Higgins v. Department of Motor Vehicles CA3

Filed 6/29/23 Higgins v. Department of Motor Vehicles CA3
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for
publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication
or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT
(Calaveras)
----
CODY HIGGINS,
Plaintiff and Appellant, C096119
v. (Super. Ct. No. 21CF13535)
DEPARTMENT OF MOTOR VEHICLES,
Defendant and Respondent.
The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) suspended the driver’s license of
appellant Cody Higgins for driving with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.15 percent.
Higgins brought a petition for writ of mandate challenging the suspension. The trial
court denied the petition. On appeal, Higgins contends that officers lacked reasonable
suspicion to stop the car in which he was a passenger when Higgins returned with a
friend to the pickup truck Higgins abandoned after a police pursuit. Disagreeing,
we affirm.
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BACKGROUND
Around 2:30 a.m. on November 12, 2019, Angels Camp police officer Anthony
Sterrett saw a white Dodge RAM pickup truck driving 70 miles per hour in a 55 miles per
hour zone. Officer Sterrett pursued, activating his red and flashing blue lights. The truck
accelerated, and Officer Sterrett turned on his siren. The truck accelerated to 95 miles
per hour (at this point, in a 50 miles per hour zone). The truck turned into a commercial
parking lot, and Officer Sterrett followed through the parking lot. Finally, the truck
stopped with its front half blocking a roadway.
Officer Sterrett radioed the license plate number of the truck to Calaveras County
Sheriff’s Office dispatch. When Officer Sterrett got out of his patrol car and approached
the truck, he found no one inside. Officer Sterrett requested backup after informing
dispatch that the driver had fled on foot. Dispatch advised Officer Sterrett that Higgins
was the registered owner of the truck and that he was an associate of one Kimberly Ross.
Two sheriff’s deputies arrived to assist in the search for the driver. After an hour
of searching, they gave up and returned to search the truck, recovering live ammunition
and a large amount of alcohol beverage containers. During the search, Officer Sterrett
saw a red Honda drive into the area and five minutes later start to drive away. He
recognized the car as belonging to Ross. Officer Sterrett attempted to stop the Honda
with his flashlight and hand signals, but the car pulled away. After dispatch confirmed
that Ross was the registered owner of the Honda, Officer Sterrett told one of the deputies
to effect a traffic stop.
Ross was driving the Honda with Higgins in the passenger seat. After advising
Ross of her Miranda1 rights, Officer Sterrett questioned Ross. Ross said that Higgins
contacted her earlier and told her he had been out of the area drinking and planned
1 Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436.
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to return to Angels Camp. He eventually arrived at her residence and told her he had
been followed by law enforcement and his truck was in a commercial parking lot near
where she worked. Higgins did not consume any alcoholic beverages at Ross’s
residence. He did not tell Ross about the attempted traffic stop of his vehicle. Higgins
asked Ross to drive him to his truck to see if officers were at the scene. When they
arrived and Ross saw the officers, she became “scared [she would get] into trouble” and
tried to leave the area. She saw the police officer attempting to contact her but “did not
want to stop and get into trouble.” Officer Sterrett informed Ross she was being arrested
for aiding Higgins in his attempted escape.
Officer Sterrett questioned Higgins after advising him of his Miranda rights,
eliciting from Higgins statements that: the truck was his; he had been driving the truck
but was unaware of the attempted stop; he stopped because of an exhaust trouble alert on
his gauge cluster; and he walked and did not run away from the truck.
Officer Sterrett observed that Higgins had watery, bloodshot eyes, slurred speech,
and the smell of alcohol on his breath. Higgins stated that he had consumed a large
amount of alcohol at Ross’s residence an hour earlier. Higgins declined to take a field
sobriety test because he said he would fail. Higgins denied that he had consumed the
alcoholic beverages found in his truck while driving, insisting that he consumed alcohol
only at Ross’s residence. Asked about the live ammunition in the truck, Higgins stated
there was a loaded firearm on the floorboard of the back seat. Officer Sterrett informed
Higgins he was under arrest for driving under the influence, evading law enforcement,
resisting arrest, and possessing a loaded firearm in a vehicle. Higgins agreed to submit
to a chemical breath test. At 5:23 a.m., the results of two breath tests showed a blood
alcohol concentration of 0.15 percent.
