Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Santa Clara County Super. Ct. No. CC788665
RUSHING, P.J.
1. Introduction
After his suppression motion was denied, defendant Terrance Damone Slocum entered a plea of no contest to a charge of possessing cocaine for sale (Health & Safe Code, § 11351) on condition that he not be sentenced to prison. The trial court suspended imposition of sentence and placed defendant on three years’ probation with a variety of conditions, including spending 10 months in jail, registering as a narcotics offender, and paying several fines and fees.
On appeal, defendant seeks further review of his suppression motion. (Pen. Code, § 1538.5, subd. (m).) The only claim he makes on appeal is that the police officer who stopped the car in which he was a passenger did not have a reasonable suspicion that the car was in violation of Vehicle Code section 5201, which provides in part: “License plates shall at all times be securely fastened to the vehicle for which they are issued so as to prevent the plates from swinging, shall be mounted in a position so as to be clearly visible, and shall be maintained in a condition so as to be clearly legible.” Because the license plate was at an angle over 45 degrees from horizontal, we will reject this contention for the reasons stated below and will affirm the judgment.
Unspecified section references are to the Vehicle Code.
2. evidence at the suppression hearing
Defendant’s suppression motion was based on the testimony of the arresting officer, San Jose Police Officer James Pickens, at the suppression hearing. We assume that the trial court made the following express and implied factual findings, as they are supported by substantial evidence. (People v. Saunders (2006) 38 Cal.4th 1129, 1133-1134 (Saunders); People v. Duncan (2008) 160 Cal.App.4th 1014, 1017 (Duncan).)
During the evening of December 1, 2007, Officer Pickens was in uniform in a marked patrol car conducting surveillance of an area in downtown San Jose known for drug sales. Over the course of the evening, he saw three or four people who, to his trained eyes, were acting like street drug dealers, walking back and forth in the area without frequenting businesses, making contact with multiple pedestrians, and engaging in hand-to-hand transactions. Defendant was one of these people, and Officer Pickens spoke to him that night.
Around 8:00 p.m., another one of the apparent drug dealers ran up to and got into the rear passenger seat of a 1988 Mercedes that had come to a stop in the street. The Mercedes drove around the block nearer to Officer Pickens. This conduct was also consistent with drug sales.
Around 11:17 p.m., Pickens saw the Mercedes for the second time. It drove towards him for most of a block. He noticed that the front license plate was hanging by one bolt at an angle exceeding 45 degrees. He did not see the plate swinging. He also recognized the passenger in the rear seat as Kurtis Hawthorne from an arrest the week before. Hawthorne was subject to a probation search condition.
The reporter’s transcript repeatedly identifies the time of the stop as 1:17 p.m., but there is also a reference to 11:00 p.m. and to Pickens seeing defendant three or four hours earlier that evening at 8:00 p.m.
Officer Pickens stopped the car, got out of his patrol car, and approached it. The driver, Robert Barnett, opened his door. Defendant was sitting in the front passenger seat.
Pickens asked Barnett for his driver’s license, registration, and insurance. Barnett reached into his shoe and explained he was getting a key to the glove box. He opened the glove box, reached into it, and shoved something back underneath a bunch of paperwork. Pickens did not see what it was that Barnett shoved. Barnett seemed very nervous and shaking. Pickens smelled marijuana. Barnett grabbed some papers and handed them to the officer. They did not contain registration or insurance. Barnett did produce his driver’s license.
A fill officer arrived. Pickens had Barnett and the passengers get out of the car before searching it. Concealed under some papers in the glove box, he found a.32 caliber revolver loaded with five rounds. In the front passenger door was digital scale with some white residue. Based on Pickens’ training and experience, the scale seemed to be one used in measuring narcotics. In the rear passenger door was a marijuana cigarette.
After fully searching the car, Officer Pickens arrested all three occupants. Defendant exhibited symptoms of being under the influence of a stimulant, so he was arrested for being under the influence and loitering in a narcotics area. Pickens remembered defendant’s symptoms at the suppression hearing, though he had not noted them in his police report. Pickens later learned that the driver was defendant’s father. Defendant was not charged with being under the influence.
The court found the officer to be credible, but recommended that he include such details in his future reports.
Pickens searched defendant at the police preprocessing center and found 15 grams of crack cocaine and eight pills in his anal cavity.
3. was the detention constitutional?
Accepting the above facts as found by the trial court, we independently review whether the vehicle stop was constitutional. (Saunders, supra, 38 Cal.4th 1129, 1133-1134; Duncan, supra, 160 Cal.App.4th 1014, 1017.) “ ‘A detention is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when the detaining officer can point to specific articulable facts that, considered in light of the totality of the circumstances, provide some objective manifestation that the person detained may be involved in criminal activity.’ [Citation.] Ordinary traffic stops are treated as investigatory detentions for which the officer must be able to articulate specific facts justifying the suspicion that a crime is being committed.” (In re Raymond C. (2008) 45 Cal.4th 303, 307.) A police officer’s stop of a vehicle is a detention of all its occupants, and each of them can challenge the basis for the stop. (Brendlin v. California (2007) 551 U.S. 249 [127 S.Ct. 2400, 2407].)
