Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight an analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple podcast, SoundCloud
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. A case about
Speaker 1: a traffic stop led to some interesting arguments and several
Speaker 1: skeptical Supreme Court justices. A Kansas man claims that police
Speaker 1: violated the Fourth Amendment when an officer pulled him over
Speaker 1: after running the license plate on his truck and discovering
Speaker 1: its registered owner had his driver's license revoked without doing
Speaker 1: anything more. Joining me is Jordan Reuben, Bloomberg Law Legal Editor.
Speaker 1: Why did the court take this case? As with pretty
Speaker 1: much any case that the court takes, they take it
Speaker 1: to resolve an issue that's unresolved around the country. And
Speaker 1: so here the question is whether it's reasonable for police
Speaker 1: to pull over a car just based on the fact
Speaker 1: that the cars interstered owner has their license revoked without
Speaker 1: any more information. And so whether it's because some justices
Speaker 1: wanted to take the case to say that it is reasonable,
Speaker 1: or it isn't. At any rate, it's an issue that
Speaker 1: it seems that the court at least felt it was
Speaker 1: reasonable to want to clear up in this case, the
Speaker 1: registered owner's license was revoked and the officer stopped him
Speaker 1: driving his truck. What was the claim by the defense?
Speaker 1: So even though it was actually the registered owner of
Speaker 1: the car, Charles Glover, who was in fact driving the car,
Speaker 1: Glover raised the argument and a suppression motion that there
Speaker 1: wasn't a good enough reason for the officer to think
Speaker 1: that it was Glover before he pulled him over. That's
Speaker 1: because all the officer did before pulling Glover's truck over
Speaker 1: was just run the license plate, at which point it
Speaker 1: showed that the registered owner, Glover, had his license revoked.
Speaker 1: But the officer didn't do anything more than that. He
Speaker 1: didn't try to confirm that it was Lover's identity first,
Speaker 1: or observe the traffic violation or anything like that. It
Speaker 1: was just the simple fact of Glover having his license revoked.
Speaker 1: And Glover argues that that's simply not enough to amount
Speaker 1: to reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment. So what should
Speaker 1: the officer have done. He's not supposed to stop the
Speaker 1: truck unless what what else was he supposed to do? Right?
Speaker 1: So that's the million dollar question that came up at
Speaker 1: the argument that Glover's lawyer didn't necessarily have a specific
Speaker 1: answer to other than to say there needs to be
Speaker 1: something done. Obviously, one thing that was brought up was
Speaker 1: trying to visually check to see if it appears to
Speaker 1: be the same person, Say, if the registered owner appears
Speaker 1: to be a sixth year old man, if it looks
Speaker 1: like the driver is someone like that, then that would
Speaker 1: be an example of one other fact that, according to
Speaker 1: the dissenses argument, would amount probably too reasonable suspicion. The
Speaker 1: bottom line was, they said, it at least has to
Speaker 1: be something more than just the fact of the register
Speaker 1: owner having their license revoked. Do we know what the
Speaker 1: officer did do? So it's a very good question, and
Speaker 1: it raises sort of a weird aspect of this case,
Speaker 1: which is that at the stage of the suppression motion,
Speaker 1: the officer didn't testify to hearing. All we had were
Speaker 1: stipulated facts, meaning both parties, the prosecution and the defense,
Speaker 1: they agreed to a certain set of facts without testing
Speaker 1: them in the crucible of cross examination, and essentially what
Speaker 1: it boiled down to was simply the fact of the
Speaker 1: officer saying the car was driving, I ran the plate,
Speaker 1: it came back as a registered owner having license revoked,
Speaker 1: and that's it. So is it possible that the officer
Speaker 1: did something else. Maybe, but really we're bound by this
Speaker 1: stipulation and the Supreme Court is bound by it too,
Speaker 1: And there was actually some frustration with that at the argument,
Speaker 1: and some of the justices saying, you know, it's sort
Speaker 1: of difficult for us to rule on this without having
Speaker 1: enough information. Now we're still waiting to see which way
Speaker 1: that's going to cut. Obviously, one way to look at
Speaker 1: that is that it could cut potentially in favor of
Speaker 1: the defense, in the sense that they could send it
Speaker 1: back to the court to say, this is a situation
Speaker 1: where we just need more you know, we want officers
Speaker 1: to testify it hearings, to at least say, consistent with
Speaker 1: my experience or something like that, this is the type
Speaker 1: of thing where the registered owner usually is the driver,
Speaker 1: for example. On the other hand, some of the other
Speaker 1: justices and perhaps a majority of the court seemed perhaps
Speaker 1: more likely to say, just based on common sense, it
Speaker 1: was a reasonable thing for the officer to do. The
Speaker 1: two words common sense came up a lot during the argument.
Speaker 1: But different members of the court and the different parties
Speaker 1: have different views of what exactly is common sense in
Speaker 1: this situation. Chief Justice John Roberts seemed particularly exasperated. You said,
Speaker 1: do you think it's totally random who the driver is?
