United States v. Timothy Washington ( 2006 )


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  •                      United States Court of Appeals
    FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
    ___________
    No. 06-1220
    ___________
    United States of America,                *
    *
    Plaintiff - Appellee,              *
    * Appeal from the United States
    v.                                 * District Court for the District
    * of Nebraska.
    Timothy W. Washington,                   *
    *
    Defendant - Appellant.             *
    ___________
    Submitted: May 16, 2006
    Filed: August 1, 2006
    ___________
    Before MURPHY, JOHN R. GIBSON, and BENTON, Circuit Judges.
    ___________
    JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge.
    Timothy Washington entered a conditional guilty plea to being a felon in
    possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), and the district court
    sentenced him to 21 months' imprisonment followed by 3 years of supervised release.
    He appeals from the district court's order denying his motion to suppress evidence
    obtained after police officers stopped the vehicle he was riding in for having a cracked
    windshield. The government concedes that having a cracked windshield does not
    violate Nebraska law, and Washington argues that the investigating officer therefore
    did not have reasonable suspicion or probable cause to stop the vehicle. We reverse
    the district court's order and vacate Washington's plea and sentence.
    I.
    On March 2, 2005, Officer Scott Antoniak was conducting traffic patrol with
    another officer in Omaha, Nebraska. He noticed that a 1993 Buick Regal in front of
    them had a horizontal crack in the windshield that "went all the way across the
    windshield at about eye level with little spider veins that come off the main crack."
    The officers decided to stop the car on the basis of the "vision obstruction" caused by
    the crack. They ran a data check on the driver, Kevin Wynn, which revealed that his
    license was suspended, so the officers handcuffed him and escorted the passenger,
    Washington, out of the car. Antoniak searched the car and discovered a loaded .22
    caliber revolver under the passenger seat. Antoniak said that when he began to
    question Wynn about the gun, Washington blurted out, "[I]t's mine and I carry it for
    protection."
    Washington was subsequently indicted for being a felon in possession of a
    firearm. He moved to suppress both the firearm and his statement, arguing that they
    were the fruit of an unconstitutional traffic stop, as no state statute or local ordinance
    prohibited driving with a cracked windshield. At the suppression hearing, Officer
    Antoniak testified to the above facts and stated that in his three and a half years as a
    police officer he had stopped some 100 cars for having cracked windshields. He
    explained that when he made such stops, he would issue a citation for "vision
    obstruction" and agreed that in this case the cracked windshield was the only basis he
    had for stopping the Buick.
    In its brief to the magistrate judge, the government conceded that Officer
    Antoniak made a mistake of law in believing that a cracked windshield violated the
    vision obstruction statute, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-6,256. That section is entitled
    "Objects placed or hung to obstruct or interfere with view of operator; unlawful;
    penalty" and states:
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    It shall be unlawful for any person to operate a motor vehicle with any
    object placed or hung in or upon such vehicle, except required or
    permitted equipment of the vehicle, in such a manner as to obstruct or
    interfere with the view of the operator through the windshield or to
    prevent the operator from having a clear and full view of the road and
    condition of traffic behind such vehicle.
    Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-6,256 (2005). The government acknowledged that no other
    provision of Nebraska law prohibits driving with a cracked windshield.
    The magistrate judge concluded that although Officer Antoniak was mistaken
    in believing that cracked windshields violated Nebraska traffic law, his mistake of law
    was objectively reasonable given his training and past experience and "It is further
    reasonable to believe it would be a violation of traffic laws to operate a motor vehicle
    with a vision obstruction, be it a cracked windshield or a totally obliterated
    windshield." The district court adopted the report and recommendation of the
    magistrate judge in its entirety and denied Washington's motion to suppress. The
    court found that Antoniak misunderstood the Nebraska motor vehicle statutes but that
    the misunderstanding was reasonable in light of the vision obstruction statute, Neb.
    Rev. Stat. § 60-6,256, as well as the view to rear statute, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-6,254.
    II.
    We review the district court's findings of fact for clear error and its legal
    conclusions about probable cause and reasonable suspicion de novo. Ornelas v.
    United States, 
    517 U.S. 690
    , 699 (1996). Under the Fourth Amendment, a traffic stop
    is reasonable if it is supported by either probable cause or an articulable and
    reasonable suspicion that a traffic violation has occurred. United States v. Smart, 
    393 F.3d 767
    , 770 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 
    125 S. Ct. 2921
    (2005). It is well-established
    that "any traffic violation, regardless of its perceived severity, provides an officer with
    probable cause to stop the driver." United States v. Jones, 
    275 F.3d 673
    , 680 (8th Cir.
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    2001). Nonetheless, the police must "objectively ha[ve] a reasonable basis for
    believing that the driver has breached a traffic law." United States v. Thomas, 
    93 F.3d 479
    , 485 (8th Cir. 1996).
    We are persuaded that Officer Antoniak made a mistake of law when he
    stopped the Buick for having a cracked windshield. It is clear from the plain language
    of the vision obstruction provision he relied on that he was mistaken in believing that
    it prohibited cracked windshields, as it only applies to physical objects that obstruct
    a driver's view. See Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-6,256. Furthermore, the view to rear statute
    mentioned by the district court is similarly inapplicable to the facts of this case as it
    addresses only obstructions that affect a driver's ability to see what is behind the
    vehicle. See Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-6,254 (2005). Finally, the government concedes
    that no other Nebraska law or Omaha city ordinance exists which bans driving with
    a cracked windshield.
