People v. Class 63 N.Y.2d 491

OPINION OF THE COURT

Kaye, J.

A police officer’s nonconsensual entry into an individual’s automobile to determine the vehicle identification number violates the Federal and State Constitutions where it is based solely on a stop for a traffic infraction (US Const, 4th Arndt; NY Const, art I, § 12).

On May 11, 1981, in the late afternoon, Police Officers Lawrence Meyer and William McNamee observed defendant driving 5 to 10 miles per hour above the speed limit, in a car with the windshield cracked on the passenger side. The officers drove alongside defendant’s car and instructed him to pull over. Defendant followed this directive, emerged from his car and approached Officer Meyer, the driver of the police car. He provided Meyer with his registration and proof of insurance but stated that he did not have a driver’s license in his possession. Meanwhile, Officer McNamee had gone directly to defendant’s car, opened the door and checked the left door jamb for the vehicle identification number (VIN). Since the VIN was not located on the door jamb, McNamee reached in and moved papers on the dashboard to enable him to view the VIN. In doing so, he saw a handle of a gun protruding from underneath the seat, seized it, and defendant was promptly arrested.

*494The hearing court denied defendant’s motion to suppress the gun. Although the court concluded that the officers had “no reason to believe the vehicle * * * was stolen” when defendant was stopped, it found their action reasonable in light of defendant’s “immediately exiting the car and walking over to the police car, instead of waiting in his automobile, coupled with the fact that the defendant did not have a driver’s license in his possession”. Defendant then pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree and was sentenced to five years’ probation. On appeal to the Appellate Division, the four-Justice majority affirmed, without opinion. The dissenting Justice found the search impermissible because “there was absolutely no predicate for believing the car was stolen.” (97 AD2d, at p 742.)

VIN inspections typically involve opening a car door to locate the VIN on the doorpost, opening the hood to locate the VIN on the engine, or looking for the hidden VIN in obscure parts of an automobile. While this court has not previously considered the legality of such inspections conducted without consent, lower courts in this State, as well as courts in other jurisdictions, have approached the question from divergent perspectives. Initially, courts are divided on the threshold issue of whether a VIN inspection constitutes a search.1 On the facts presented by this appeal, we conclude that a search was conducted.

The Fourth Amendment “protects people from unreasonable government intrusions into their legitimate expectations of privacy” (United States v Chadwick, 433 US 1, 7; see, also, Katz v United States, 389 US 347; People v Perel, 34 NY2d 462, 466). One has no legitimate expectation of privacy in locations in a car which are observable by passersby. Accordingly, an officer’s simply peering inside an automobile does not constitute a search and the Fourth *495Amendment consequently does not limit this activity (Texas v Brown, 460 US 730; People v Cruz, 34 NY2d 362, 370). But there are many places inside a car — including the area underneath the seats — which cannot be viewed from the outside and which an individual legitimately expects will remain private. The government intrusion here, Officer McNamee’s opening the door and reaching inside, was undertaken to obtain information and it exposed these hidden areas. It therefore constituted a search (cf. United States v Place, 462 US 696; People v Miller, 43 NY2d 789, affg 52 AD2d 425, 428; People v Sullivan, 29 NY2d 69).2

The absence of any legitimate expectation of privacy in the VIN itself is not determinative of the issue presented. The fact that certain information must be kept, or that it may be of a public nature, does not automatically sanction police intrusion into private space in order to obtain it. In particular, the existence of a VIN on every automobile cannot enable police, without any basis, to make “wholesale entries of cars on nothing more than a hope that one of them might turn out to be stolen.” (1 LaFave, Search and Seizure, § 2.5, p 360.)3

A VIN inspection normally involves a lesser invasion of privacy than a full-blown search because of the fixed, known and readily accessible location of the VIN on the automobile. Additionally, there is a compelling police interest, in situations such as automobile thefts and accidents, in the positive identification of vehicles. Consequently, it may well be that some lesser justification than probable cause would be appropriate. However, it is unnecessary in this case to determine whether probable cause or a lesser justification should have been required to support the search, because here there was no semblance of either. The trial court based its apparent finding of reasonable suspicion to believe the car was stolen on two factors: *496defendant’s exiting the vehicle and approaching the officers, and his failure to produce a driver’s license. But a driver’s emergence from a car upon being stopped by police is not indicative of criminal activity. Nor was reliance properly placed by the court on defendant’s failure to produce a license because McNamee, having proceeded directly to defendant’s car, was not even aware of that fact when he entered the automobile. Since competing inferences cannot reasonably be drawn from the undisputed facts presented, the hearing court erred as a matter of law in finding reasonable suspicion to believe the car was stolen (see People v Harrison, 57 NY2d 470, 477). The facts reveal no reason for the officer to suspect other criminal activity or to act to protect his own safety (compare People v David L., 56 NY2d 698, cert den 459 US 866). The sole predicate for the officer’s action here was defendant’s commission of an ordinary traffic infraction, an offense which, standing alone, did not justify the search (cf. People v Marsh, 20 NY2d 98).

Some lower court cases in New York have interpreted subdivision 4 of section 401 of the Vehicle and Traffic Law as authorizing VIN inspections (see, e.g., People v Gohn, 49 AD2d 585; People v Frank, 61 Misc 2d 450; People v Goldstein, 60 Misc 2d 745). That section provides, in pertinent part: “Carrying certificate of registration. Every person operating a motor vehicle or a motor vehicle and a trailer, registered or transferred in accordance with any of the provisions of this chapter, shall upon demand of any magistrate, motor vehicle inspector, peace officer, acting pursuant to his special duties, or police officer produce for inspection the certificate of registration or the registration renewal stub for such vehicle and shall furnish to such magistrate, inspector, officer or police officer any information necessary for the identification of such vehicle and its owner, and all information required concerning his license to operate, if he is required by law to have such a license, and shall, if required, sign his name in the presence of such magistrate, inspector, peace officer or police officer as a further means of identification.”

