OCTOBER TERM, 1995
Syllabus
WHREN ET AL.
v. UNITED STATES
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
No. 95-5841. Argued April 17, 1996-Decided June 10, 1996
Plainclothes policemen patrolling a "high drug area" in an
unmarked vehicle observed a truck driven by petitioner Brown
waiting at a stop sign at an intersection for an unusually long
time; the truck then turned suddenly, without signaling, and sped
off at an "unreasonable" speed. The officers stopped the vehicle,
assertedly to warn the driver about traffic violations, and upon
approaching the truck observed plastic bags of crack cocaine in
petitioner Whren's hands. Petitioners were arrested. Prior to trial
on federal drug charges, they moved for suppression of the
evidence, arguing that the stop had not been justified by either a
reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe petitioners were
engaged in illegal drug-dealing activity, and that the officers'
traffic-violation ground for approaching the truck was pretextual.
The motion to suppress was denied, petitioners were convicted, and
the Court of Appeals affirmed.
Held: The temporary detention of a motorist upon probable
cause to believe that he has violated the traffic laws does not
violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable
seizures, even if a reasonable officer would not have stopped the
motorist absent some additional law enforcement objective. Pp.
809-819.
(a) Detention of a motorist is reasonable where probable cause
exists to believe that a traffic violation has occurred. See,
e. g., Delaware v.
Prouse, 440 U. S. 648, 659.
Petitioners claim that, because the police may be tempted to use
commonly occurring traffic violations as means of investigating
violations of other laws, the Fourth Amendment test for traffic
stops should be whether a reasonable officer would have stopped the
car for the purpose of enforcing the traffic violation at issue.
However, this Court's cases foreclose the argument that ulterior
motives can invalidate police conduct justified on the basis of
probable cause. See,
e. g., United States v.
Robinson, 414
U. S. 218, 221, n. 1,236. Subjective intentions play no role in
ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis. Pp.
809-813.
(b) Although framed as an empirical question-whether the
officer's conduct deviated materially from standard police
practices-petitioners' proposed test is plainly designed to combat
the perceived danger of pretextual stops. It is thus inconsistent
with this Court's cases, which
807
make clear that the Fourth Amendment's concern with
"reasonableness" allows certain actions to be taken in certain
circumstances,
whatever the subjective intent. See,
e.
g., Robinson, supra, at 236. Nor can the Fourth Amendment's
protections be thought to vary from place to place and from time to
time, which would be the consequence of assessing the
reasonableness of police conduct in light of local law enforcement
practices. Pp. 813-816.
(c) Also rejected is petitioners' argument that the balancing of
interests inherent in Fourth Amendment inquiries does not support
enforcement of minor traffic laws by plainclothes police in
unmarked vehicles, since that practice only minimally advances the
government's interest in traffic safety while subjecting motorists
to inconvenience, confusion, and anxiety. Where probable cause
exists, this Court has found it necessary to engage in balancing
only in cases involving searches or seizures conducted in a manner
unusually harmful to the individual. See,
e. g., Tennessee
v.
Garner, 471
U. S. 1. The making of a traffic stop out of uniform does not
remotely qualify as such an extreme practice. pp. 816-819.
53 F.3d
371, affirmed.
SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
Lisa Burget Wright argued the cause for petitioners.
With her on the briefs were A.
J. Kramer, Neil H. Jaffee,
and G. Allen Dale.
James A. Feldman argued the cause for the United
States.
On the brief were Solicitor General Days, Acting Assistant
Attorney General Keeney, Deputy Solicitor General Dreeben, and Paul
A. Engelmayer.
*
*Briefs of
amici curiae urging reversal were filed for
the American Civil Liberties Union by
Steven R. Shapiro and
Susan N. Herman; and for the National Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers by
Natman Schaye and
Walter B.
Nash III.
Briefs of
amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for
the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation by
Kent S.
