I am dealing with a case that deals with an obscured license plate creating probable cause to conduct a traffic stop. This is one of those cases that drives me nuts, because it involves a law that a good chunk of the population violates without even realizing it.
In Texas, you cannot have a license plate frame that covers one-half or more of the name of the state. That means that some of those license plate frames you get from a dealer, or that you buy as–let’s say–a statement of your Marine Corps pride, can subject you to getting pulled over whenever a law enforcement officer feels like enforcing the law. Or when he’s “mistaken” about reality. Usually he (or she) will do this when he thinks you’ve been up to something hinky. Like trafficking in narcotics or driving while intoxicated; he might not have probable cause to pull you over for the actual thing he’s looking for, but he can get you pulled over for the frame. And then he can get into your car.
For reference, the Texas statute that covers license plate frames is Tex. Transp. Code § 504.945 (don’t get too used to that particular statute, because this law has bounced around the books a lot over the past decade). It states that a person commits an offense if the person attaches or displays a license plate that has a covering that alters or obscures one-half or more of the name of the state in which the vehicle is registered. This is a convoluted way of saying: that license plate frame can’t cover half or more of the name of the state.
That would be all well and good if we had judges that sided with reality more than some desire to put people in jail. Because this “one-half or more” language has been interpreted as, literally, “pretty durn near close to halfway,” by at least one judge in Texas, with a federal court of appeals determining that his decision was fair. In United States v. Montes-Hernandez, 350 Fed. Appx. 862 (5th Cir. 2009), the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a conviction for a defendant who challenged the probable cause for his stop by pointing out that the name of his state, Chihuahua, was spelled out in letters approximately 1.7 to 1.9 centimeters tall, and that 1 centimeter of the name was visible. In other words, the frame did not obscure one-half or more of the name of the state. No probable cause, then, right?
Wrong.
The District Judge in the case looked at it, and said that the letters were “pretty durn close to halfway” obstructed and that what was visible “could be different while the car was driving down the interstate.” The District Court then went on to say that the officer, while they’re driving down the road at 50 to 80 miles per hour, might have had the reasonable belief that one-half or more of the name Chihuahua was covered. And thus, even a mistaken reasonable belief is okay.
The Fifth Circuit found nothing wrong with this analysis. Sure, it put a lot more analysis into it, but at the end of the day, it just creates more cynicism about the legal system that judges will do everything they can to convict people, even if that means they allow law enforcement officers to run roughshod over reality.
