airfreshener2If you have a tree air freshener – or anything else – hanging from the rear-view mirror of your car, police in Virginia can pull you over.
For more than 25 years, Virginia law has prohibited drivers from hanging objects from the rear-view mirror “in such a manner as to obstruct the driver’s clear view of the highway.” Many law enforcement agencies ignore such a minor infraction. But some police officers have used this law as a means to stop drivers they want to investigate for other reasons.
Virginia’s criminal defense lawyers have repeatedly challenged this police practice. Some have questioned whether an object hanging from the rear-view mirror provides police with enough of a reason to make a traffic stop – particularly when the officer cannot say whether the object actually obstructs the driver’s view.
This week the Supreme Court of Virginia finally answered that question: yes, police can pull you over simply for having an object hanging from your rear-view mirror. It does not matter whether the object obstructs your view of the highway. Nor does it matter if the officer, after pulling you over, investigates whether the object obstructed your view. What matters is whether the dangling object “was sufficiently prominent to attract the officer’s attention during the brief moments that it passed through his field of view.”
According to Virginia’s highest court, so long as the officer has a reasonable, articulable suspicion that a dangling object “could” obstruct the driver’s view of the highway, the traffic stop is legal.
In the case decided by the Supreme Court of Virginia this week, Mason v. Commonwealth, an officer in Sussex County stopped Tony Jarrett on a highway in Waverly, Va. Jarrett was not speeding. The officer identified just one traffic infraction that caught his eye: the 3-inch by 5-inch parking pass that hung on Jarrett’s rear-view mirror.
After the stop, the officer did not check to see whether the parking pass obstructed Jarrett’s view of the highway. In court, the officer testified that the pass “could” have obstructed Jarrett’s view.
The traffic stop revealed that Loren Mason, a front-seat passenger in Jarrett’s car, was in possession of marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine and more than $3,000 in cash. Mason was convicted of three drug felonies and sentenced to a year and seven months in prison. He appealed to the Virginia Court of Appeals, which initially reversed his conviction based on the traffic stop. That court later reversed itself, 6–5. The Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision means Mason’s convictions will stand.
Still have that air freshener, fuzzy dice or graduation tassel hanging from your rear-view mirror?