Atwater v. City of Lago Vista

Atwater v. City of Lago Vista
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 4, 2000 Decided April 24, 2001
Full case name	Gail Atwater, et al., Petitionors v. City of Lago Vista, et al.
Citations	532 U.S. 318 (more) 121 S. Ct. 1536; 149 L. Ed. 2d 549; 2001 U.S. LEXIS 3366; 69 U.S.L.W. 4262; 2001 Cal. Daily Op. Service 3203; 2001 Daily Journal DAR 3953; 2001 Colo. J. C.A.R. 2069; 14 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 193
Case history
Prior	United States District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled for the City, 5th Circuit Court reversed
Subsequent	None
Holding
Police may make a warrantless arrest when someone commits a misdemeanor offense.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority	Souter, joined by Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas
Dissent	O'Connor, joined by Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. IV

Atwater v. Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318 (2001), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a woman's Fourth Amendment rights were not violated when she was arrested after driving without a seatbelt. They ruled that this arrest, for a misdemeanor that is punishable only by a fine, did not constitute an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment.

Facts

Texas law provides for police officer discretion in arresting any person caught committing a misdemeanor, such as violating its mandatory seat belt laws. Violation of its seat belt law is punishable with the maximum fine of $50. In March 1997, Gail Atwater a long-term resident of Lago Vista, Texas, was driving her pick-up truck with her three-year-old son and five-year-old daughter. None of them were wearing seat belts. Police-officer Turek, then with the city of Lago Vista, recognized Ms. Atwater and pulled her over. According to court records, witnesses observed that Atwater and her children remained in her pick up when Turek approached the driver's side window and aggressively jabbed his finger toward Atwater’s face. Turek screamed at Atwater about the seatbelts, frightening her children. When Atwater calmly and in a normal tone requested that Turek lower his voice. Turek immediately yelled out “you’re going to jail.” According to the record, Atwater remained calm, when Turek told her she was going to jail. She did not act suspiciously, she did not pose any threat to Turek, and she was not engaged in any illegal conduct, other than failing to wear a seat belt. Turek continued to speak to Atwater in a verbally abusive manner, accusing her of not caring for her children. Atwater's children and bystanders, including friends and other Lago Vista residents who drove or walked by, witnessed Turek's tirade.

After telling Atwater that she would be taken to jail, Turek demanded her driver's license and proof of insurance. When Atwater informed Turek that her license and insurance card were in her purse that had been stolen a couple of days before, Turek told Atwater that he had "heard that story two-hundred times." Atwater provided her address from her checkbook. Atwater then asked Turek to allow her to take her "frightened, upset, and crying" children to a friend's home just two houses down before taking her to jail, but he refused her request. Turek told her "[y]ou're not going anywhere." and stated that her children could accompany her to the police station. A friend of Atwater's who came to the scene took the children into her care while the officer arrested Atwater. Turek handcuffed Atwater, in front of her two young children, placed her in his squad car and drove her to the police station to be booked. According to the court document, "booking officers had her remove her shoes, jewelry, and eyeglasses, and empty her pockets. Officers took Atwater's 'mug shot' and placed her, alone, in a jail cell for about one hour." A magistrate released Atwater on $310 bond. She later paid a $50 fine for violating Texas's seat belt law. When she provided proof, the charges of driving without a license and without proof of insurance were dismissed.

Atwater and her husband, Michael Haas, an emergency room physician at a local hospital, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the city violated her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures by arresting her for a crime whose only punishment was a fine. This argument required her to concede that the police had probable cause to arrest her for violating the seat belt law, and thus the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas found summary judgment for the city. A panel of the Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that arresting a person for a fine-only misdemeanor was per se unreasonable. The Fifth Circuit sitting en banc reversed the panel, agreeing with the district court's reasoning. Three judges dissented from the en banc panel's ruling, arguing that the police had to have a specific reason for arresting Atwater for only violating the seat belt law. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

Majority opinion

The Court held that officer “Turek was authorized (though not required) to make a custodial arrest without balancing costs and benefits or determining whether Atwater's arrest was in some sense necessary.” In Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927 (1995), the Court considered whether the Fourth Amendment required the police to knock first and announce their presence before entering a person's home. To decide that issue, the Court deemed it necessary to examine whether the common law required the police to knock and announce their presence. The Court's analysis in this case proceeded along similar lines. Atwater claimed that the Framers of the Fourth Amendment understood an "unreasonable" seizure to include a warrantless arrest for a misdemeanor offense that was not a "breach of the peace." The Court examined the historical evidence of practice in England during the Middle Ages and in the 17th and 18th centuries and in America from the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights to modern times. Though the Court did find some evidence favoring Atwater's position, it determined that much of the historical precedent contradicted her argument. In the end, the Court's common law analysis supported the proposition that a police officer could arrest any person for a misdemeanor committed in his or her presence.

