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Subject: 95-1268.ZO Opinion
Date: 19 Feb 1997 16:59:59 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
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NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
preliminary print of the United States Reports.  Readers are requested to
notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash-
ington, D.C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that
corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
--------
No. 95-1268
--------
MARYLAND, PETITIONER v. JERRY LEE WILSON
on writ of certiorari to the court of special
appeals of maryland
[February 19, 1997]

  Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the
Court.
  In this case we consider whether the rule of Pennsyl-
vania v. Mimms, 434 U. S. 106 (1977), that a police
officer may as a matter of course order the driver of a
lawfully stopped car to exit his vehicle, extends to
passengers as well.  We hold that it does.
  At about 7:30 p.m. on a June evening, Maryland state
trooper David Hughes observed a passenger car driving
southbound on I-95 in Baltimore County at a speed of
64 miles per hour.  The posted speed limit was 55 miles
per hour, and the car had no regular license tag; there
was a torn piece of paper reading -Enterprise Rent-A-
Car- dangling from its rear.  Hughes activated his lights
and sirens, signaling the car to pull over, but it contin-
ued driving for another mile and a half until it finally
did so.
  During the pursuit, Hughes noticed that there were
three occupants in the car and that the two passengers
turned to look at him several times, repeatedly ducking
below sight level and then reappearing.  As Hughes
approached the car on foot, the driver alighted and met
him halfway.  The driver was trembling and appeared
extremely nervous, but nonetheless produced a valid
Connecticut driver's license.  Hughes instructed him to
return to the car and retrieve the rental documents, and
he complied.  During this encounter, Hughes noticed
that the front-seat passenger, respondent Jerry Lee
Wilson, was sweating and also appeared extremely
nervous.  While the driver was sitting in the driver's
seat looking for the rental papers, Hughes ordered
Wilson out of the car.
  When Wilson exited the car, a quantity of crack
cocaine fell to the ground.  Wilson was then arrested
and charged with possession of cocaine with intent to
distribute.  Before trial, Wilson moved to suppress the
evidence, arguing that Hughes' ordering him out of the
car constituted an unreasonable seizure under the
Fourth Amendment.  The Circuit Court for Baltimore
County agreed, and granted respondent's motion to
suppress.  On appeal, the Court of Special Appeals of
Maryland affirmed, 106 Md. App. 24, 664 A. 2d 1 (1995),
ruling that Pennsylvania v. Mimms does not apply to
passengers.  The Court of Appeals of Maryland denied
certiorari.  340 Md. 502, 667 A. 2d 342 (1995).  We
granted certiorari, 518 U. S. ___ (1996), and now
reverse.
  In Mimms, we considered a traffic stop much like the
one before us today.  There, Mimms had been stopped
for driving with an expired license plate, and the officer
asked him to step out of his car.  When Mimms did so,
the officer noticed a bulge in his jacket that proved to
be a .38-caliber revolver, whereupon Mimms was
arrested for carrying a concealed deadly weapon. 
Mimms, like Wilson, urged the suppression of the
evidence on the ground that the officer's ordering him
out of the car was an unreasonable seizure, and the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court, like the Court of Special
Appeals of Maryland, agreed.
  We reversed, explaining that -[t]he touchstone of our
analysis under the Fourth Amendment is always `the
reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular
governmental invasion of a citizen's personal security,'-
434 U. S., at 108-109 (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S.
1, 19 (1968)), and that reasonableness -depends `on a
balance between the public interest and the individual's
right to personal security free from arbitrary interfer-
ence by law officers,'- id., at 109 (quoting United States
v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873, 878 (1975)).  On the
public interest side of the balance, we noted that the
State -freely concede[d]- that there had been nothing
unusual or suspicious to justify ordering Mimms out of
the car, but that it was the officer's -practice to order
all drivers [stopped in traffic stops] out of their vehicles
as a matter of course- as a -precautionary measure- to
protect the officer's safety.  Id., at 109-110.  We thought
it -too plain for argument- that this justification-officer
safety-was -both legitimate and weighty.-  Id., at 110. 
In addition, we observed that the danger to the officer
of standing by the driver's door and in the path of
oncoming traffic might also be -appreciable.-  Id., at 111.