Scheidegger and
Charles L. Hobson; and for the State
of California et al. by
Daniel E. Lungren, Attorney General
of California,
George Williamson, Chief Assistant Attorney
General,
Ronald A. Bass, Senior Assistant Attorney General,
Joan Killeen and
Catherine A. Rivlin, Supervising
Deputy Attorneys General, and
Christina V. Kuo, Deputy
Attorney General; and by the Attorneys General for their respective
States as follows:
M. Jane Brady of Delaware,
808
JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this case we decide whether the temporary detention of a
motorist who the police have probable cause to believe has
committed a civil traffic violation is inconsistent with the Fourth
Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable seizures unless a
reasonable officer would have been motivated to stop the car by a
desire to enforce the traffic laws.
I
On the evening of June 10, 1993, plainclothes vice-squad
officers of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department
were patrolling a "high drug area" of the city in an unmarked car.
Their suspicions were aroused when they passed a dark Pathfinder
truck with temporary license plates and youthful occupants waiting
at a stop sign, the driver looking down into the lap of the
passenger at his right. The truck remained stopped at the
intersection for what seemed an unusually long time-more than 20
seconds. When the police car executed aU-turn in order to head back
toward the truck, the Pathfinder turned suddenly to its right,
without signaling, and sped off at an "unreasonable" speed. The
policemen followed, and in a short while overtook the Pathfinder
when it stopped behind other traffic at a red light. They pulled up
alongside, and Officer Ephraim Soto stepped out and approached the
driver's door, identifying himself as a police officer and
directing the driver, petitioner Brown, to put the vehicle in park.
When Soto drew up to the driver's
Thomas
J. Miller of Iowa, Carla
J. Stovall of
Kansas,
J. Joseph Curran, Jr., of Maryland, Mike Moore of
Mississippi, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, Deborah T. Poritz of
New Jersey, Dennis C. Vacco of New York, Michael F. Easley of North
Carolina, Betty D. Montgomery of Ohio, W A. Drew Edmondson of
Oklahoma, Charles W Burson of Tennessee, and Jan Graham of
Utah.
Richard S.
Michaels and
Jeff Rubin filed a
brief for the California District Attorney's Association as
amicus curiae.
809
window, he immediately observed two large plastic bags of what
appeared to be crack cocaine in petitioner Whren's hands.
Petitioners were arrested, and quantities of several types of
illegal drugs were retrieved from the vehicle.
Petitioners were charged in a four-count indictment with
violating various federal drug laws, including 21 U. S. C. §§
844(a) and 860(a). At a pretrial suppression hearing, they
challenged the legality of the stop and the resulting seizure of
the drugs. They argued that the stop had not been justified by
probable cause to believe, or even reasonable suspicion, that
petitioners were engaged in illegal drug-dealing activity; and that
Officer Soto's asserted ground for approaching the vehicle-to give
the driver a warning concerning traffic violations-was pretextual.
The District Court denied the suppression motion, concluding that
"the facts of the stop were not controverted," and "[t]here was
nothing to really demonstrate that the actions of the officers were
contrary to a normal traffic stop." App. 5.
Petitioners were convicted of the counts at issue here.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions, holding with
respect to the suppression issue that, "regardless of whether a
police officer subjectively believes that the occupants of an
automobile may be engaging in some other illegal behavior, a
traffic stop is permissible as long as a reasonable officer in the
same circumstances
could have stopped the car for the
suspected traffic violation."
53 F.3d
371, 374-375 (CADC 1995). We granted certiorari. 516 U. S. 1036
(1996).
II
The Fourth Amendment guarantees "[t]he right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures." Temporary detention of
individuals during the stop of an automobile by the police, even if
only for a brief period and for a limited purpose, constitutes a
"seizure" of "persons" within the
810
meaning of this provision. See
Delaware v.
Prouse,
440 U. S. 648, 653 (1979);
United States v.
Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, 556 (1976);
United
States v.
Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873, 878
(1975). An automobile stop is thus subject to the constitutional
imperative that it not be "unreasonable" under the circumstances.
