Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Kern County. Super. Ct. No. LF007210, Lee P. Felice, Judge.
Law Offices of Benjamin R. Greene & Associates, Benjamin R. Greene and Diane M. Medina, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Michael P. Farrell, Assistant Attorney General, Louis M. Vasquez and Leanne Le Mon, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
OPINION
Wiseman, Acting P.J.
This case concerns the admissibility of evidence obtained after a traffic stop. Defendant Cruz Morales argues that the stop violated Vehicle Code section 12801.5 and that marijuana found as a result of the stop should have been suppressed. The People disagree that the section was violated. As we will explain, there is no need to determine whether the stop violated the statute, since exclusion of the evidence would not have been an allowable sanction for a violation. The stop was supported by the officer’s reasonable suspicion that Morales was driving with an expired license, so Morales’s suppression motion correctly was denied. We affirm the judgment.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORIES
The district attorney filed an information on July 27, 2007, charging Morales with three counts: possessing marijuana for the purpose of sale (Health & Saf. Code, § 11359); cultivating marijuana (Health & Saf. Code, § 11358); and driving without a license (Veh. Code, § 12500, subd. (a)). After pleading not guilty, Morales filed a motion to suppress evidence pursuant to Penal Code section 1538.5. The motion alleged that the evidence against Morales—drugs found in his van and house—was the fruit of an unlawful traffic stop.
At the suppression hearing, Morales’s attorney stated that the sole issue was the validity of the traffic stop. If the stop was invalid, all the drug evidence would be inadmissible; if it was valid, there would be no grounds for suppressing any of it.
Kern County Sheriff’s Deputy Nelson Diaz testified that he first stopped Morales’s vehicle for a traffic violation on January 16, 2007. After the stop, the deputy learned from his dispatcher that Morales’s driver’s license was expired. Diaz cited Morales for marijuana possession and driving without a license and released him.
Diaz pulled Morales over for a traffic violation again on February 19, 2007. Morales’s driver’s license was still expired, so Diaz issued him another citation for driving without a license and again released him.
For the January citation, Morales received three years’ misdemeanor probation on charges of driving without a license (Veh. Code, § 12500, subd. (a)) and possessing an ounce or less of marijuana (Health & Saf. Code, § 11357, subd. (b)). For the February citation, he received three years’ misdemeanor probation and 10 days in county jail on a charge of driving without a license (Veh. Code, § 12500, subd. (a)).
Diaz saw Morales driving again on June 2, 2007. He suspected Morales was still driving without a license and again pulled him over. On cross-examination, Diaz testified that his suspicion was simply that the license was still expired and had not been renewed. He had no reason to think the license was suspended, had received no information about the status of the license between the stop in February and the one in June, and did not ask his dispatcher to check the status of the license until after the stop was effectuated. Morales admitted, and the dispatcher confirmed, that the license was still expired. Diaz arrested him.
Another deputy searched Morales’s van and found marijuana inside. Later, deputies searched Morales’s house, where they found a substantial quantity of packaged marijuana and a number of marijuana plants.
After the court denied the motion to suppress, Morales pleaded no contest to the charge of cultivating marijuana. The other charges were dismissed. The court sentenced Morales to the middle term of two years.
DISCUSSION
Morales argues that Diaz violated Vehicle Code section 12801.5, subdivision (e), when he pulled him over. Section 12801.5 prohibits the issuance of a driver’s license without proof that the applicant’s presence in the United States is authorized under federal law. Subdivision (e) of the section provides:
Subsequent statutory references are to the Vehicle Code.
“Notwithstanding Section 40300 or any other provision of law, a peace officer may not detain or arrest a person solely on the belief that the person is an unlicensed driver, unless the officer has reasonable cause to believe the person driving is under the age of 16 years.”
Morales says this means a traffic stop based on a suspected unlicensed-driver violation alone is unlawful.
The People contend that section 12801.5, subdivision (e), means only that an officer cannot stop a driver based on a mere “hunch” that the driver is unlicensed. They say the statute allows a stop based on a reasonable suspicion of this; Diaz had a reasonable suspicion based on the previous citations and therefore did not violate the statute. They also cite section 14602.6, which deals with seizure of vehicles driven by unlicensed drivers. Section 14602.6, subdivision (a), provides that “[w]henever a peace officer determines that a person was driving a vehicle while his or her driving privilege was suspended or revoked, … or driving a vehicle without ever having been issued a driver’s license, the peace officer may … immediately arrest that person and cause the removal and seizure of that vehicle .…” Finally, the People contend that Morales waived his claim of error by failing to rely on section 12801.5 at the suppression hearing.