    In our circuit, if an officer makes a traffic stop based on a mistake of law, the
    legal determination of whether probable cause or reasonable suspicion existed for the
    stop is judged by whether the mistake of law was an "objectively reasonable one."1
    1
    We recognize that other circuits have held that a police officer's mistake of law
    can never be objectively reasonable. See United States v. McDonald, — F.3d — , No.
    05-3761, 
    2006 WL 1975403
    , at *3 (7th Cir. July 17, 2006) ("We agree with the
    majority of circuits to have considered the issue that a police officer's mistake of law
    cannot support probable cause to conduct a stop."); United States v. Tibbets, 
    396 F.3d 1132
    , 1138 (10th Cir. 2005) ("[F]ailure to understand the law by the very person
    charged with enforcing it is not objectively reasonable."); United States v.
    Chanthasouxat, 
    342 F.3d 1271
    , 1279 (11th Cir. 2003) (no matter how reasonable or
    understandable a mistake of law, it cannot provide the "objectively reasonable grounds
    for reasonable suspicion or probable cause"); United States v. Twilley, 
    222 F.3d 1092
    ,
    1096 (9th Cir. 2000) ("[I]n this circuit, a belief based on a misunderstanding of the
    law cannot constitute the reasonable suspicion required for a constitutional traffic
    stop."); United States v. Miller, 
    146 F.3d 274
    , 279 (5th Cir. 1998) (where officer was
    mistaken about law "no objective basis for probable cause justified the stop").
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    Smart, 393 F.3d at 770
    . Therefore, the constitutionality of the traffic stop in this case
    depends on whether Officer Antoniak's belief that a state law was violated was
    objectively reasonable. His subjective good faith belief about the content of the law
    is irrelevant to our inquiry, "for officers have an obligation to understand the laws that
    they are entrusted with enforcing, at least to a level that is objectively reasonable."
    United States v. Martin, 
    411 F.3d 998
    , 1001 (8th Cir. 2005).
    The question of how to determine whether a mistake of law is "objectively
    reasonable" was recently addressed in Martin, where we affirmed the denial of a
    motion to suppress based on an officer's objectively reasonable belief that operating
    a motor vehicle with one non-functioning brake light violated a particular provision
    of tribal 
    law. 411 F.3d at 1001-02
    . We determined that the officer's mistake of law
    was objectively reasonable based on the statute's "counterintuitive and confusing"
    language and concluded that "the level of clarity [of the statute] falls short of that
    required to declare Officer Grube's belief and actions objectively unreasonable under
    the circumstances." 
    Id. at 1002.
    The officer argued that his mistaken interpretation
    of the law -- that it required two functioning brake lights -- was "common
    knowledge." In light of the ambiguities in the statute, we noted that the following
    factors would be relevant to the objective reasonableness of the officer's belief: "the
    drafting history of the Code, prior enforcement of the Code's provision concerning
    'stop lights,' the training of police concerning the requirements of the Code, or
    previous judicial interpretations of the 'stop lights' provision." 
    Id. at 1001.
    The instant case is distinguishable from Martin as we are not confronted with
    any "counterintuitive and confusing" motor statutes that might prohibit cracked
    windshields. Rather, § 60-6,256 clearly does not prohibit the conduct Officer
    Antoniak thought it did, and this is an unusual case as the government concedes that
    no other motor statute or ordinance forbids cracked windshields. Moreover, the
    government has not presented any evidence of police manuals or training materials,
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    state case law, legislative history, or any other state custom or practice that would
    create some objectively reasonable basis for the traffic stop.
    Consequently, the district court erred in adopting the magistrate judge's
    conclusion that Officer Antoniak's mistake of law was objectively reasonable based
    on Antoniak's "training and past experiences of prior traffic citation cases involving
    cracked windshields." There is no evidence that Antoniak was trained by the police
    department to make stops on the basis of cracked windshields. Antoniak's own past
    practices were based on the same mistake of law and do not create a justification for
    future stops. The district court also erred in adopting the magistrate judge's statement
    that the mistake of law was objectively reasonable because it would be reasonable for
    an officer to believe that having a cracked windshield must violate some traffic law
    in Nebraska. The concept of an objectively reasonable mistake of law cannot be so
    unmoored from actual legal authority. Where there is a basis in state law for an
    officer's action and some ambiguity or state custom that caused the officer to make the
    mistake, it may be objectively reasonable. See 
    Martin, 411 F.3d at 1001-02
    . However,
    in the absence of such evidence, officers cannot act upon misunderstandings of clear
    statutes or, worse yet, their own notions of what the law ought to be.
    Officers have broad authority to stop vehicles for any traffic violation,
    regardless of how minor, but they must have a legal justification for the stop that is
    grounded in the state's law. We conclude that Antoniak's understanding of Nebraska
    law was unreasonable and that the government has therefore failed to establish that
    it had probable cause to stop the Buick. The traffic stop was unconstitutional, and the
    firearm and Washington's statements to the police should have been suppressed.
    Accordingly, we vacate Washington's conviction and sentence.
    ______________________________
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