State v. Tuma, 2013 VT
70
Don’t call it a rollback, but today’s case marks the first time
in a long string of probable cause cases where the SCOV has been skeptical and
dismissive of a police officer’s basis for an initial stop to support the suppression
of the events that followed.
Cynics take note.
The facts are simple.
Police Officer stopped Defendant because the passenger’s side of
Defendant’s front license plate was two inches lower than the driver’s
side. From this stop, the Officer
noticed that Defendant was a bit hoary-eyed and ran him through the usual roadside
coordination Olympics. Defendant took bronze
for effort, and things ended where they mostly do with an arrest and charge of
DUI.
At trial, Defendant sought to suppress all evidence of the
stop because the Officer lacked probable cause.
The State opposed.
At issue is a motor vehicle statute, which requires all cars
to affix their license plates in a manner where they are conspicuous. Under this statute, license plates “shall be
kept horizontal” and affixed so that they don’t swing.
Defendant’s position was that horizontal is a relative term
that allows some variation and angle of deviation. The State, because it has to defend the
Officer’s probable cause, argued that horizontal means strictly level.
Before you rush out to your car with your plumb bobs and
laser sights, know that the trial court agreed with the Defendant and granted
the motion to suppress. Two inches of
slant was not enough to cancel out the general horizontal nature of the
plate. Without the stop, the state was
dead in the water, and so the present appeal followed.
The SCOV does not appear to take this case too
seriously. From the beginning, it is
clear that the Officer and the State overreached on this stop, and the SCOV,
like a cat that has found a wounded shrew, toys with the issue before putting
it to bed.
For the SCOV the question is how to define “horizontal.” How much slope should a plate have before it
is labeled diagonal or vertical? What
degree or angle can trigger a reasonable stop?
Casting through the State and Defendant’s arguments and
attempts to define horizontal, the SCOV rejects each one, comes up with a few
more, and rejects those too. Despite the
general tone of lightness that pervades the opinion, the SCOV appears to be
genuinely searching for a workable definition.
Eventually, the SCOV comes back to the purpose of the
underlying statute, which is intended to require the conspicuous placement of
license plates to ensure that they can be easily read. In this respect, the horizontal requirement
is akin to the prohibition against swinging plates. It is a measure to promote visible plates.
Thus, the SCOV concludes, a plate is properly horizontal
until the point that its angle or degree of declination makes reading the
plates difficult. The SCOV notes that
this may standard may vary for different cars (particularly those with crooked
bumpers) and different observers (we’re looking at you, Officer Magoo), but it
is one that ultimately serves the purpose of the statute.
Whether this definition will work in the long run remains to
be seen, but here it works like a charm.
Defendant’s plate may have been crooked but it was hardly obscured.
. . .
And that, dear reader, is the sound of probable cause
disappearing into the either. The trial
court is upheld, and the charges are effectively dismissed.
Rev up the car.
Defendant’s got a reason to celebrate.
In the end, it is fair to say that the SCOV looked askance
at the Officer’s attempt to push the statute a bit too far out of line. Nevertheless, anyone trying to read more into
this decision is likely to lose their next probable cause challenge, which
remains a shockingly low threshold to establish, something the SCOV reaffirms in
its decision.
For now, let us say that there was nothing wrong with the law,
just the attempt to control the horizontal, which brought the State to the outer limits of probable
cause.
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