Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County No. GA068268, Janice C. Croft, Judge.
Jacqueline Goodman Rubio, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Steven D. Matthews and David E. Madeo, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
MANELLA, J.
Cory Deshawn Bailey appeals from the judgment entered following the denial of his motion to suppress evidence pursuant to Penal Code section 1538.5 and his guilty plea to possession of marijuana for sale (Health & Saf. Code, § 11359). Imposition of sentence was suspended and he was placed on formal probation for three years upon certain terms and conditions, including that he spend 90 days in county jail. He contends the stop for the sole purpose of checking his registration was unlawful, his registration was not expired for purposes of Vehicle Code section 4000, and that the good faith exception does not apply to this mistake of law. For reasons stated in the opinion, we affirm the judgment.
Pursuant to his negotiated plea, one count of transportation of marijuana (Health & Saf. Code, § 11360, subd. (a)) was dismissed.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL SUMMARY
The evidence at the hearing on the motion to suppress pursuant to Penal Code section 1538.5 established that on December 15, 2006, at approximately 6:00 p.m., Pasadena Police Officer Tony Karg was on patrol with his partner in the area of Lincoln and Howard Street in the County of Los Angeles when he saw a gold Toyota Camry driving westbound on Howard Street. Officer Karg’s partner “r[a]n... checks on that vehicle” and the registration returned as “expired.” The “printout” showed that the registration had expired on December 2, 2006. Driving with an expired registration is a violation of Vehicle Code section 4000, subdivision (a), and Officer Karg stopped the vehicle, which was being driven by appellant. Subsequently, a large quantity of marijuana along with a digital scale and $3,700 in cash were recovered from the car.
Evidence of the discovery of these items is taken from the transcript of the preliminary hearing.
In support of the motion to suppress evidence, appellant argued that under Vehicle Code section 4000, a vehicle registration did not expire until the end of the month in which the registration due date occurred.
The court denied the suppression motion based on the fact that prior to the traffic stop the officer received information that the registration had expired.
DISCUSSION
“‘An appellate court’s review of a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress is governed by well-settled principles. [Citations.] [¶] In ruling on such a motion, the trial court (1) finds the historical facts, (2) selects the applicable rule of law, and (3) applies the latter to the former to determine whether the rule of law as applied to the established facts is or is not violated. [Citations.] “The [trial] court’s resolution of each of these inquiries is, of course, subject to appellate review.” [Citations.] [¶] The court’s resolution of the first inquiry, which involves questions of fact, is reviewed under the deferential substantial-evidence standard. [Citations.] Its decision on the second, which is a pure question of law, is scrutinized under the standard of independent review. [Citations.] Finally, its ruling on the third, which is a mixed fact-law question that is however predominantly one of law,... is also subject to independent review.’ [Citation.]” (People v. Alvarez (1996) 14 Cal.4th 155, 182, quoting People v. Williams (1988) 45 Cal.3d 1268, 1301; accord, People v. Ayala (2000) 23 Cal.4th 225, 255.)
“[A]n officer may, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, conduct a brief, investigatory stop when the officer has a reasonable, articulable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot.” (Illinois v. Wardlow (2000) 528 U.S. 119, 123.) “‘Although police officers may not arrest or search a suspect without probable cause and an exception to the warrant requirement, they may temporarily detain a suspect based only on a “reasonable suspicion” that the suspect has committed or is about to commit a crime. [Citations.] Such detentions are permitted, notwithstanding the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of probable cause and a search warrant, because they are “limited intrusions” that are “justified by special law enforcement interests.” [Citations.]’ [Citation.]” (People v. Durazo (2004) 124 Cal.App.4th 728, 734.) An ordinary traffic stop is treated as an investigatory detention, i.e., a “Terry stop.” (Ibid.) A Terry stop is justified if it is based on at least reasonable suspicion that the individual has violated the Vehicle Code or some other law. (Id. at pp. 734-735.)
Terry v. Ohio (1968) 392 U.S. 1.
Appellant first contends that stopping the vehicle for the sole purpose of checking appellant’s registration was unlawful. He cites Delaware v. Prouse (1979) 440 U.S. 648, 660 and People v. Franklin (1968) 261 Cal.App.2d 703, 707 for this proposition. In these cases, however, there was no basis to believe that any vehicle registration had expired. In the present case, the officers checked the vehicle’s registration before stopping the vehicle and the registration returned as expired. Only after receiving the information that the registration had expired did the officers stop appellant’s vehicle.
Similarly inapplicable is appellant’s argument that an officer cannot have a reasonable suspicion if the officer does not know the law and makes a stop based upon facts that cannot constitute a violation. The officers in the present case were advised that the vehicle’s registration had expired, which was a violation of the Vehicle Code.
Appellant asserts that the instant registration had not in fact expired for purposes of Vehicle Code section 4000 in that pursuant to Vehicle Code section 1651.5, a vehicle registration does not expire until the last day of the month and year indicated on the registration tags. As the trial court observed, however, Officer Karg was advised during the computer check that the registration had, in fact, expired. Even if the information was incorrect, the officer relied on this information and his mistake was one of fact. (See U.S. v. Miguel (9th Cir. 2004) 368 F.3d 1150, 1154.)
U.S. v. Miguel, supra, 368 F.3d 1150 is instructive. There, officers ran a check of a vehicle’s license through a computer connected to the Arizona Motor Vehicle Department’s database. The computer showed the license registration had expired, and the deputies then stopped the vehicle for an expired registration. It was later established at the suppression hearing that the registration had not expired. The court observed, however, that the stop was based on a mistake of fact and that “‘[a] mere mistake of fact will not render a stop illegal, if the objective facts known to the officer give rise to a reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was afoot.’ [Citation.]” (Id. at p.1153.)
This principle was recently reinforced by the United States Supreme Court in Herring v. United States (2009) ___U.S.___ [129 S.Ct. 695, 172 L.Ed.2d 496]. There, the Court held that where an officer reasonably but mistakenly believed there was an outstanding arrest warrant based on a negligent bookkeeping error by another police employee, suppression of contraband found during a search incident to the arrest was not required, despite the Fourth Amendment violation. (Id. at p. 698.) The Court observed that “our cases establish that such suppression is not an automatic consequence of a Fourth Amendment violation. Instead, the question turns on the culpability of the police and the potential of exclusion to deter wrongful police conduct.” (Ibid.) The Court held that “the error was the result of isolated negligence attenuated from the arrest... [and] that in these circumstances the jury should not be barred from considering all the evidence.” (Ibid.) In the present case, there was no showing of culpability of the police or the need to deter wrongful police conduct, and the court’s denial of the suppression motion was not error.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur: WILLHITE, Acting P. J. SUZUKAWA, J.