CALIFORNIA CRIMINAL DEFENSE: ILLEGALLY PROLONGED DETENTION? NO PROBLEM
In a week with perhaps the best case of the year (Arizona), we also get an outrage of the week, perhaps the outrage of the year. The California Court of Appeal has to really struggle even to come up with a traffic infraction to justify the detention in this case; get this, the headlights were out of alignment.
ARE YOU KIDDING?
Alrighty, then. But the detention was illegally prolonged, under McGaughran (25 Cal.3d 577). Atwater (532 U.S. 318) says that the 4th Amendment isn't violated by a state law permitting a custodial arrest for a fine-only infraction.
This California Court of Appeal mangles Atwater and comes up with a rule that the 4th Amendment permits custodial arrests for infractions, and concludes that McGauhran isn't the law, so illegally prolonged detentions don't require uppression under the 4th Amendment.
Don't believe me: "if the law enforcement officers had probable cause to believe defendant
committed traffic infractions, then detaining him longer than necessary to simply cite him did not violate the Fourth Amendment." So they ignore a case from the California Supremes and essentially permit extended detentions justified by the most trivial of traffic violations.
Oh, and they skillfully don't even mention the binding cases from the U.S. Supremes barring illegally prolonged detentions, U.S. v. Sharpe (470 U.S. 675) and U.S. v. Place (462 U.S. 696).
And anyway, what does the scope of a custodial arrest have to do with an illegally prolonged detention prior to an arrest? What was searched? Sure enough, the police searched the car after the defendant was arrested and removed from it, violating our new winner, Arizona v. Gant, just decided by SCOTUS.!
People v. Branner; 2009 DJ DAR 5507; DJ, 4/21/09; C/A 3rd
