appellant misplaces
his reliance on Delaware v. Prouse
(1979) 440 U.S. 648 (Prouse) to
contend Officer Piper unlawfully stopped him.
In Prouse, a police officer
of checking the driving license of the operator and the registration of the
car. The officer had “neither probable
cause to believe nor reasonable suspicion that the car [was] being driven
contrary to the laws governing the operation of motor vehicles or that either
the car or any of its occupants [was] subject to seizure or detention in
connection with the violation of any other applicable law.†(Id.
at p. 650.) In holding that the stop was
unlawful, the Supreme Court stated: “[W]e
hold that except in those situations in which there is at least articulable and
reasonable suspicion that a motorist is unlicensed or that an automobile is not
registered, or that either the vehicle or an occupant is otherwise subject to
seizure for violation of law, stopping an automobile and detaining the driver
in order to check his driver’s license and the registration of the automobile
are unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.â€
(Id. at p. 663.)
officer in Prouse, Officer Piper had
reasonable suspicion that appellant had committed at least one vehicle code
violation prior to stopping appellant’s
truck and, as discussed above, the manner in which he obtained information
to make this determination did not implicate appellant’s Fourth Amendment
rights. Accordingly, we conclude the
court did not err when it denied appellant’s suppression motion.
DISPOSITION
The
judgment is affirmed.
Code section 1808, subdivision (a) provides:
“Except where a specific provision of law prohibits the disclosure of
records or information or provides for confidentiality, all records of the department relating to the registration of vehicles,
other information contained on an application for a driver’s license, abstracts
of convictions, and abstracts of accident reports required to be sent to the
department in Sacramento, except for abstracts of accidents where, in the
opinion of a reporting officer, another individual was at fault,
office hours. All abstracts of accident reports shall be available to law
enforcement agencies and courts of competent jurisdiction.†(Italics added.)