As a general matter, the decision to stop an automobile is
reasonable where the police have probable cause to believe that a
traffic violation has occurred. See
Prouse, supra, at 659;
Pennsylvania v.
Mimms, 434 U. S. 106, 109 (1977)
(per curiam).
Petitioners accept that Officer Soto had probable cause to
believe that various provisions of the District of Columbia traffic
code had been violated. See 18 D. C. Mun. Regs. §§ 2213.4 (1995)
("An operator shall ... give full time and attention to the
operation of the vehicle"); 2204.3 ("No person shall turn any
vehicle ... without giving an appropriate signal"); 2200.3 ("No
person shall drive a vehicle ... at a speed greater than is
reasonable and prudent under the conditions"). They argue, however,
that "in the unique context of civil traffic regulations" probable
cause is not enough. Since, they contend, the use of automobiles is
so heavily and minutely regulated that total compliance with
traffic and safety rules is nearly impossible, a police officer
will almost invariably be able to catch any given motorist in a
technical violation. This creates the temptation to use traffic
stops as a means of investigating other law violations, as to which
no probable cause or even articulable suspicion exists.
Petitioners, who are both black, further contend that police
officers might decide which motorists to stop based on decidedly
impermissible factors, such as the race of the car's occupants. To
avoid this danger, they say, the Fourth Amendment test for traffic
stops should be, not the normal one (applied by the Court of
Appeals) of whether probable cause existed to justify the stop; but
rather, whether a police officer, acting reasonably, would have
made the stop for the reason given.
811
A
Petitioners contend that the standard they propose is consistent
with our past cases' disapproval of police attempts to use valid
bases of action against citizens as pretexts for pursuing other
investigatory agendas. We are reminded that in
Florida v.
Wells, 495 U. S.
1, 4 (1990), we stated that "an inventory search[l] must not be
a ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover incriminating
evidence"; that in
Colorado v.
Bertine, 479 U. S. 367, 372
(1987), in approving an inventory search, we apparently thought it
significant that there had been "no showing that the police, who
were following standardized procedures, acted in bad faith or for
the sole purpose of investigation"; and that in
New York v.
Burger, 482 U.
S. 691, 716-717, n. 27 (1987), we observed, in upholding the
constitutionality of a warrantless administrative inspection,2 that
the search did not appear to be "a 'pretext' for obtaining evidence
of ... violation of ... penal laws." But only an undiscerning
reader would regard these cases as endorsing the principle that
ulterior motives can invalidate police conduct that is justifiable
on the basis of probable cause to believe that a violation of law
has occurred. In each case we were addressing the validity of a
search conducted in the
absence of probable cause. Our
quoted statements simply explain that the exemption from the need
for probable cause (and warrant), which is accorded to searches
made for the purpose of inventory or administrative
1 An inventory search is the search of property lawfully seized
and detained, in order to ensure that it is harmless, to secure
valuable items (such as might be kept in a towed car), and to
protect against false claims of loss or damage. See
South
Dakota v.
Opperman, 428 U. S. 364, 369
(1976).
2 An administrative inspection is the inspection of business
premises conducted by authorities responsible for enforcing a
pervasive regulatory scheme-for example, unannounced inspection of
a mine for compliance with health and safety standards. See
Donovan v.
Dewey, 452 U. S. 594, 599-605
(1981).
812
regulation, is not accorded to searches that are
not made
for those purposes. See
Bertine, supra, at 371-372;
Burger, supra, at 702-703.
Petitioners also rely upon
Colorado v.
Bannister,
449 U. S. 1 (1980)
(per curiam), a case which, like this one, involved a
traffic stop as the prelude to a plain-view sighting and arrest on
charges wholly unrelated to the basis for the stop. Petitioners
point to our statement that "[t]here was no evidence whatsoever
that the officer's presence to issue a traffic citation was a
pretext to confirm any other previous suspicion about the
occupants" of the car.
Id., at 4, n. 4. That dictum
at
most demonstrates that the Court in
Bannister found no
need to inquire into the question now under discussion; not that it
was certain of the answer. And it may demonstrate even less than
that: If by "pretext" the Court meant that the officer really had
not seen the car speeding, the statement would mean only that there
was no reason to doubt probable cause for the traffic stop.
