Court tosses gun as evidence because driving your mom's rental car not good enough reason for police to search your car
Suffolk County prosecutors won't be able to use a gun and ammunition as evidence against a man facing gun charges after his arrest at the Heath Street rotary because the Supreme Judicial Court has ruled the car he was driving should never have been searched.
Jamil Campbell was initially detained by a state trooper at the Heath Street rotary for operating without authority after ignoring a stop sign, because his mother had rented the car, with a condition nobody else be allowed to drive it.
But the state's highest court ruled today that the "without authority" section of the state's motor-vehicle laws is meant for larceny cases and that there's no evidence Campbell stole the car - in fact, his mother even told the state trooper she had let her son drive the car when he called her as Campbell sat in the back of the trooper's cruiser.
So without a reason to charge Campbell with an arrestable offense - running a stop sign is good for a ticket, not an arrest - there was no reason for the inventory search of the car in which the trooper found the gun and ammunition, the court ruled.
According to the ruling, Campbell gave the trooper his driver's license and a copy of his mother's rental agreement after he was stopped on Aug. 17, 2013.
The trooper - patrolling Heath Street due to gun violence in the area - had Campbell sit in the back of his cruiser while he conducted an "inventory" search of Campbell's car. He found the gun in the center console, at which point he told Campbell he was now under arrest. He found ammunition. And then he learned Campbell was wanted for failing to appear for jury duty.
The SJC said Campbell shouldn't have been detained, even if just put in the back of the cruiser, for the operating-without-authority charge. Although the rental agreement said nobody else should drive the car, the court said "authority" of the car at that point was in the hands of Campbell's mother, who not only gave Campbell permission to drive the car, she told the trooper that when he called her as Campbell sat in the cruiser.
The court ruled the "without authority" section of the state's motor-vehicle laws was aimed at protecting the public from people "from harm caused by a user of a motor vehicle who is not readily identifiable." The court added:
Punishing a person who uses a vehicle with the permission of
someone who is in lawful possession of the vehicle, such as a renter, does not advance that purpose, because a user with such permission readily may be identified by the person with explicit authority to use the vehicle.
And, the court continued, the "without authority" section is really part of the specific law dealing with larceny, and Campbell was not accused of stealing the car.
A person who has been authorized by the renter listed on the rental
agreement to use the vehicle during the rental period does not deprive the rental company of any short-term use to which it otherwise would have been entitled.
The court acknowledged the potential insurance issues should Campbell have gotten into an accident, but said that's a civil matter, not a criminal one:
While concern about collision damage waiver liability may be one
reason that rental agreements distinguish between authorized and unauthorized drivers, that question of civil liability in the event of an accident does not affect our interpretation of use "without authority" under G. L. c. 90, § 24 (2) (a), a criminal statute that imposes substantial penalties on those who violate it.A renter's decision to allow a person who is not a permitted driver according to the rental agreement to drive a rental vehicle may be a breach of that agreement, but it does not also result in a violation of criminal law.
And so:
Based on our construction of G. L. c. 90, § 24 (2) (a), we conclude that [the trooper] lacked probable cause to determine that the defendant was using the rental vehicle without authority.
The Suffolk County District Attorney's office argued that even if that is so, the warrant for avoiding jury duty should have been enough to arrest Campbell and search his car.
The court, however, said there was no evidence the trooper - and another trooper who arrived to help - ever intended to arrest Campbell for that or that they learned of the warrant before they conducted the search.
The impoundment of the rental vehicle was not proper, because the police did not have probable cause to believe that the defendant was operating it in violation of G. L. c. 90, § 24 (2) (a), and it is not certain as a practical matter that they would have executed the default warrant and impounded the vehicle on that basis. Accordingly, the inventory search was not lawful, and the handgun and ammunition properly were suppressed.
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Comments
BFD
We still now know that he breaks laws. Good luck with that next time you have legal trouble, (expletive).
I have lost all faith in the
I have lost all faith in the SJC.
Why? The car wasn't stolen,
Why? The car wasn't stolen, he didn't commit a crime [ETA that they knew about], the cops had no grounds to search it. If the cops had just waited a few minutes, it seems they would have found out about the warrant- then they could have arrested him for that and then searched the car legally, no?
Checks and balances
The SJC decision here seems appropriate.
Indeed.
I have also lost faith in the courts, for continuing to find that the rule of law exists and restricts what both defendants and police officers can do. Personally, I think it would be much easier if we tore up everything in the Bill of Rights and just trusted that the police will always do the right thing out of the goodness of their hearts.
Yes. Living like Nazis would
Yes. Living like Nazis would be much better. It would definitely help deal with those pesky brown people.
Because the cops tried to
Because the cops tried to pervert the intent of the law to justify a search and the SJC slapped them back?
Ends vs Means. Hypothetical question.
For discussion:
After reading this story, a well-meaning officer makes a traffic stop tonight. Similar situation. Driver skips stop-sign and upon being stopped by the officer, he happens to be one of those people 'known-to-police'. Cop notes driver does not have permission to be driving the rental car, and her experience in the community tells her this guy is rarely without his drugs and gun stash.
Does the officer search the car, take an illegal gun off the street, even knowing that the conviction may not stand in the long run? And if so, are there repercussions for the officer for violating someone's right of protection from illegal search? Or are there repercussions if he's wrong and there's no gun, but she gets a medal if she finds one?
As a civil rights advocate who also wants to be safe in my neighborhood, I'd say this is a tough one. Very curious to see the debate.
So, vehicular stop and frisk,
So, vehicular stop and frisk, then?
Contracts between two private parties are civil law, not criminal law, usually.
There is no indication or
There is no indication or proof of "well-meaning" in regards to the officer in this article. Unless we've replaced all human cops with perfectly programmed robots, they will always make mistakes or possibly have ill-will like every other human that's ever been born.
Default warrant arrests?
Are police mandated to arrest someone they have stopped and discover they have a warrant? Can they pick and choose which warrants they want to enforce? Once they discovered this young lad had a warrant what options did they have?
Gets back to the probable cause thing
The only reason the trooper kept him from going on his way was the operating-without-authority charge. If the trooper had discovered the default warrant before he searched the car, that's one thing, but neither he nor the DA provided proof that was what happened.