holding that “an officer making a traffic stop may order passengers to get out of the car pending completion of the stop,” because “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” and that “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”
How later courts described this case
- holding that “an officer making a traffic stop may order passengers to get out of the car pending completion of the stop,” because “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” and that “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”
- explaining that even where “no special dan- ger to the police is suggested by the evidence in th[e] record” certain situations are sufficiently volatile such that “[t]he risk of harm to both the police and the occupants is minimized if the officers routinely exercise unquestioned command of the situation”
- recognizing that “as a practical matter, the passengers are already stopped by virtue of the stop of the vehicle” and “[t]he 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”
- holding that “the rule of Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 98 S.Ct. 330, 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977) (per curiam), 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.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Reported overruled by Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332 (2009) — not on the Supreme Court's list
— U.S. -, 129 S.Ct. 1710, 173 L.Ed.2d 485 (2009), overruled Wilson
Declined to follow by Commonwealth v. Gonsalves, 46 Mass. App. Ct. 186 (1999)
Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. at 415.1 We reject the Commonwealth’s contention, because the law as developed under art. 14 of the Declaration of Rights of the Massachusetts Constitution does not follow the Mimms!
Distinguished
Distinguished by Welshman v. Commonwealth, 25 Va. App. 599 (1997)
We disagree with the Commonwealth’s contention that the intrusion on appellant’s liberty in the present case was commensurate with the de minimis, incremental intrusions at issue in Wilson and Summers.
The opinion
Justice Kennedy,
dissenting.
I join in the dissent by Justice Stevens and add these few observations.
The distinguishing feature of our criminal justice system is its insistence on principled, accountable decisionmaking in individual cases. If a person is to be seized, a satisfactory explanation for the invasive action ought to be established by an officer who exercises reasoned judgment under all the circumstances of the case. This principle can be accommodated even where officers must make immediate decisions to ensure their own safety.
Traffic stops, even for minor violations, can take upwards of 30 minutes. When an officer commands passengers innocent of any violation to leave the vehicle and stand by the side of the road in full view of the public, the seizure is serious, not trivial. As Justice Stevens concludes, the command to exit ought not to be given unless there are objective circumstances making it reasonable for the officer to issue the order. (We do not have before us the separate question whether passengers, who, after all, are in the car by choice, *423 can be ordered to remain there for a reasonable time while the police conduct their business.)
The requisite showing for commanding passengers to exit need be no more than the existence of any circumstance justifying the order -in the interests of the officer’s safety or to facilitate a lawful search or investigation. As we have acknowledged for decades, special latitude is given to the police in effecting searches and seizures involving vehicles and their occupants. See, e. g., Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42 (1970); New York v. Class, 475 U. S. 106 (1986); New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454 (1981). Just last Term we adhered to a rule permitting vehicle stops if there is some objective indication thát a violation has been committed, regardless of the officer’s real motives. See Whren v. United States, 517 U. S. 806 (1996). We could discern no other, workable rule. Even so, we insisted on a reasoned explanation for the stop.
The practical effect of our holding in Whren , of course, is to allow the police to stop vehicles in almost countless circumstances. When Whren is coupled with today’s holding, the Court puts tens of millions of passengers at risk of arbitrary control by the police. If the command to exit were to become commonplace, the Constitution would be diminished in a most public way. As the standards suggested in dissent are adequate to protect the safety of the police, we ought not to suffer so great a loss.
Since a myriad of circumstances will give a cautious officer reasonable grounds for commanding passengers to leave the vehicle, it might be thought the rule the Court adopts today will be little different in its operation than the rule offered in dissent. It does no disservice to police officers, however, to insist upon exercise of reasoned judgment. Adherence to neutral principles is the very premise of the rule of law the police themselves defend with such courage and dedication.
Most officers, it might be said, will exercise their new power with discretion and restraint; and no doubt this often *424 will be the case. It might also be said that if some jurisdictions use today’s ruling to require passengers to exit as a matter of routine in every stop, citizen complaints and political intervention will call for an end to the practice. These arguments, however, would miss the point. Liberty comes not from officials by grace but from the Constitution by right.
For these reasons, and with all respect for the opinion of the Court, I dissent.