We need not resolve the parties’ disputes about whether the stop violated section 12801.5, subdivision (e), and whether Morales preserved that issue for appeal. Ever since the voters adopted the constitutional amendment known as Proposition 8 in 1982, an officer’s violation of state law does not, by itself, trigger the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. (1 Witkin, Cal. Evidence (4th ed. 2000) Introduction, §§ 7, 8, pp. 12, 13.) Among other provisions, Proposition 8 added Article I, section 28, subdivision (f)(2), to the state Constitution:
Before Article I, section 28, was amended by Proposition 9 at the November 4, 2008, election, this provision was codified as Article I, section 28, subdivision (d).
“Right to Truth-in-Evidence. Except as provided by statute hereafter enacted by a two-thirds vote of the membership in each house of the Legislature, relevant evidence shall not be excluded in any criminal proceeding .… Nothing in this section shall affect any existing statutory rule of evidence relating to privilege or hearsay, or Evidence Code Sections 352, 782 or 1103. Nothing in this section shall affect any existing statutory or constitutional right of the press.”
“The chief purpose of the new provision was to eliminate independent state grounds for exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, leaving the federal Constitution as interpreted by controlling federal decisions as the sole basis for exclusion.” (1 Witkin, Cal. Evidence, supra, Introduction, § 8, p. 13; see In re Lance W. (1985) 37 Cal.3d 873, 887-889; People v. McKay (2002) 27 Cal.4th 601, 605.) Even if Morales is correct in claiming that the stop violated section 12801.5, subdivision (e), the violation would not be a basis for excluding evidence obtained as fruits of the stop.
Exclusion of the evidence would, of course, still be required if Diaz made the stop without a reasonable suspicion that Morales was committing an offense. (United States v. Sokolow (1989) 490 U.S. 1, 7; Terry v. Ohio (1968) 392 U.S. 1, 27.) Our Supreme Court has defined reasonable suspicion as follows:
“[I]n order to justify an investigative stop or detention the circumstances known or apparent to the officer must include specific and articulable facts causing him to suspect that (1) some activity relating to crime has taken place or is occurring or about to occur, and (2) the person he intends to stop or detain is involved in that activity.… [T]he facts must be such as would cause any reasonable police officer in a like position, drawing when appropriate on his training and experience [citation], to suspect the same criminal activity and the same involvement by the person in question. The corollary to this rule, of course, is that an investigative stop or detention predicated on mere curiosity, rumor, or hunch is unlawful, even though the officer may be acting in complete good faith.” (In re Tony C. (1978) 21 Cal.3d 888, 893, fn. omitted.)
The fact that the circumstances are equally consistent with criminal and innocent conduct does not necessarily vitiate an investigatory stop. “The possibility of an innocent explanation does not deprive the officer of the capacity to entertain a reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct.” (In re Tony C., supra, 21 Cal.3d at p. 894.) A reasonable suspicion that a driver is unlicensed is, for federal constitutional purposes, sufficient grounds for a traffic stop. (People v. Saunders (2006) 38 Cal.4th 1129, 1135.)
Morales argues that Diaz lacked a reasonable suspicion because a failure to renew an expired license in January, followed by a continued failure to renew it in February, provides no support for a suspicion that it has still not been renewed in June. The People contend that Diaz’s previous experiences with Morales did support a reasonable suspicion. We agree with the People’s position.
The most factually similar case the parties cite is People v. Nunn (1968) 264 Cal.App.2d 919. There, an officer knew the defendant’s license had been revoked in September. He stopped the defendant in December of the same year, suspecting the license was still suspended. Observing that the Vehicle Code authorizes suspensions for periods of more than three months, the Court of Appeal held that the stop was reasonable. (People v. Nunn, supra, at pp. 921, 923.)
The present case is dissimilar in that, unlike a suspension, the mere expiration of a license can be remedied at any time. Diaz, however, had a reasonable suspicion that Morales had not remedied it based on his prior experience with Morales’s inaction. Morales received a citation for his expired license in January but still had done nothing about it in February. Diaz could reasonably suspect that the cause of this—procrastination or some legal obstacle—still existed in June.
Morales also argues that section 12801.5, subdivision (e), makes any suspicion of unlicensed driving unreasonable per se. As he puts it, the statute “necessarily renders the detention unreasonable” by prohibiting a stop based on a belief that a driver is unlicensed. This interpretation cannot be correct, since it would establish the statute as an independent state ground for exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, in contravention of Article I, section 28, subdivision (f)(2), of the state Constitution.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
WE CONCUR: Levy, J., Hill, J.