By PETE YOST
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON- Supreme Court nominee John Roberts sided with police but was on the losing end of an appeals court decision on whether officers were within their authority to search the trunk of a suspect’s car.
Roberts dissented in a 2-1 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, reversing a man’s conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm.
The decision was released by the court Friday, even as Roberts was touring Senate in a political candidate-like search for confirmation votes.
Roberts said in his minority opinion that U.S. Park Police were justified in searching the trunk of a car and seizing a .25-caliber pistol found there after the officers performed a records check and discovered the vehicle’s temporary license tags were stolen in Fairfax County, Va. They had pulled over the car because the tag light on the license plate wasn’t functioning.
“Stolen tags often accompany stolen cars,” Roberts wrote.
The officers also found that Tarry M. Jackson was driving the car despite suspended driving privileges and that the car was not currently registered in Virginia, information the officers uncovered before they searched the trunk. Jackson later explained to the officers that the car belonged to his girlfriend.
Jackson entered a conditional guilty plea to unlawful possession of a gun, preserving his right to appeal a federal judge’s refusal to suppress the evidence found in the search. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison.
“My colleagues seem to believe that the inconclusive records check somehow dissipated any suspicion that the car was stolen,” Roberts wrote. “To the officers on the scene, however, the failure of the records check to resolve ownership of the vehicle was unusual.
“Given the ample grounds to suspect the car was stolen, the officers certainly had a reasonable basis for supposing that the trunk would contain other items that might have confirmed their suspicion _ such as identification or belongings of the real owner _ or items that helped connect Jackson to stealing it.”
Appeals Judge Judith Rogers criticized Roberts’ reasoning in the case.
Roberts “conveniently ignores that nothing in the record indicates that, at the time the officers searched the car, the driver, who was secured inside the cruiser in handcuffs, had reason to believe that he was suspected of being an unauthorized user of the car.”
The officers, Rogers said, could have questioned the driver about the ownership of the car and how he came to be driving it.
“Then based on his answers and demeanor they may have been able to establish probable cause to believe contraband or evidence of a crime was in the trunk,” Rogers wrote.
The majority decision said that stolen tags on a car “are an end in and of themselves, and they do not point to related contraband that may be present in the trunk.”
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The case is United States v. Tarry M. Jackson. The ruling is available at:
http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200507/04-30 1a. pdf