Countywide : Ruling Reverses Cocaine Convictions

Police officers who stop a car solely to arrest someone on outstanding warrants may not require anyone else in the car to produce a driver’s license or other identification, the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Ventura has ruled.

The ruling reverses the convictions of Eddie Darcell Hinton and Baxter Winthrop Walton, who each spent a year in Ventura County Jail after pleading guilty to cocaine charges.

The appeals court ruling, issued Wednesday, gives this account:

The two men were arrested when Ventura police stopped Walton’s truck in August, 1988, to arrest a female passenger on outstanding warrants. All three occupants of the truck were asked for identification.

Police detained Walton after learning that his license entitled him to drive only a motorcycle and detained Hinton because he had no identification. Another arriving officer recognized Walton and knew that a condition of his probation in another case allowed police to search him and his vehicle.

While the search was being conducted, Walton and Hinton were placed in a police car, where their conversation was secretly recorded. The two men discussed the presence of drugs in their motel room, the ruling said, and police went there, found cocaine and drug paraphernalia and arrested the men.

In reversing the convictions, the appeals court ruled that under California law, police may not require anyone to produce a driver’s license except when they are enforcing the state vehicle code. In Hinton’s case, the court said, all evidence stemming from the illegal request for identification must be suppressed.

Walton’s case is more complex, the court said, because his probation conditions allowed him to be searched. The key issue, the court said, is whether the officer who recognized Walton as a probationer arrived within the reasonable period of time required to arrest the female passenger. Otherwise, the court said, Walton was being detained unlawfully and all evidence obtained as a result of the stop must be suppressed.

The court ordered Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch to hold a hearing on that question.