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C.A. Warns O.C. District Attorney Over Language in Brief
Opinion Advises Prosecutor’s Office Against Asserting That Trial Court ‘Fabricated’ New Legal Theory, Warns of Possible Future Sanctions
By Kimber Cooley, Associate Editor
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TODD SPITZER Orange County district attorney |
Div. Three of the Fourth District Court of Appeal yesterday warned Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer to be more cautious in the language used by his office in appellate briefs or face possible sanctions in the future.
The questionable language cited by the court was used in the office’s opening brief in an appeal asserting that Orange Superior Court Judge Elizabeth G. Macias “fabricated” a new rule governing vehicle detentions in “defiance” of U.S. and California Supreme Court precedent in granting a defendant’s motion to suppress.
The motion was filed by Luis Ramirez who was pulled over on Aug. 1, 2022, by Santa Ana Police Officers James Driscoll and Travis Booth after they observed him fail to bring his car to a halt at a stop sign. After the officers ran a check on his license, which returned clean, Booth ordered Ramirez to exit the vehicle and Driscoll noticed a handgun tucked into a pouch on the back of the driver’s seat.
After a search of the car revealed illegal narcotics, Ramirez was charged with possession of a controlled substance and possession of a firearm by a felon.
Ramirez argues that asking him to exit the vehicle after running a records check rendered the detention and subsequent search unreasonable, as there were no changes in the circumstances between the initial stop and the decision to require him to get out of the car.
Macias agreed with the defendant, acknowledging that “[t]he Court of Appeal may very well tell me that I am wrong” but ruling that the delay in the removal of Ramirez from the car, with no change in circumstances as to the officers’ safety, rendered the detention unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The criminal case was dismissed due to the suppression of the firearm and the narcotics as fruit of an illegal detention.
Acting Presiding Justice Eileen C. Moore authored the opinion reversing the dismissal and remanding the case with directions to deny Ramirez’s motion to suppress, noting that it is well-established that police officers who have lawfully detained a vehicle for a traffic violation may order a driver to exit without any articulable justification.
Justices Thomas M. Goethals and Martha K. Gooding joined in the opinion.
Respect by Attorneys
Moore said that “before we more fully discuss the search and seizure issues, there is another issue we need to address in this opinion: the respect attorneys owe to trial court judges when challenging their rulings on appeal.”
She cited California Rules of Court, rule 9.7 which provides that every attorney in the state must take an oath swearing that “[a]s an officer of the court, I will strive to conduct myself at all times with dignity, courtesy and integrity” and the “long-standing rule” that an appellate brief containing disrespectful language toward a trial judge amounts to contempt of court.
The jurist said, adding italics for emphasis:
“In the appellant’s opening brief, the district attorney argued: ‘The trial court here has fabricated a new requirement to vehicle detentions, and has done so in defiance of United States and California Supreme Court precedent.’….And in the reply brief, the district attorney argued, in part: ‘This fabricated legal theory was untenable as the justification for granting the suppression motion, and likewise cannot justify the denial of the instant appeal.’ ”
She explained that the deputy district attorney assigned to oral argument (Mina Said)—who was not the author of the briefs—theorized that the intent behind the language was only to suggest that Macias’ ruling was contrary to established precedent. Moore remarked:
“We accept the representation of the district attorney (through his deputy) that he did not intend to suggest that the trial court had acted in bad faith when making its ruling. Indeed, the prosecutor who appeared at the hearing on the motion (and authored the appellate briefs) was gracious and respectful to the trial court judge. However, the written assertions in the district attorney’s briefs that the trial court ‘fabricated’ a legal theory are nonetheless subject to misinterpretation and are unacceptable.”
The docket shows that the author of the briefs was Deputy District Attorney Austin Charles Deuel. The justice added:
“We advise the district attorney in the future to be more cautious and consider his language more carefully when challenging a ruling of a trial court in an appellate brief, or he may be subject to sanctions. Words are to lawyers, as scalpels are to surgeons. They are tools to be used with precision.”
Legal Detention
Turning to the suppression motion, Moore said:
“The district attorney argues the trial ‘court erred when it concluded that there was a violation of the Fourth Amendment.’….We agree.”
She continued:
“When Booth returned to Ramirez’s car at about three minutes into the stop, he ordered Ramirez to put down his phone, put his hands on his head, and exit the car. The Fourth Amendment requires no justification to order a driver out of a vehicle. After about a minute, Ramirez complied. Although this court would additionally find Booth was justified in ordering Ramirez out of the car for officer safety reasons (to conduct a patdown search to investigate the bulge in Ramirez’s waistband), Booth did not need to justify his reasons for ordering Ramirez out of the vehicle.”
Moore declared:
“[W]e find Ramirez’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures or searches was not violated at any point during the traffic stop. Thus, we reverse the ruling of the trial court, which was a dismissal of Ramirez’s criminal charges following the granting of his motion to suppress the evidence.”
The case is People v. Ramirez, 2024 S.O.S. 2835.
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