  On the other side of the balance, we considered the
intrusion into the driver's liberty occasioned by the
officer's ordering him out of the car.  Noting that the
driver's car was already validly stopped for a traffic
infraction, we deemed the additional intrusion of asking
him to step outside his car -de minimis.-  Ibid.  Accord-
ingly, we concluded that -once a motor vehicle has been
lawfully detained for a traffic violation, the police
officers may order the driver to get out of the vehicle
without violating the Fourth Amendment's proscription
of unreasonable seizures.-  Id., at 111, n. 6.
  Respondent urges, and the lower courts agreed, that
this per se rule does not apply to Wilson because he was
a passenger, not the driver.  Maryland, in turn, argues
that we have already implicitly decided this question by
our statement in Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032
(1983), that -[i]n [Mimms], we held that police may
order persons out of an automobile during a stop for a
traffic violation,- id., at 1047-1048 (emphasis added),
and by Justice Powell's statement in Rakas v. Illinois,
439 U. S. 128 (1978), that -this Court determined in
[Mimms] that passengers in automobiles have no Fourth
Amendment right not to be ordered from their vehicle,
once a proper stop is made,- id., at 155, n. 4 (Powell, J.,
joined by Burger, C. J., concurring) (emphasis added). 
We agree with respondent that the former statement
was dictum, and the latter was contained in a concur-
rence, so that neither constitutes binding precedent.  
  We must therefore now decide whether the rule of
Mimms applies to passengers as well as to drivers.  On
the public interest side of the balance, the same weighty
interest in officer safety is present regardless of whether
the occupant of the stopped car is a driver or passenger. 
Regrettably, traffic stops may be dangerous encounters. 
In 1994 alone, there were 5,762 officer assaults and 11
officers killed during traffic pursuits and stops.  Federal
Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports: Law
Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted 71, 33 (1994). 
In the case of passengers, the danger of the officer's
standing in the path of oncoming traffic would not be
present except in the case of a passenger in the left rear
seat, but the fact that there is more than one occupant
of the vehicle increases the possible sources of harm to
the officer.  
  On the personal liberty side of the balance, the case
for the passengers is in one sense stronger than that for
the driver.  There is probable cause to believe that the
driver has committed a minor vehicular offense, but
there is no such reason to stop or detain the passengers. 
But as a practical matter, the passengers are already
stopped by virtue of the stop of the vehicle.  The only
change in their circumstances which will result from
ordering them out of the car is that they will be outside
of, rather than inside of, the stopped car.  Outside the
car, the passengers will be denied access to any possible
weapon that might be concealed in the interior of the
passenger compartment.  It would seem that the
possibility of a violent encounter stems not from the
ordinary reaction of a motorist stopped for a speeding
violation, but from the fact that evidence of a more
serious crime might be uncovered during the stop.  And
the motivation of a passenger to employ violence to
prevent apprehension of such a crime is every bit as
great as that of the driver.  
  We think that our opinion in Michigan v. Summers,
452 U. S. 692 (1981), offers guidance by analogy here. 
There the police had obtained a search warrant for
contraband thought to be located in a residence, but
when they arrived to execute the warrant they found
Summers coming down the front steps.  The question in
the case depended -upon a determination whether the
officers had the authority to require him to re-enter the
house and to remain there while they conducted their
search.-  Id., at 695.  In holding as it did, the Court
said:
-Although no special danger to the police is suggested
by the evidence in this record, the execution of a
warrant to search for narcotics is the kind of trans-
action that may give rise to sudden violence or fran-
tic efforts to conceal or destroy evidence.  The risk
of harm to both the police and the occupants is
minimized if the officers routinely exercise unques-
tioned command of the situation.-  Id., at 702-703
(footnote omitted).
  In summary, danger to an officer from a traffic stop is
likely to be greater when there are passengers in
addition to the driver in the stopped car.  While there
is not the same basis for ordering the passengers out of
the car as there is for ordering the driver out, the
additional intrusion on the passenger is minimal.  We
therefore hold that an officer making a traffic stop may
order passengers to get out of the car pending comple-
tion of the stop.  
  The judgment of the Court of Special Appeals of Mary-
land is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceed-
ings not inconsistent with this opinion.
                                      It is so ordered.