Speaker 1: In other words, it's registered to Fred Jones, but it
Speaker 1: could be anybody in the world. Yeah. So Chief Justice
Speaker 1: Roberts usually keeps a pretty even keel. He got sort
Speaker 1: of almost agitated during the argument and back and forth
Speaker 1: with Glover's attorney Sarah Harrington. Roberts seemed to really buy
Speaker 1: into the state's common sense argument, and so he was
Speaker 1: getting frustrated in terms of trying to search for an
Speaker 1: answer of what more exactly was the officers supposed to do,
Speaker 1: including the question of what sort of probability can we
Speaker 1: attach to whether the registered owner is in fact the driver?
Speaker 1: And Roberts, as well as Justice Alito and some other justices,
Speaker 1: they were sort of frustrated at the defense essentially not
Speaker 1: buying into the state's common sense argument. From their view,
Speaker 1: so now let's talk about the standard. The standard is
Speaker 1: reasonable suspicion, and that's a pretty low standard, it is,
Speaker 1: And so that came up during the argument as well.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's a point that the state pressed more
Speaker 1: vigorously than the defense did. Obviously, the defense doesn't want
Speaker 1: to highlight that it's a low standard. But the defense said,
Speaker 1: even under this low standard, this is and enough in
Speaker 1: their view. And so obviously it's a point that the
Speaker 1: state wants to emphasize and saying the fact that reasonable
Speaker 1: suspicion is such a low standard, combined with this sort
Speaker 1: of common sense argument that it's at least reasonable for
Speaker 1: an officer to pull over a car that is being
Speaker 1: driven where the registered owner's license is revoked, at least
Speaker 1: to investigate more. In the words of Canvas lawyer's argument,
Speaker 1: it would have been bad police work for the cop
Speaker 1: not to pull the car over again, sort of going
Speaker 1: towards this common sense type of argument. So Jordan's Justice
Speaker 1: Samuel Alito said about the decision they're going to issue
Speaker 1: that they could either issue a trivial decision or a
Speaker 1: revolutionary decision. Explain what he meant by that, sure, and
Speaker 1: this is Justice Alito, who is probably the least likely
Speaker 1: on the court to side with the criminal defense in
Speaker 1: a criminal case. And what he was saying was this,
Speaker 1: He said, it could be a trivial decision in the
Speaker 1: sense that they could hold okay, all an officer had
Speaker 1: to do was additionally testify based on my training and experience,
Speaker 1: and Injustice Lados where its blah blah blah, essentially showing
Speaker 1: that he doesn't really think it's that's a good a deal.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it could be a revolutionary decision
Speaker 1: if they wind up having to say that certain probabilities
Speaker 1: and statistics are involved, or something as sort of mundane
Speaker 1: in Justice Leado's view anyway, as this sort of routine
Speaker 1: traffic stops. So when he called it a revolutionary from
Speaker 1: his view, that did not seem to be a laudatory
Speaker 1: way to put the defense's arguments. It's times like this
Speaker 1: that I wish we had the audio of the of
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court arguments earlier than when they do. Let
Speaker 1: us hear it for sure, and that uh, and that'll
Speaker 1: be posted Friday at the end of every week. And
Speaker 1: there's also a good part of the audio I would
Speaker 1: say to check out for Justice Gorsage is impression or
Speaker 1: so it seems, of a New York City police officers.
Speaker 1: That was another fun moment of it here he got
Speaker 1: called on that he did and then uh Glover's lawyer,
Speaker 1: Sarah Harrington told them this case was actually taking place
Speaker 1: in Kansas, not New York, and gorgeous, said touche, playhearted
Speaker 1: moment in the argument, finally, is it public safety on
Speaker 1: one side versus privacy on the other, Well, what Glover
Speaker 1: would probably say is that public safety doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be sacrificed in order to buy by the Fourth Amendment.
Speaker 1: What the state is saying. They point to the fact
Speaker 1: that having unlicensed drivers on the road is a very
Speaker 1: dangerous thing, and that, in their views, sometimes making these
Speaker 1: traffic stops are really the only opportunity that law enforcement
Speaker 1: have in order to prevent fatalities. And so they even
Speaker 1: though this is sort of a routine, maybe seems like
Speaker 1: not such a big deal, you're just pulling a car over,
Speaker 1: from the government's view, it actually is something a lot
Speaker 1: more serious than that. And at the same time, from
Speaker 1: the defense point of view, it's a lot more serious
Speaker 1: than the government is giving a credit for in its
Speaker 1: own right, And by that that's going to sort of
Speaker 1: the argument that if it isn't the person driving whose
Speaker 1: license is revoked, then they're being subjected to a seizure
Speaker 1: that they otherwise wouldn't be subjected to if an officer
Speaker 1: had attempted to confirm their identity first. So there are
Speaker 1: those two arguments. On both sides. There certainly are competing interests,
Speaker 1: and we're just going to have to see what the
Speaker 1: court does with all that. Thanks Jordan's that's Jordan Reuben,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Law Legal Editor. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg Ye.