“[W]hen there is articulable and reasonable suspicion that a motorist is unlicensed, that an automobile is not registered, or that either the vehicle or an occupant is otherwise subject to seizure for violation of law, the vehicle may be stopped and the driver detained in order to check his or her driver’s license and the vehicle’s registration.” (Saunders, supra, 38 Cal.4th at p. 1135.) A stop may be warranted by a “reasonable suspicion that the car was being driven in violation of vehicular license requirements. (Veh. Code, §§ 5200, 5201.)” (In re Raymond C., supra, 45 Cal.4th 303, 307.) “[T]he lack of a front license plate has long been recognized as a legitimate basis for a traffic stop.” (Saunders, supra, 38 Cal.4th at p. 1136, and cases there cited.)
Section 5201 “imposes three requirements—that the plate be securely fastened to prevent swinging, that it be clearly visible, and that it be clearly legible.” (Duncan, supra, 160 Cal.App.4th 1016, 1019.) The phrase “clearly visible” was interpreted, defined, and applied in People v. White (2001) 93 Cal.App.4th 1022, with the appellate decision concluding, “A license plate mounted in a place that results in it being partially obstructed from view by a trailer hitch ball violates Vehicle Code section 5201....” (Id. at p. 1026.) The phrase “clearly legible” was interpreted, defined, and applied in Duncan, supra, 160 Cal.App.4th 1014, with the appellate decision concluding: “It is evident that the Legislature, in using the phrase ‘clearly legible,’ intended for the information on a license plate to be read with ease and without doubt or mistake. Therefore, we conclude that it would be a violation of the statute to mount the license plate upside down, which would make the plate more difficult or confusing to read.” (Id. at p. 1019.)
Defendant argues as follows. There has been no appellate interpretation of the “securely fastened” requirement of section 5201, which provides, “License plates shall at all times be securely fastened to the vehicle for which they are issued so as to prevent the plates from swinging....” He offers on-line dictionary definitions of “secure,” “fasten,” “prevent,” and “swing,” and concludes: “This requirement is directed towards ensuring that license plates remain affixed to vehicles.” “It is only when the plate commences swinging that the condition has ripened into an infraction.” Unless a officer sees a license plate in the process of swinging, there can be no reasonable suspicion of a violation of that part of the statute.
The People agree that “[t]he proper interpretation of the first provision presents a question of first impression.” Actually, this phrase was applied in People v. Trumpour (1967) 253 Cal.App.2d 934, where the court indicated that a vehicle stop was justified in part because the rear license plate, attached by one screw and a piece of wire, jiggled as the car moved. (Id. at pp. 935, 937.) This statement was dictum, however, as the conviction was reversed due to a Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436 violation.
This argument overlooks two points. First, the primary purpose of the statute is not to prevent an equipment violation like burned out stoplamps (§ 24603) or headlamps (§ 24400), inadequate service brakes (§ 26454), or bald tires (§ 27465). A license plate is not a safety feature. The primary purpose of a vehicle license plate is to give the vehicle a unique identity so as to enable its identification by observers. “A vehicle license plate is a state-imposed display of registered vehicle identification.” (Kahn v. Department of Motor Vehicles (1993) 16 Cal.App.4th 159, 166.)
Although the first clause of section 5201 seeks to define a “securely fastened” license plate as one that is not “swinging,” the ultimate objective of the three statutory requirements is to have license plates in positions on a vehicle from which they can be easily read. Obviously a front license plate canted at an angle over 45 degrees from horizontal, while more readable than one that is upside down, is not as readable as one that is upright.
Second, to the extent this clause evidences a concern perceived by defendant about plates that will swing and eventually fall off, it was reasonable for Officer Pickens to believe that he was observing one, though it was temporarily at rest. A plate that is secured by two or more fasteners should be in an upright position, so a plate at an angle indicates the failure or absence of a fastener. While some plates may be mounted improperly, though securely, at an angle, it is a reasonable assumption that a plate at an angle is not securely fastened, but has swung to that angle and might swing again. Defendant protests that, if the plate was so insecurely fastened as to have swung to its current position, then it necessarily must have been swinging or vibrating when Officer Pickens observed it. But there was no evidence that the Mercedes was doing anything—turning sharply, weaving, riding on a bumpy road—that would necessarily have caused the plate to swing as it approached the officer.
Saunders, supra, 38 Cal.4th 1129 stated: “The question for us . . . is not whether Ingram’s vehicle was in fact in full compliance with the law at the time of the stop, but whether Officer Womack had ‘ “articulable suspicion” ’ it was not. [Citations.] The possibility of an innocent explanation for a missing front license plate does not preclude an officer from effecting a stop to investigate the ambiguity.” (Id. at p. 1136.)
Similarly here, we conclude that the over 45 degree angle of the license plate gave rise to a reasonable suspicion that it was not securely fastened and justified Officer Pickens stopping the car to investigate its status. In view of this conclusion, we decline the Attorney General’s invitation to consider whether the angled plate was also in violation of the requirement that it be clearly legible, a question that was not put to Officer Pickens.
Defendant argues further that allowing police officers to stop traffic to investigate stationary angled plates to see if they are securely fastened will lead to other traffic stops to ascertain how securely fastened are license plates held on by two bolts. This slippery slope argument does not concern us. A license mounted horizontally on two bolts is much less likely to swing and become unreadable or fall off, and it would be correspondingly more difficult for an officer to articulate a reasonable suspicion that a plate so mounted was not securely fastened.
We concluded that the trial court did not err in denying defendant’s suppression motion.
Disposition
The judgment is affirmed.
WE CONCUR: PREMO, J., ELIA, J.