Chalking Tires--Illegal Search: In a ruling announced April 22, a unanimous Sixth Circuit panel held that parking enforcement officers in Saginaw, Michigan, are committing an unreasonable search on motorists by chalking tires on parked cars to enforce local parking laws. Kevin Koeniger of Courthouse News Service reports that the ruling came in a federal lawsuit brought against the city by a woman who had been cited for parking violations 15 times over a 3-year period. In many cities, parking officers patrolling a beat put chalk marks on tires of parked cars to determine if a car has stayed in the same spot beyond the legal time limit. A district judge dismissed the suit, finding that the chalking fell under a "community caretaker" function rather than a law enforcement function. The court of appeal rejected that holding, concluding that parking officers are enforcing the law and that the city is required to present evidence that chalking tires to enforce a parking law is related to public safety.
No More Fines for Poor Lawbreakers: A January appeals court decision, called a game-changer by defense attorneys, is rippling across California to eliminate fines for low-income criminal defendants. The unanimous Second District Court of Appeals ruling in People v. Duenas announced that state courts cannot impose fines for criminal offenses without considering a defendant's ability to pay. Megan Cassidy of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that, based upon that ruling, a Contra Costa County judge waived the fine for a DUI offender and defense attorneys are appealing cases involving low-income defendants who have been fined. The decision is part of a trend in California to eliminate fees, fines, and bail bonds for offenses in the name of "economic justice," because they disproportionately impact the poor and homeless. Working people and retirees who can pay, of course, will still have to. The California Supreme Court is currently considering a 2018 appeals court ruling which announced that judges must set bail based upon a defendant's ability to pay. The CJLF brief in that case is here.
Amended conclusion to the opinion:
Taking the allegations in Taylor’s complaint as true, we hold that chalking is a search
under the Fourth Amendment, specifically under the Supreme Court’s decision in Jones. This
does not mean, however, that chalking violates the Fourth Amendment. Rather, we hold, based
on the pleading stage of this litigation, that two exceptions to the warrant requirement—the
“community caretaking” exception and the motor-vehicle exception—do not apply here. Our
holding extends no further than this. When the record in this case moves beyond the pleadings
stage, the City is, of course, free to argue anew that one or both of those exceptions do apply, or
that some other exception to the warrant requirement might apply
The amended opinion is available here.