It would, moreover, be anomalous, to say the least, to treat a
statement in a footnote in the
per curiam Bannister opinion
as indicating a reversal of our prior law. Petitioners' difficulty
is not simply a lack of affirmative support for their position. Not
only have we never held, outside the context of inventory search or
administrative inspection (discussed above), that an officer's
motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the
Fourth Amendment; but we have repeatedly held and asserted the
contrary. In
United States v.
Villamonte-Marquez,
462 U. S. 579,
584, n. 3 (1983), we held that an otherwise valid warrantless
boarding of a vessel by customs officials was not rendered invalid
"because the customs officers were accompanied by a Louisiana state
policeman, and were following an informant's tip that a vessel in
the ship channel was thought to be carrying marihuana." We flatly
dismissed the idea that an ulterior motive might serve to strip the
agents of their legal justification. In
United States v.
Robinson, 414
U. S. 218 (1973), we held that
813
a traffic-violation arrest (of the sort here) would not be
rendered invalid by the fact that it was "a mere pretext for a
narcotics search,"
id., at 221, n. 1; and that a lawful
post-arrest search of the person would not be rendered invalid by
the fact that it was not motivated by the officer-safety concern
that justifies such searches, see
id., at 236. See also
Gustafson v.
Florida, 414 U. S. 260, 266
(1973). And in
Scott v.
United States, 436 U. S. 128, 138
(1978), in rejecting the contention that wiretap evidence was
subject to exclusion because the agents conducting the tap had
failed to make any effort to comply with the statutory requirement
that unauthorized acquisitions be minimized, we said that
"[sJubjective intent alone ... does not make otherwise lawful
conduct illegal or unconstitutional." We described
Robinson
as having established that "the fact that the officer does not have
the state of mind which is hypothecated by the reasons which
provide the legal justification for the officer's action does not
invalidate the action taken as long as the circumstances, viewed
objectively, justify that action." 436 U. S., at 136, 138.
We think these cases foreclose any argument that the
constitutional reasonableness of traffic stops depends on the
actual motivations of the individual officers involved. We of
course agree with petitioners that the Constitution prohibits
selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as
race. But the constitutional basis for objecting to intentionally
discriminatory application of laws is the Equal Protection Clause,
not the Fourth Amendment. Subjective intentions play no role in
ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis.
B
Recognizing that we have been unwilling to entertain Fourth
Amendment challenges based on the actual motivations of individual
officers, petitioners disavow any intention to make the individual
officer's subjective good faith the touchstone of "reasonableness."
They insist that the stand-
814
ard they have put forward-whether the officer's conduct deviated
materially from usual police practices, so that a reasonable
officer in the same circumstances would not have made the stop for
the reasons given-is an "objective" one.
But although framed in empirical terms, this approach is plainly
and indisputably driven by subjective considerations. Its whole
purpose is to prevent the police from doing under the guise of
enforcing the traffic code what they would like to do for different
reasons. Petitioners' proposed standard may not use the word
"pretext," but it is designed to combat nothing other than the
perceived "danger" of the pretextual stop, albeit only indirectly
and over the run of cases. Instead of asking whether the individual
officer had the proper state of mind, the petitioners would have us
ask, in effect, whether (based on general police practices) it is
plausible to believe that the officer had the proper state of
mind.
Why one would frame a test designed to combat pretext in such
fashion that the court cannot take into account
actual and
admitted pretext is a curiosity that can only be explained by
the fact that our cases have foreclosed the more sensible option.
