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Ninth Circuit:
Parole Status Inquiry During Traffic Stop Is Constitutional
By Kimber Cooley, Staff Writer
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held yesterday that asking a driver stopped for a traffic violation about his parole status does not offend the Fourth Amendment as the practice is reasonably related to officer safety and only negligibly extends the length of the stop.
Circuit Judge Kenneth K. Lee’s opinion comes in a case where a parolee, Victor Manuel Ramirez, was stopped for speeding, asked about his status, and was charged with illegal possession of a firearm by a parolee after a search of the vehicle revealed the presence of a loaded 9mm semiautomatic pistol in the glove compartment.
Ramirez pled guilty and was sentenced to five years and three months in prison, but reserved the right to challenge the denial by District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson of the Central District of California of his motion to suppress and withdraw his guilty plea should he prevail.
In denying the motion, Wilson rejected Ramirez’s argument that officers unreasonably prolonged the stop by engaging in a “fishing expedition for hypothetical criminal activity” rather than addressing the traffic code violations.
Officer Safety
Lee noted that Fourth Amendment case law makes clear that a traffic stop which exceeds the time needed to handle the underlying traffic code violations will be found to violate the Fourth Amendment’s shield against unreasonable seizures, but ordinary inquiries incidental to the traffic stop or related to officer security are constitutionally permissible.
He said:
“[I]n assessing potential risks involved in a traffic stop, it is useful for a police officer to know if the person remains on parole because a parolee has committed a crime serious enough to have merited prison time. To be sure, a parolee may not necessarily be more dangerous than a non-parolee….But all else being equal, it is reasonable for a police officer to consider taking additional precautions when dealing with someone who served prison time.”
Lee opined that the incident in question bears witness to the fact that police officers feel heightened security concerns when dealing with parolees.
“Faced with a parolee (who, it turned out, had a loaded gun in the car),” the jurist wrote, Santa Ana police officer Dorin Officer Buchanan “took precautions in dealing with Ramirez (e.g., asking him not to reach for his driver’s license, directing him to put his right hand behind his back when unbuckling his seat belt).”
More Revealing
Lee reasoned that such parole inquiries are akin to running a criminal history check which he identified as “a practice we have held passes muster under the Fourth Amendment.” He commented:
“If anything, parole status may reveal more about potential danger than a criminal background check: a parolee has committed a serious enough crime to warrant prison time and has likely been released recently, while a criminal history check may yield a stale history of minor offenses committed years ago.”
Ramirez unsuccessfully analogized the question before the court to that encountered in the 2015 Ninth Circuit case of United States v. Evans, which held—in an opinion written by now-Senior Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon—that running an ex-felon registration check during a traffic stop unreasonably prolonged the stop in violation of the Constitution.
In distinguishing active parole status checks from felon registration inquiries, Lee wrote:
“Evans was based on the conclusion that whether someone complied with a procedural reporting law (for a crime that may have been committed years ago) does not ‘advance officer safety’…. In contrast, asking whether someone recently served prison time—like running a criminal background check—reasonably relates to officer safety.”
The case is United States v. Ramirez, 22-50045.
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