Texas Appeals Court Upholds License Scanners for Traffic Stops
Police in Texas have the right to stop motorists if a license plate recognition camera system suspects the vehicle’s owner lacks automobile insurance. In an unpublished ruling last Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the Texas Court of Appeals refused the attempt by Kenneth Ray Short to have a March 2010 traffic stop declared illegal.
Short appealed, citing an appellate decision last year that found a traffic stop could not be based on a report that insurance information for a vehicle was unavailable. The three-judge panel disagreed with Short because the information returned was far more complete and Officer McGrew testified that he believed the system was “very accurate.”
“It is our opinion that the trial court could reasonably conclude that a reasonably objective officer could form a reasonable suspicion based on the evidence provided from the database inquiry in this case, and from that information, the officer could have formed a reasonable belief that the car Short was driving was not covered by an insurance policy,” Justice Hollis Horton wrote. “Because the trial court, on the facts before it, could reasonably choose to believe Officer McGrew’s testimony and decide to deny Short’s motion to suppress evidence, we overrule Short’s sole issue on appeal.”
Short was convicted of possessing less than three ounces of marijuana. The Texas Department of Insurance set up the TexasSure Vehicle Insurance Verification database in June 2008. Companies like InsureNet had hired lobbyists hoping to convince the legislature to use a version of the database to issue automated uninsured motorist tickets, generating millions in revenue.
A copy of the unpublished decision is available in a 115k PDF file at the source link below.
Source:
Short v. Texas (Court of Appeals, State of Texas, 8/10/2011)
[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]
More by The Newspaper
Comments
Join the conversation
Now that I've read the ruling, I have to yet again question the accuracy of The Newspaper's work. Contrary to what the headline says, the issue in the case was not about electronic scanners. The issue was one of whether a stop was permitted when a database comes back with inconclusive, as opposed to definitive, results. In this case, a database check stated that the insurance status of the vehicle was "unconfirmed." The issue here was one of whether an "unconfirmed" finding from a database was a strong enough result in order to justify a stop, which would then allow further investigation. Apparently, it is.
I did a "ride-along" with a city police officer a few years back. His right hand almost never left the computer, keying in license numbers almost the whole shift. He caught a few expired plates but didn't want to disrupt traffic to swing around and stop the offender. He did, however, make a mental note of the vehicle and the neighborhood it was coming out of...