Police stop after license plate check, but without any reaso
Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2002 3:50 pm
The case reported was decided by the Massachusetts Appeals Court:
Where a Plaintiff charged with operating a motor vehicle after the revocation of his driver’s license, filed a suppression motion based on the fact that a police officer, acting without any reasonable suspicion, had checked the validity of the license plates on the defendant’s car and subsequently pulled the car over, the motion was correctly denied based on a lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy.
The Court held that the operation of a motor vehicle has no reasonable expectation of privacy in a ‘number plate’ that is required by law to be displayed conspicuously on that vehicle.
SYNOPSIS OF THE FACTS:
At about 2:45 A.M. on October 12, 1999 a female police officer was driving a marked cruise on a public way in the town of Douglas. Traveling in front of the cruiser was a brown Thunder Bird. Nothing in the operation of the Thunderbird or its appearance was suspicious or unlawful. The officer called dispatch and asked that the registration displayed on the Thunderbird’s Massachusetts number plate be checked through LEAPS. Upon being advised by dispatch that the plates belonged to a blue Ford Taurus, the officer stopped the Thunderbird.
“The threshold issue in our review of the denial of the motion to suppress is whether Officer Glynn’s use of information appearing on the number plates of the Ford Thunderbird, without benefit of a warrant, constituted ‘a search’ of the defendant in the Fourth Amendment sense of that word…
“We hold that the defendant had no reasonable in the number plate viewed by Officer Glynn and that its examination, therefore, was not a search in the constitutional sense”.
Reports of cases on Search and Seizure have been made in the past, because each seems to have insight on why or why not a certain set of facts affords protection to a defendant.
I believe these issues are important to MA’s as a legal self defense issue as much as your training is in your dojo, dojang, kwoon or training hall.
We can apply the facts of the above case to a martial artist who was stopped under the same circumstances.
We will add to the recipe the discovery by the LEO of in view sets of nunchuck, balisong,
sai, and tonfa.
Your defense is that you are a martial artist on the way to class and this is part of your study of the arts.
Your stop has been ruled legal in the above case.
To those not aware, the above weapons, pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 269, Section 10(b) qualify as “per se” dangerous weapons and a two and one half year jail sentence is possible.
How do you believe the court will rule on your defense that the search should, upon the above facts, be suppressed?
Compare case on this forum March 11, 2002.
Where a Plaintiff charged with operating a motor vehicle after the revocation of his driver’s license, filed a suppression motion based on the fact that a police officer, acting without any reasonable suspicion, had checked the validity of the license plates on the defendant’s car and subsequently pulled the car over, the motion was correctly denied based on a lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy.
The Court held that the operation of a motor vehicle has no reasonable expectation of privacy in a ‘number plate’ that is required by law to be displayed conspicuously on that vehicle.
SYNOPSIS OF THE FACTS:
At about 2:45 A.M. on October 12, 1999 a female police officer was driving a marked cruise on a public way in the town of Douglas. Traveling in front of the cruiser was a brown Thunder Bird. Nothing in the operation of the Thunderbird or its appearance was suspicious or unlawful. The officer called dispatch and asked that the registration displayed on the Thunderbird’s Massachusetts number plate be checked through LEAPS. Upon being advised by dispatch that the plates belonged to a blue Ford Taurus, the officer stopped the Thunderbird.
“The threshold issue in our review of the denial of the motion to suppress is whether Officer Glynn’s use of information appearing on the number plates of the Ford Thunderbird, without benefit of a warrant, constituted ‘a search’ of the defendant in the Fourth Amendment sense of that word…
“We hold that the defendant had no reasonable in the number plate viewed by Officer Glynn and that its examination, therefore, was not a search in the constitutional sense”.
Reports of cases on Search and Seizure have been made in the past, because each seems to have insight on why or why not a certain set of facts affords protection to a defendant.
I believe these issues are important to MA’s as a legal self defense issue as much as your training is in your dojo, dojang, kwoon or training hall.
We can apply the facts of the above case to a martial artist who was stopped under the same circumstances.
We will add to the recipe the discovery by the LEO of in view sets of nunchuck, balisong,
sai, and tonfa.
Your defense is that you are a martial artist on the way to class and this is part of your study of the arts.
Your stop has been ruled legal in the above case.
To those not aware, the above weapons, pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 269, Section 10(b) qualify as “per se” dangerous weapons and a two and one half year jail sentence is possible.
How do you believe the court will rule on your defense that the search should, upon the above facts, be suppressed?
Compare case on this forum March 11, 2002.