After an administrative hearing, the DMV suspended Higgins’s driver’s license.
At the hearing, Higgins’s counsel argued that law enforcement did not have probable
cause to stop Ross’s car. Counsel objected to consideration of Officer Sterrett’s arrest
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report regarding Higgins’s blood alcohol concentration, arguing it resulted from an illegal
detention.
Ross testified at the hearing that Higgins has been her friend for more than eight
years. On the night of November 12, 2019, Higgins woke Ross at her house, telling her
that his truck was having trouble. They went to the truck to retrieve Higgins’s wallet and
saw that the police were there. When Ross saw the police, she kept driving and was
pulled over by law enforcement. Ross said law enforcement informed her she was being
arrested for aiding and abetting.
In a written ruling, the hearing officer determined that: (1) Officer Sterrett had
probable cause to detain Higgins; (2) based on Higgins’s appearance and behavior, as
well as his admission of alcohol consumption, Officer Sterrett formed the belief that
Higgins was intoxicated; and (3) Officer Sterrett had reasonable cause to believe Higgins
was driving a motor vehicle while intoxicated.
Higgins filed a petition for writ of mandate in the trial court contending that the
traffic stop of Ross’s car was an illegal detention and the blood test did not establish
Higgins’s blood alcohol concentration because it was taken more than three hours after
his truck was observed driving. At the hearing on the petition, the trial court commented
that the traffic stop was appropriate because the officer tried to signal to Ross to stop, but
“she took off” and “evaded” law enforcement, which furnished a basis for the stop. The
trial court entered judgment denying the petition, finding that “the Administrative Record
reflects sufficient evidence to show there was reasonable cause to detain” Higgins and his
blood alcohol test was taken within three hours from when he was last seen driving his
truck.
DISCUSSION
Higgins contends his driver’s license was suspended based on a police officer’s
“hunch” that Ross was aiding and abetting Higgins. The DMV asserts there was
reasonable suspicion to stop Ross’s car containing Higgins given the high-speed pursuit
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of his truck, his flight on foot, and the appearance of Ross’s car driving by the officers
searching Higgins’s truck in the early hours of the morning, then driving off when
Officer Sterrett signaled Ross to stop. We agree with the DMV.
A. Standard of Review
On a petition for writ of mandate challenging suspension of a driver’s license, the
trial court exercises its independent judgment to determine whether the weight of the
evidence supports the administrative decision. (Lake v. Reed (1997) 16 Cal.4th 448, 456-
457.) On appeal, the court reviews the record to determine whether substantial evidence
supports the trial court’s findings, resolving all evidentiary conflicts and drawing all
reasonable inferences in favor of the lower court’s decision. (Id. at p. 457; Auburn v.
Department of Motor Vehicles (2007) 151 Cal.App.4th 1480, 1484 (Auburn).)
B. Reasonable Suspicion to Stop Ross’s Car
Higgins asserts he was illegally detained because Officer Sterrett did not have
reasonable suspicion to detain Ross. Higgins claims that the “detention of the Ross
vehicle was not based upon facts, but only a hunch.”
“[A]n officer may stop and detain a motorist on reasonable suspicion that the
driver has violated the law. [Citations.] The guiding principle in determining the
propriety of an investigatory detention is ‘the reasonableness in all the circumstances of
the particular governmental invasion of a citizen’s personal security.’ [Citations.] In
making our determination, we examine ‘the totality of the circumstances’ in each case.”
(People v. Wells (2006) 38 Cal.4th 1078, 1082-1083.)