If those cases were based only upon the evidentiary difficulty of
establishing subjective intent, petitioners' attempt to root out
subjective vices through objective means might make sense. But they
were not based only upon that, or indeed even principally upon
that. Their principal basis-which applies equally to attempts to
reach subjective intent through ostensibly objective means-is
simply that the Fourth Amendment's concern with "reasonableness"
allows certain actions to be taken in certain circumstances,
whatever the subjective intent. See,
e. g., Robinson,
supra, at 236 ("Since it is the fact of custodial arrest which
gives rise to the authority to search, it is of no moment that [the
officer] did not indicate any subjective fear of the [arrestee] or
that he did not himself suspect that [the arrestee] was armed")
(footnotes omitted);
Gustafson, supra, at 266 (same). But
even if our concern had been only an evidentiary one,
815
petitioners' proposal would by no means assuage it. Indeed, it
seems to us somewhat easier to figure out the intent of an
individual officer than to plumb the collective consciousness of
law enforcement in order to determine whether a "reasonable
officer" would have been moved to act upon the traffic violation.
While police manuals and standard procedures may sometimes provide
objective assistance, ordinarily one would be reduced to
speculating about the hypothetical reaction of a hypothetical
constable-an exercise that might be called virtual
subjectivity.
Moreover, police enforcement practices, even if they could be
practicably assessed by a judge, vary from place to place and from
time to time. We cannot accept that the search and seizure
protections of the Fourth Amendment are so variable, cf.
Gustafson, supra, at 265;
United States v.
Caceres, 440
U. S. 741, 755-756 (1979), and can be made to turn upon such
trivialities. The difficulty is illustrated by petitioners'
arguments in this case. Their claim that a reasonable officer would
not have made this stop is based largely on District of Columbia
police regulations which permit plainclothes officers in unmarked
vehicles to enforce traffic laws "only in the case of a violation
that is so grave as to pose an
immediate threat to the
safety of others." Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.
C., General Order 303.1, pt. 1, Objectives and Policies (A)(2)(4)
(Apr. 30, 1992), reprinted as Addendum to Brief for Petitioners.
This basis of invalidation would not apply in jurisdictions that
had a different practice. And it would not have applied even in the
District of Columbia, if Officer Soto had been wearing a uniform or
patrolling in a marked police cruiser.
Petitioners argue that our cases support insistence upon police
adherence to standard practices as an objective means of rooting
out pretext. They cite no holding to that effect, and dicta in only
two cases. In
Abel v.
United States, 362 U. S. 217
(1960), the petitioner had been arrested by the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS), on the basis of
816
an administrative warrant that, he claimed, had been issued on
pretextual grounds in order to enable the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) to search his room after his arrest. We
regarded this as an allegation of "serious misconduct," but
rejected Abel's claims on the ground that "[a] finding of bad faith
is ... not open to us on thee] record" in light of the findings
below, including the finding that "'the proceedings taken by the
[INS] differed in no respect from what would have been done in the
case of an individual concerning whom [there was no pending FBI
investigation],'"
id., at 226-227. But it is a long leap
from the proposition that following regular procedures is some
evidence of lack of pretext to the proposition that failure to
follow regular procedures
proves (or is an operational
substitute for) pretext.
Abel, moreover, did not involve the
assertion that pretext could invalidate a search or seizure for
which there was probable cause-and even what it said about pretext
in other contexts is plainly inconsistent with the views we later
stated in
Robinson, Gustafson, Scott, and
Villamonte-Marquez. In the other case claimed to contain
supportive dicta,
United States v.
Robinson, 414 U. S. 218 (1973), in
approving a search incident to an arrest for driving without a
license, we noted that the arrest was "not a departure from
established police department practice."
Id., at 221, n. 1.
That was followed, however, by the statement that "[w]e leave for
another day questions which would arise on facts different from
these."
Ibid. This is not even a dictum that purports to
provide an answer, but merely one that leaves the question
open.
