Cartwright

Analysis of contacts between police officers and passengers in motor vehicles has nettled California courts for some time. Some have held that passengers are not detained for Fourth Amendment purposes simply because they are present inside a car stopped for a traffic violation; others have reached the opposite conclusion. Even where courts have agreed on a result, they have differed over the reasoning that applies.

In this case, we try our hand at it with the guidance of United States Supreme Court precedent and conclude the typical traffic stop does not, by itself, constitute a Fourth Amendment seizure of the passenger. Rather, a passenger is seized only if the officer physically restrains him or her or initiates a show of authority to which a reasonable innocent person in the passenger’s position would feel compelled to submit, and to which the passenger actually does submit. No seizure of either sort occurred here until after the passenger volunteered she was in possession of methamphetamine, and we therefore affirm her conviction.

Officer Dean Michael of the Huntington Beach Police ran a check on the registration of a car in which Misty Anne Cartwright was a…