In section 401, however, the Legislature has seen fit only to authorize an officer to demand information necessary to identify the car, as he may demand the certificate of *497registration for the vehicle.4 No basis has been shown for ignoring this legislative direction. Here, had the officer complied with the statute and demanded exhibition of the VIN, defendant could have avoided the intrusion on his privacy interests by simply moving the papers on the dashboard, thereby facilitating the Officer’s observation of the VIN through the windshield. Section 401, therefore, provided no justification for the officer’s entry of defendant’s car.

Accordingly, the order should be reversed, the motion to suppress granted, the conviction vacated and the indictment dismissed.

Jones, J.

(dissenting). I would affirm the order of the Appellate Division which upheld Criminal Term’s denial of defendant’s motion to suppress the .22 calibre revolver. I do not differ with the majority’s recital of the facts; I do depart, however, from the legal conclusion that it reaches.

It is undisputed that the police were warranted in stopping defendant’s 1972 Dodge Charger. They had observed that it was traveling in excess of the speed limit and that it had a cracked windshield. In this circumstance they were justified not only in stopping the vehicle but thereafter in obtaining its vehicle identification number (VIN).

The requirement that each motor vehicle be assigned a VIN is for the purpose of facilitating rapid, positive identification of each particular motor vehicle. The VIN is functional only when affixed to the particular vehicle and comes into the owner’s possession solely by reason of such affixation. The letters and digits constituting the VIN (as distinguished from the tab on which they may be imprinted) have no independent existence and are not susceptible of being possessed by the owner separate and apart from his possession of the vehicle or of being independently “seized” by the police.

The Supreme Court of the United States and our court have recognized that the owner of a motor vehicle has only a diminished expectation of privacy with respect to the *498contents of an automobile that is being operated on the highway (United States v Chadwick, 433 US 1, 11-13; People v Belton, 55 NY2d 49, 53). With respect to a VIN affixed to a motor vehicle, however, once the vehicle is on the highway the owner can have no expectation of privacy.1 The purpose of the VIN is to proclaim the identity of the vehicle, a purpose quite inconsistent with any legitimate privacy interest of the owner.

The police on the other hand have a compelling interest, usually in the identification of a particular motor vehicle, but always in the ready availability of a near-infallible method of vehicular identification. Positive identification of a motor vehicle may be sought by them for a variety of regulatory and administrative objectives as, for example, to establish correlation with a registration certificate produced by the driver, to make positive identification of a vehicle involved in an accident, or to determine whether the vehicle has been stolen. Its identification may also be sought, of course, for purposes of recovery of a vehicle previously known to have been stolen, but in many instances when inspection of the VIN is made the police have no intimation of actual preexistent criminal activity. Familiar concepts with respect to the necessity for probable cause to justify a search for or seizure of criminal evidence or contraband would be applicable to VIN inspection only if the objective of the police action was search for proof with respect to known or suspected preexisting criminal activity. These concepts are immaterial and have no application where, as here, there is no evidence that such was the purpose of police inspection of the VIN, the objective of which was identification of the vehicle only, with no thought of connection with known or suspected previous criminal activity. The purpose of the police was to obtain information, not to seize physical evidence.2

*499In sum, except possibly in exceptional circumstances, I would hold that whenever the police are justified in making a traffic stop (cf. People v Ingle, 36 NY2d 413) they are authorized to inspect the VIN.

After the concededly permissible traffic stop in this instance Officer McNamee opened the driver’s door of the vehicle in expectation of finding the VIN on the inside panel of the door. Not finding it there he went directly to the other location where to his knowledge the VIN would be found — on top of the dashboard on the driver’s side. When he observed that view of the VIN in that location was obscured by some papers, he reached inside the vehicle and moved them aside to view the VIN. That he did not first request defendant to remove the papers or seek his consent to do so is immaterial; such consent could not permissibly have been withheld. The officer was not searching for or intending to seize any physical evidence on the ground that he had probable cause to believe that a crime had been committed; he was seeking information relevant and appropriate to the traffic stop which all concede he had been authorized to make.

The right of the police to inspect the VIN affixed to a motor vehicle is to be distinguished from the right of the police to search for or to seize a vehicular registration certificate. Registration of a motor vehicle, with the related license plates, in contrast to a VIN, serves to describe a vehicle and identify its owner and constitutes proof that *500the vehicle has been properly licensed for operation on the highway for a specified period of time, customarily one year. In the course of its life a motor vehicle may be, and customarily is, the subject of several different registration certificates, reflecting different periods of licensing and usually successive ownership. A registration certificate may be independently possessed by its owner, on his person, in the glove compartment of the vehicle, or otherwise. Without probable cause the police would have no right to search the person of the driver of the interior of the vehicle to obtain a registration certificate. Penalties might attach to the failure of the driver to produce the registration certificate, but that fact would not enlarge the right of the police to search. The VIN, however, is intended to be indelibly affixed to the particular vehicle throughout its existence, irrespective of changing ownership of the vehicle and whether or not it is licensed for operation on the highway. As its name states, its purpose is vehicle registration without reference to ownership or licensure for operation.3

Inasmuch as in this instance the police had the right to inspect the VIN of the 1972 Dodge4 and the revolver was observed inadvertently and without intention to search for it, under the plain view doctrine it should not be suppressed (see Texas v Brown, 460 US 730).

Chief Judge Cooke and Judges Wachtler, Meyer and Simons concur with Judge Kaye; Judge Jones dissents and votes to affirm in a separate opinion in which Judge Jasen concurs.

Order reversed, etc.