Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Arrested Jaywalker Justices Say Warrant Check During Routine Stop That Resulted In Drug Charge Was Illegal

Travis Lee Rife picked the wrong time to jaywalk.

One February night in 1994, the Seattle man got off the Metro bus and crossed busy Aurora Avenue, old Highway 99, without using a crosswalk or waiting for a light to change. A policeman saw it and promptly stopped him, asked for ID and called in to see if he had any outstanding warrants.

When two warrants popped up, Rife was taken to the police station and a search turned up some heroin in his pocket. Although he was never cited for the original offense, jaywalking, he was convicted of drug possession.

On Thursday, he won an appeal. The state Supreme Court held that during a routine stop for jaywalking or other traffic infraction, police cannot do a warrant check and haul the person off to jail for a previous crime.

The high court said the heroin seized when Rife was taken to the police station cannot be used against him. That conclusion touched off a dissent by Justice Phil Talmadge and Chief Justice Barbara Durham, who called the record checks “routine and reasonable.”

When Rife was stopped, the police officer took his identification and made a radio check for outstanding warrants, keeping the man waiting between 10 and 20 minutes. The officer didn’t give him a ticket for jaywalking, but took him in for two outstanding warrants he discovered during the phone check. The warrants are not described by the court.

At the station, the officer frisked Rife and discovered heroin in his pocket. Rife was convicted on possession charges after Superior Court Judge Janice Niemi concluded that the warrant check was not intrusive, that the officer acted properly and the heroin was found in a search after the arrest. The Supreme Court opinion does not say what happened to the original outstanding warrants.

Rife took his case to the Court of Appeals, arguing that his detention during a routine traffic stop and the running of a background check violated his federal and state constitutional protection against unlawful seizure. The appeals bench upheld Niemi and Rife went to the Supreme Court.

The majority didn’t rule on possible constitutional violations, but held that the policeman was acting on his own, without legal authority to do the check.

“Neither the (state) statute nor the Seattle Municipal Code grants authority for a police officer to run a warrant check after stopping a person for a routine traffic infraction,” the court said in an opinion written by Justice Charles Z. Smith and signed by five judges.

Police can detain a traffic offender only long enough to identify the person, check the status of the person’s license, tabs and insurance if driving is involved in the offense, and to write out a ticket, the court said.

The justices cited a 1984 case that says “a citizen’s right to be free of governmental interference with movement means, at a minimum, that … it be brief and related directly to the inquiries concerning the suspect.”

Since Rife wouldn’t have otherwise been arrested and taken in, the search wouldn’t have occurred, the court said.

“The heroin seized thus must be suppressed,” Smith wrote.

Three justices signed concurring opinions. “Travis Rife did not commit a crime” and should not have been checked out or taken to the police station and searched, concluded Justice Richard Guy.

But Talmadge and Durham said, “Washington case law has long accepted the view that a brief warrant check is a proper part of a stop for a traffic infraction.” They said the majority had to overrule a number of similar cases where judges have upheld actions like this Seattle case.

“When an individual commits a traffic infraction in the presence of a police officer, the individual’s brief detention for the purpose of verifying his or her identity and driver’s license status, including a brief warrant check, is a routine and reasonable police practice,” Talmadge wrote.