III
In what would appear to be an elaboration on the "reasonable
officer" test, petitioners argue that the balancing inherent in any
Fourth Amendment inquiry requires us to weigh the governmental and
individual interests implicated in a traffic stop such as we have
here. That balancing, petitioners claim, does not support
investigation of minor traffic in-
817
fractions by plainclothes police in unmarked vehicles; such
investigation only minimally advances the government's interest in
traffic safety, and may indeed retard it by producing motorist
confusion and alarm-a view said to be supported by the Metropolitan
Police Department's own regulations generally prohibiting this
practice. And as for the Fourth Amendment interests of the
individuals concerned, petitioners point out that our cases
acknowledge that even ordinary traffic stops entail "a possibly
unsettling show of authority"; that they at best "interfere with
freedom of movement, are inconvenient, and consume time" and at
worst "may create substantial anxiety,"
Prouse, 440 U. S.,
at 657. That anxiety is likely to be even more pronounced when the
stop is conducted by plainclothes officers in unmarked cars.
It is of course true that in principle every Fourth Amendment
case, since it turns upon a "reasonableness" determination,
involves a balancing of all relevant factors. With rare exceptions
not applicable here, however, the result of that balancing is not
in doubt where the search or seizure is based upon probable cause.
That is why petitioners must rely upon cases like
Prouse to
provide examples of actual "balancing" analysis. There, the police
action in question was a random traffic stop for the purpose of
checking a motorist's license and vehicle registration, a practice
that-like the practices at issue in the inventory search and
administrative inspection cases upon which petitioners rely in
making their "pretext" claim-involves police intrusion
without
the probable cause that is its traditional justification. Our
opinion in
Prouse expressly distinguished the case from a
stop based on precisely what is at issue here: "probable cause to
believe that a driver is violating anyone of the multitude of
applicable traffic and equipment regulations."
Id., at 661.
It noted approvingly that "[t]he foremost method of enforcing
traffic and vehicle safety regulations ... is acting upon observed
violations,"
id., at 659, which afford the "'quantum of
individualized suspicion'" necessary to ensure that police
818
discretion is sufficiently constrained,
id., at 654-655
(quoting
United States v.
Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S.,
at 560). What is true of
Prouse is also true of other cases
that engaged in detailed "balancing" to decide the
constitutionality of automobile stops, such as
Martinez-Fuerte, which upheld checkpoint stops, see 428 U.
S., at 556-562, and
Brignoni-Ponce, which disallowed
so-called "roving patrol" stops, see 422 U. S., at 882-884: The
detailed "balancing" analysis was necessary because they involved
seizures without probable cause.
Where probable cause has existed, the only cases in which we
have found it necessary actually to perform the "balancing"
analysis involved searches or seizures conducted in an
extraordinary manner, unusually harmful to an individual's privacy
or even physical interests-such as, for example, seizure by means
of deadly force, see
Tennessee v.
Garner, 471 U. S. 1 (1985),
unannounced entry into a home, see
Wilson v.
Arkansas, 514
U. S. 927 (1995), entry into a home without a warrant, see
Welsh v.
Wisconsin, 466 U. S. 740 (1984), or
physical penetration of the body, see
Winston v.
Lee,
470 U. S. 753
(1985). The making of a traffic stop out of uniform does not
remotely qualify as such an extreme practice, and so is governed by
the usual rule that probable cause to believe the law has been
broken "outbalances" private interest in avoiding police
contact.
Petitioners urge as an extraordinary factor in this case that
the "multitude of applicable traffic and equipment regulations" is
so large and so difficult to obey perfectly that virtually everyone
is guilty of violation, permitting the police to single out almost
whomever they wish for a stop. But we are aware of no principle
that would allow us to decide at what point a code of law becomes
so expansive and so commonly violated that infraction itself can no
longer be the ordinary measure of the lawfulness of enforcement.
And even if we could identify such exorbitant codes, we do not know
by what standard (or what right) we would decide, as
819
petitioners would have us do, which particular provisions are
sufficiently important to merit enforcement.
For the run-of-the-mine case, which this surely is, we think
there is no realistic alternative to the traditional common-law
rule that probable cause justifies a search and seizure.
***
Here the District Court found that the officers had probable
cause to believe that petitioners had violated the traffic code.
That rendered the stop reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, the
evidence thereby discovered admissible, and the upholding of the
convictions by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit correct. The judgment
is
Affirmed.
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