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Jan 9, 2024

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Case: Kansas v. Glover (2022) Issue: In the case of Kansas v. Glover (2022) the case is against my client who is the defendant in the matter Mr. Charles Glover Jr. The case of Kansas v. Glover (2020) revolves around the question of whether a police officer can stop a vehicle based solely on the registered owner's license status being suspended. I will argue that the stop was unlawful and Mr. Glover's Fourth Amendment rights were violated. The police officer that conducted the stop assumed that Mr. Glover was the owner and driver of the vehicle, and it was later confirmed that Mr. Glover indeed have a suspended license. Introduction: The case of Kansas v. Glover (2020) involved a traffic stop initiated by a State of Kansas police officer who ran a license plate check and discovered that the registered owner had a revoked license. Without investigating whether the driver was indeed the registered owner, the officer pulled Mr. Glover’s vehicle over and found Mr. Glover behind the wheel. He was subsequently arrested and later charged with driving with a revoked license. The case was brought to the Supreme Court, as Mr. Glover argued that the officer lacked reasonable suspicion to stop him without confirming his identity first. After the detention of Mr. Glover, had requested for evidence to be suppressed and the district court granted his request. This decision of the District Court was later overturned in the Court of Appeals “it was reasonable for [Deputy] Mehrer to infer that the driver was the owner of the vehicle” because “there were specific and articulable facts from which the officer’s

common-sense inference gave rise to a reasonable suspicion.” 54 Kan. App. 2d 377, 385, 400 P. 3d 182, 188 (2017).” (Kansas v. Glover 589 U.S., 2020). Later on the Kansas State Supreme Court reversed the judgement of the Court of Appeals as stated “According to the court, Deputy Mehrer did not have reasonable suspicion because his inference that Glover was behind the wheel amounted to “only a hunch” that Glover was engaging in criminal activity. 308 Kan. 590, 591, 422 P. 3d 64, 66 (2018). The court further explained that Deputy Mehrer’s “hunch” involved “applying and stacking unstated assumptions that are unreasonable without further factual basis,” namely, that “the registered owner was likely the primary driver of the vehicle” and that “the owner will likely disregard the suspension or revocation order and continue to drive.” Id., at 595–597, 422 P. 3d, at 68–70. We granted Kansas’ petition for a writ of certiorari, 587 U. S. ___ (2019), and now reverse.” (Kansas v. Glover 589 U.S., 2020) After this the case was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the court and Justices Roberts, C. J., and Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, JJ., concurred, and Justice Sotomayor was the dissenting opinion. The defense for Mr. Glover is that the stop and detention of Mr. Glover's vehicle violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The issue is whether the police officer had reasonable suspicion to believe that Mr. Glover was the registered owner of the vehicle and that he was driving with a suspended license. According to the law, a stop and detention must be justified by specific, articulable evidence that, when considered with logical deductions, supports the reasonableness of the suspicion. The forthcoming analysis will show that the police officer lacked reasonable suspicion and thus violated Mr. Glover's Fourth Amendment rights.

The outcome of the Kansas v. Glover case was not justified based on the evidence presented. The Supreme Court’s ruling only affects those individuals with warrants for their arrest, not every driver. Mr. Glover was stopped without probable cause, which violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, as there was no reasonable suspicion to believe he was the owner of the vehicle. The totality of the circumstances in this case does not show reasonable suspicion and the lower court's decision to suppress the evidence should be upheld. Rule: If a registered owner's name appears in a government database as having a suspended license, can a police officer stop a vehicle merely based on that information? That is the question at hand in Kansas v. Glover (2020). The defendant, Mr. Glover, argues that this violates his Fourth Amendment rights to prevent unreasonable searches and seizures. The Kansas Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Mr. Glover, but the Kansas Supreme Court reversed the decision, stating that the stop was justified because the officer had a common-sense suspicion that the driver was the registered owner with a suspended license. The issue is whether this suspicion was sufficient to justify the traffic stop. The "stop and frisk" theory was created by the Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio (1968), which permits police officers to temporarily detain and pat down someone if they have a good reason to believe they are engaged in illegal conduct. The Court has made it abundantly apparent that this is a low bar, and officers must have more than a hunch or an "immature and unparticularized suspicion or 'hunch'" to support a stop. When an officer has precise, articulable facts that, when considered with logical conclusions drawn from them, warrant the intrusion,

they are considered to be reasonable suspicion. Arvizu v. United States, 534 U.S. 266, 273 (2002). According to the Supreme Court, a traffic stop qualifies as a seizure under the Fourth Amendment and requires a valid reason. A two-part test for determining whether there is reasonable suspicion was established by the Court in United States v. Cortez (1981): "The police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion." Without having the proper justification to conduct the search is in fact the violation of Mr. Glover’s 4 th Amendment rights. In Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648 (1979), the Supreme Court addressed a related problem, holding that a police officer cannot arbitrarily stop a car without specific and articulable facts suggesting that the driver has broken a traffic statute or committed another crime. The Court ruled that to prevent the arbitrary or discriminatory use of that discretion, "the police's discretion in making traffic stops must be limited by clear and objective standards." The Supreme Court has ruled in numerous earlier decisions that a traffic stop justified by a hunch or a stereotype is inadmissible. Below are a handful of them: Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 124 (2000) (finding that "headlong flight" from police, without more, does not constitute reasonable suspicion); United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989) (holding that "an officer's reliance on a mere hunch is insufficient to justify a stop"). The significance of the issue in terms of Fourth Amendment rights and law enforcement practices is substantial. The Fourth Amendment guarantees that citizens have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. When law enforcement officers have reasonable

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