Atwater had urged the Court to adopt a "bright-line" rule that the police not arrest anyone for an offense that did not carry jail time unless the government could show a compelling need to detain the person. At first blush, the Court conceded, this rule appeared easily administrable by police officers, which would serve the government's interest in rules that are easy to apply on the spot. But in thinking through many possible applications of the rule Atwater proposed, the Court found it more difficult to apply. Court opinion stated that it is not reasonable to expect the average police officer to know the details of "frequently complex penalty schemes," especially since the penalty associated with seemingly identical conduct can vary with the facts that are difficult to discern at the scene of a crime, such as whether the suspect is a repeat offender or the weight of drugs. Furthermore, even if the officer could make that distinction on the spot, he could not know how the district attorney will later choose to charge the offense.

Police routinely exercise discretion in their work. Requiring the police to decide whether a crime is a fine-only crime, for which he could not arrest the suspect, in the heat of the moment ultimately exposes the police to greater legal consequences—either exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, or personal liability for violating the suspect's constitutional rights. Balancing of Fourth Amendment interests through “probable cause” and “extraordinary” circumstances has been delineated in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). Given the choice to abandon or abridge the requirement of probable cause for arrest in the case of fine-only misdemeanors, the Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment imposed the same standard for all crimes: probable cause.

The Court's decision in this case ultimately involved the extent of law-enforcement discretion in exercising their duties. The majority opinion emphasized a prevenient view that otherwise “Multiplied many times over, the costs to society of such underenforcement could easily outweigh the costs to defendants of being needlessly arrested and booked.”

Dissenting opinion

Justice O'Connor, presenting the (4-5) dissenting opinion, stated that the historical evidence was not uniform in rejecting Atwater's proposed rule and reasoned that the Fourth Amendment required a balancing of interests in the case of an arrest for a fine-only misdemeanor. The court dissent in Atwater precluded the sole use of probable cause in Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996), where the Court had held that, on balance, it was reasonable to allow the police to make a traffic stop whenever they spied a violation of the traffic laws, although a traffic stop was a seizure. But, because of the length of the typical traffic stop and the fact that most drivers are free to go after it is done, such a seizure was commensurate with the magnitude of the violation and sufficient to ensure that the offender would appear later in court if necessary. In Atwater, the dissent argued that an arrest for a fine-only misdemeanor was not reasonable because sending someone to jail for up to 48 hours (the time necessary to get him or her before a magistrate to be released) was too great an intrusion upon the personal liberty interests of one who had committed such a relatively minor offense as would merit only a fine as punishment.

The Atwater dissenting court opinion states, “A broad range of conduct falls into the category of fine-only misdemeanors... Such unbounded discretion carries with it grave potential for abuse. The majority takes comfort in the lack of evidence of ‘an epidemic of unnecessary minor-offense arrests’." Reasoning beyond the case of a misdemeanor arrest for a seat-belt-law violation, Justice O'Connor’s dissenting court opinion further cautions, “The Court’s error, however, does not merely affect disposition of this case. The per se rule that the Court creates has potentially serious consequences for the everyday lives of Americans.” Justice O’Connor concludes the court’s dissent by stating, “The Court neglects the Fourth Amendment’s express command in the name of administrative ease. In so doing, it cloaks the pointless indignity that Gail Atwater (and her children) suffered with the mantle of reasonableness.”

Evidence of possible retaliation

The federal trial judge, James Nowlin, an acquaintance of the Lago Vista Chief of Police, did not just summarily dismiss the case, but on his own motion declared it "frivolous" and ordered the attorney for Atwater, Charles E. Lincoln, III, to cease the practice of law, which was not within his jurisdiction. He then asked the FBI to investigate Lincoln. When FBI agent Nancy Houston, after two years of investigation, reported she found nothing on which Lincoln could be prosecuted, she was told to look again, and Lincoln was charged with the federal felony of "misstating" two digits in his social security number given to open a checking account at Wells Fargo Bank, under 42 USC § 408, based not on any document provided by Lincoln, but only on the basis of an entry in the bank's computer, made by some clerk. However, Lincoln and his lawyers were intimidated into making a plea agreement for no prison time but only resignation from the Bar.

Atwater's husband Michael Haas had obtained a burn permit to burn brush in his yard, but when he attempted to do so, a Lago Vista officer charged him with a violation of the ordinance, and when Haas offered to show his permit, the officer, according to Haas, assaulted Haas with no provocation, and arrested him for assaulting an officer. The Texas Medical Board then used this incident to remove his license to practice medicine and he lost his job at a major hospital in his county.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 532

External links

• Text of the opinion, findlaw.com
• Text of the dissenting opinion, findlaw.com
• Text of U.S.C.A. - Fifth Circuit: No. 98-50302, findlaw.com (initial ruling of 3-judge panel, reversed en banc)
• Text of U.S.C.A. - Fifth Circuit: No. 98-50302 (en banc decision, affirmed 5-4 by the Supreme Court) (pdf)
• Text of the opinion, LII, Cornell University
• OYEZ Project
• Amicus brief of Americans for Effective Law Enforcement
• Information about appliying Atwater in California, from the Alameda County District Attorney's office
• Amicus brief of the CATO Institute
• Amicus brief of the ACLU
• Amicus brief of the Solicitor General