How Could Recent California Court Decision on Traffic Stops Influence Sentencing?

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, California recently ruled that a traffic stop does not constitute an arrest. This ruling is significant as it has implications when applying federal sentencing guidelines. Specifically, someone who has received citations during traffic stops in the past may face less personally injurious consequences if arrested for a separate offense, explains an attorney in California.
The Federal Sentencing Guidelines and Criminal History Points

Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which impose statutory minimum sentences on offenders in California and throughout the United States, criminal history points are assigned to defendants for convictions. The number of criminal history points assigned varies depending upon the penalties imposed upon the guilty individual, and defendants are assigned to one of six different criminal history categories based on the number of points they have. The category that a person is in will dictate what penalties he receives when he commits an illegal act covered by federal sentencing guidelines.

Traffic Stops and Criminal History Points

When Israel Leal-Felix, a Mexican citizen, was arrested for unlawful re-entry, the number of criminal history points he had came into question. Based on the number of points he was believed to have, Leal-Felix was assigned to Criminal History Category VI. Being in this category meant that Federal sentencing guidelines dictated a prison sentence lasting between 21-27 months.

Leal-Felix's category assignment stemmed, in part, from criminal history points earned as a result of two citations for driving with a suspended driver's license. The citations had been issued two days apart, but he was sentenced for both citations on the same day and served time in county jail for his offenses in a concurrent sentence.

Leal-Felix argued, however, that he had been incorrectly assigned too many criminal history points. Each of the traffic citations had been counted separately and he had been issued two points as a result, but he alleged that he should have received only one set of points based on the rule set forth in 4A1.2(a)(2). Leal-Felix believed that one set of points was appropriate because he was sentenced for the citations on the same day and because there was no intervening arrest to separate them.

The question thus hinged on whether the traffic citation was an arrest, in which case the citations would be considered two separate sentences with points assigned for each or not. The 7th Circuit District court disagreed with Leal-Felix and a three-judge panel affirmed the Seventh Circuits position that the traffic stop was an intervening arrest.

The 9th Circuit Ruling

According to The Recorder, the 9th Circuit reversed the decision of the 7th Circuit because it held that there was nothing to indicate that Leal-Felix had been "arrested" at the time when he received his traffic citation. The judges who declared that a traffic stop is not an arrest indicated that their decision was based on the fact that Leal-Felix was never told he was under arrest, as well as on the fact that a traffic stop does not fall within the common meaning of arrest. One judge also declared that no average person who was involved in a routine traffic stop would believe he had been arrested and used this argument as the basis for concurrence with the majority decision.

Another judge pointed out that college and job applicants who had received traffic tickets or been involved in traffic stops did not answer, "yes" to the question of whether they had ever been arrested.

The Implications

The implications of the decision reach beyond this particular case, in large part due to the nature of the federal sentencing guidelines and their assignment of criminal history points. Leal-Felix and others in similar positions will have a lower number of criminal history points based on multiple concurrent traffic citations and may thus face less personally injurious consequences, specifically lighter sentences.

Likewise, there are implications for candidates of Safety Valve, a provision that allows defendants to escape mandatory minimum drug sentences if they have no more than a single criminal history point. Defendants who receive two separate traffic citations with concurrent sentences will no longer be excluded from this program now that the Supreme Court has clarified this issue.