Pretty rare 1-1-1 opinion yesterday out of the 11th Circuit dealing with an interesting Fourth Amendment legal issue: during a traffic stop, if an officer suspects only the driver of committing a traffic-related offense, can the officer nevertheless ask a passenger to identify himself? In the case before the court, an officer had pulled over a car for having an obscured license plate. When the officer asked the passenger to identify himself--and the passenger refused--the officer arrested the passenger for resisting arrest without violence.
The trial court held that the officer violated the passenger's Fourth Amendment rights AND denied the officer's motion to dismiss on qualified immunity grounds (holding that the passenger's right to not identify himself under such circumstances was clearly established). The Eleventh Circuit reversed.
The opinion breakdown was interesting. Judge Tjoflat and Judge Branch agreed that the officer was entitled to qualified immunity, with Judge Tjoflat going further and saying that no Fourth Amendment violation had even occurred (Branch not joining that aspect of the opinion). Judge Wilson dissented, arguing that the officer had violated the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights AND that the defendant's right to not identify himself was clearly established at the time of the stop.
Johnson Opinion by John Byrne on Scribd
1 comment:
Good case for Supreme Court to take. No citizen who is a passenger in a car without more is required to identify himself, and even our over-to-the-right Eleventh Circuit should know that.
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