Whren v. United States

Petitioners
Michael A. Whren, James L. Brown
Respondent
United States
Petitioners' Claim
That evidence discovered and seized by police during a minor traffic stop wasinadmissible in court given Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure.
Chief Lawyers for Petitioners
A.J. Kramer, G. Allen Dale, Neil H. Jaffee, Lisa Burget Wright
Chief Lawyers for Respondent
Drew S. Days, U. S. Solicitor General; John C. Kenney, Acting Assistant Attorney General
Justices for the Court
Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor,William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia (writing for the Court), David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens, Clarence Thomas
Justices Dissenting
None
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
10 June 1996
Decision
Denied the petitioners' claim and affirmed the decisions of the trial court and court of appeals, ruling that probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred is sufficient justification for the police to stop a vehicle and conduct a search for objects in plain view within that vehicle.
Significance
The ruling allowed law enforcement officers greater latitude in the investigation and pursuit of individuals engaged in the illegal drug trade. Because aviolation of the traffic laws, however minor, justifies the authorities in stopping a vehicle, the Court ruled that any additional evidence obtained by aplain view search during such a stop, regardless of police motives or the existence of probable cause to believe that any crime other than the traffic violation was occurring, was legally admissible.
The War on Drugs
Beginning in the early 1980s, the Court interpreted Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure so as to increase the ability oflaw enforcement authorities to obtain evidence against criminal suspects. This tendency has been particularly apparent in cases involving the trade in illegal drugs, and has generally mirrored public sentiment.
A Routine Traffic Stop?
On the evening of 10 June 1993 two Washington, D.C. police officers cruised the streets of an area of the city known to be a center of the illegal drug trade. The officers were in plain clothes and drove an unmarked car as they looked for suspicious activity along their route. They soon spotted something that aroused their suspicions: a dark-colored small truck of a type favored byyoung drug dealers which waited an inordinate amount of time at a stop sign while its driver looked down toward the passenger in the front seat. When theofficers made a U-turn to investigate the situation, the small truck made a right turn without using its turn indicator and began to speed off. The officers then followed the truck until it reached a stoplight, whereupon one of theofficers stepped out, identified himself to the driver of the truck (petitioner Brown), and directed him to put his vehicle in park.
When the officer approached the driver's window he saw two large bags containing a white substance which turned out to be crack cocaine. Brown and Whren were then arrested and charged with violation of several federal drug laws. The petitioners entered a pretrial motion to suppress the evidence obtained bythe police search of their truck, arguing that the authorities had no reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe that they were engaged in drug trafficking. They also asserted that the traffic stop was a pretext, and that the police had really intended to look for drugs in the truck simply because itwas a model favored by drug dealers and was occupied by two young African American men.
Lower Court Rulings
The district court refused to grant the petitioners' motion for suppression of evidence, and Whren and Brown were convicted of the drug charges brought against them. They then appealed their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The appeals court affirmed their convictions, statingthat "regardless of whether a police officer subjectively believes that theoccupants of an automobile may be engaging in some other illegal behavior, atraffic stop is permissible as long as a reasonable officer in the same circumstances would have stopped the car for the suspected traffic violation." Whren and Brown then appealed their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heardarguments in the matter on 17 April 1996.
Use of Pretext to Enable a Search
While the petitioners did not contend that they had not violated the trafficlaws of the District of Columbia, they did maintain that the arcane nature oftraffic laws rendered nearly all motorists guilty of repeated infractions, and that in this case police officers had used a minor traffic violation as apretext to conduct a visual search of the vehicle. Whren and Brown also maintained that the case represented an instance of selective enforcement of the law based on race, contending that their traffic violation might have gone unnoticed if they had not "fit the profile" for drug dealers in the area in which they were stopped. Although the Court found some merit in this last argument, it chose not to consider whether or not the search represented a selectiveenforcement based on race, holding that this was more properly a FourteenthAmendment question of Equal Protection and not germane to the petitioners' Fourth Amendment case. The Court thus implied that this latter argument may have been more efficacious for the petitioners. However, the Court was not as sympathetic to the Fourth Amendment case the petitioners advanced, as it upheldthe decisions of the district court and court of appeals by a unanimous vote.
Writing for the Court, Justice Scalia agreed with the court of appeals that when police officers observe a traffic violation, they automatically have probable cause to stop the offending vehicle and to issue a citation or a warningto its driver. With probable cause thus established, any incriminating evidence of the traffic violation or any other criminal activity found by an officer in plain view within the stopped vehicle could legally be seized and usedas evidence in court. Scalia also noted the possible validity of the petitioners' Fourteenth Amendment argument, however. He thus proposed that, to avoidselective enforcement based on race, the standard for determining reasonableness of traffic stops be amended from automatic probable cause created by anyminor infraction to a test of whether any officer, acting reasonably, would have made the same stop.
The Court also rejected the petitioners' argument that traffic stops used asa pretext for obtaining other evidence should be abolished, noting that suchpretext would be impossible to ascertain. In the final analysis the Court ruled that as long as a traffic stop was made following an actual traffic infraction it was reasonable by definition.
Impact
Whren v. United States is an example of the Court's willingness to allow law enforcement authorities engaged in operations against the trade in illegal drugs great latitude under the Fourth Amendment. The ruling allowed evidence of other crimes found in plain view and seized by police officers duringroutine traffic stops to be used in court. Despite the apparent permissiveness of the decision toward law enforcement officers the Court was quite sensitive to the possibility of selective enforcement of the law based on race, andsuggested the slightly more rigorous standard for determining the reasonableness of traffic stops discussed previously.
Related Cases

• United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975).
  
• United States v. Martinez Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 (1976).
  
• Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106 (1977).
  
• Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648 (1979).