“To justify an investigative stop or detention, the circumstances known or
apparent to the officer must include specific and articulable facts which, viewed
objectively, would cause a reasonable officer to suspect that (1) some activity relating
to crime has taken place or is occurring or about to occur, and (2) the person the officer
intends to stop or detain is involved in that activity.” (People v. Conway (1994)
25 Cal.App.4th 385, 388 (Conway); see In re Tony C. (1978) 21 Cal.3d 888, 893.)
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“The standard of reasonable suspicion is ‘less demanding than probable cause “not only
in the sense that reasonable suspicion can be established with information that is different
in quantity or content than that required to establish probable cause, but also in the sense
that reasonable suspicion can arise from information that is less reliable than that required
to show probable cause.” ’ [Citation.] At the same time, however, ‘no stop or detention
is permissible when the circumstances are not reasonably “consistent with criminal
activity” and the investigation is therefore based on mere curiosity, rumor, or hunch.’ ”
(Auburn, supra, 151 Cal.App.4th at p. 1484; see Kansas v. Glover (2020) 589 U.S. __[206 L.Ed.2d 412, 140 S.Ct. 1183, 1187] (Kansas) [“ ‘Although a mere “hunch” does not
create reasonable suspicion, the level of suspicion the standard requires is considerably
less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of the evidence, and obviously less
than is necessary for probably cause.’ ”].)
Higgins argues that the DMV justified the detention of Ross by arguing facts
concerning “the operation of the truck earlier by an unknown driver, Appellant, which
were not known when the stop of Ms. Ross occurred and therefore could not be used to
justify her detention.” We disagree that the driver of the truck was unknown. At the time
police officers discovered the truck was abandoned, a records check of the license plate
determined Higgins was the registered owner. In Kansas v. Glover, the United States
Supreme Court explained that the reasonable suspicion standard “ ‘depends on the factual
and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not
legal technicians, act.’ ” (Kansas, supra, 140 S.Ct. at p. 1188, original italics.) Courts
therefore “must permit officers to make ‘commonsense judgments and inferences about
human behavior.’ ” (Ibid., quoting Illinois v. Wardlow (2000) 528 U.S. 119, 125
(Illinois); see People v. Silveria and Travis (2020) 10 Cal.5th 195, 236.) The court held
that it was a “commonsense inference” that the registered owner of a vehicle was likely
the vehicle’s driver. (Kansas, at p. 1188.)
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Here, Officer Sterrett could likewise draw the commonsense inference that
Higgins, the registered owner, was driving his pickup truck earlier. The officer could
also draw a commonsense inference that Ross was driving the Honda the officer knew
belonged to her, when it appeared in a commercial parking lot in the early morning hours
where officers were conducting a search of Higgins’s truck. Further, it was reasonable
for the officer to infer that Ross, a person the officer knew to be Higgins’s associate, had
driven at Higgins’s behest to the exact location where he had abandoned his truck after a
high-speed pursuit, in order to determine whether officers were still at the scene, and thus
aid and abet Higgins in evading law enforcement.
When Ross drove off as Officer Sterrett attempted to flag her down—and Officer
Sterrett confirmed the Honda was registered to Ross—the officer had more than
reasonable suspicion to direct a sheriff’s deputy to initiate a traffic stop. “While such
evidence of flight, of itself, is not sufficient to justify an investigative stop, it ‘is a proper
consideration—and indeed can be key factor—in determining whether in a particular case
the police have sufficient cause to detain.’ ” (People v. Turner (2013) 219 Cal.App.4th
151, 168, quoting People v. Souza (1994) 9 Cal.4th 224, 235; see United States v.
Brignoni-Ponce (1975) 422 U.S. 873, 885 [“obvious attempts to evade officers can
support a reasonable suspicion”]; Illinois, supra, 528 U.S. at p. 124 [“nervous, evasive
behavior is a pertinent factor in determining reasonable suspicion”]; Conway, supra,
25 Cal.App.4th at pp. 389-390 [officer had reasonable suspicion sufficient to stop
defendant’s car at 3:00 a.m. driving from the direction of the house burglarized two
minutes before, where no one else was in the area]; People v. Lloyd (1992) 4 Cal.App.4th
724, 733-734 [reasonable suspicion to detain suspect found at 4:00 a.m. next to a
business in which a silent alarm was triggered, who began to walk away when officers
approached].)
Since law enforcement officers acted in an objectively reasonable manner in
stopping Ross, the trial court properly denied Higgins’s petition for writ of mandate.
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DISPOSITION
The judgment denying the writ of mandate is affirmed.
/s/
MESIWALA, J.
We concur:
/s/
HULL, Acting P. J.
/s/
RENNER, J.
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