Summaries of Selected Opinions
| Publication year | 2009 |
| Pages | 147 |
2009, June, Pg. 147. Summaries of Selected Opinions
June 2009
Vol. 38, No. 6 [Page 147]
Summaries of selected Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Opinions appear on a space-available basis. The summaries are prepared for the Colorado Bar Association (CBA) by Katherine Campbell and Frank Gibbard, licensed Colorado attorneys. They are provided as a service by the CBA and are not the official language of this Court. The CBA cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the summaries. Full copies of the Tenth Circuit decisions are accessible from the CBA website: www.cobar.org (click on "Opinions/Rules/Statutes").
No. 07-3298. U.S. v. Orduna-Martinez. 04/03/2009. D.Kan. Judge Henry. Search and Seizure--Probable Cause--Obscured License Plate Decal.
Defendant entered a conditional guilty plea to possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, reserving the right to appeal the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence found during a search of his vehicle. A Kansas state trooper stopped his vehicle after he noticed that an "Ohio State Buckeyes" metal tag bracket had partially obscured the license plate's annual registration decal. It also covered the top part of the "O" and "h" in the portion of the license plate reading "Ohio." The trooper pulled within fifty feet of defendant's vehicle, but could not read one of the two digits on the decal stating the expiration year of the plate. Because the plate was from Ohio, not Kansas, the trooper could not determine from the color of the decal whether it was up-to-date. After stopping the vehicle, the trooper moved the bracket to one side and determined that the plate was in fact up-to-date. The stop later led to the discovery of approximately twenty-five kilograms of cocaine, which was hidden in a compartment in the back of the vehicle.
On appeal, defendant argued that the trooper lacked probable cause or reasonable suspicion to stop his vehicle, because obstruction of a registration decal is not a crime under Kansas law and because the state name (Ohio) was too minimally obscured to constitute a violation of Kansas law. He contended that the Kansas statute prescribing standards for the decals did not require them to be legible, or even visible, and that the Kansas statute that requires license plates in general to be clearly legible has been interpreted to mean legible to an officer following at a safe distance. Defendant reasoned that registration decals are too small to be legible even at a safe distance, so the legibility requirement must not apply to decals.
The Tenth Circuit rejected these arguments. It noted that the standard is whether the detaining officer reasonably suspected that the driver had violated the law. The Kansas courts have interpreted its statutes to require that vehicle tags be legible and not obscured, even if vehicles are registered in other states. Read as a whole, the Kansas statutes require the date on the registration sticker to be clearly visible, free from foreign materials, and clearly legible. Under those statutes, a "license plate" includes an annual registration decal. Cases determining that plates were not legible because they could not be read by an officer at a safe distance did not define the outer limits of "legibility." A decal is not "clearly legible," however, where it is obscured by a metal bracket and can be read only by looking behind the frame.
Because the obstruction of the registration decal justified the stop, the court did not need to determine whether the partial obstruction of the state's name also would have justified it. Accordingly, the Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction.
No. 07-8086. U.S. v. Serafin. 04/14/2009 D.Wyo. Judge Tymkovich. Crime of Violence--Possession of Unregistered Firearm.
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