Steve Palmer: All right, here we are. Lawyer Talk, off The Record, on the air. Questions and Answers galore. If you've got a, uh, question, it's really easy. Ship it to me@LawyerTalkPodcast.com or check us out in the socials. You can give us a comment. I'll try to get to it. Believe, uh, it or not, we do have TikTok. So I'm an old bird with TikTok. Uh, so check us out. All the videos are streaming or posted or playing in, uh, all the ordinary places. You can find them on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, etc. Or just do it the easy way, like an old, uh, like the old school guy, like me. Go toLawyer Talk podcast.com, where you can check out all former episodes, even going way, way back, years ago. So the Q and A series is just that. We are taking questions, and I am providing Answers the best I can. This is not legal advice, folks. I'm just giving you Answers, giving you comments, giving you my thoughts on different scenarios that people ask about. Some of them hit home in my criminal defense practice right here in Columbus, Ohio. This one is one of those. It's from William in Minnesota. Uh, hey, Steve, Love your show. Thank you. Uh, I have a question about what the police can do after they stop my car. Uh, can they force me to get out of the car even if it's just a traffic ticket? Does it matter if it's a DUI or something else? Something worse? This is a great question. I get this all the Time, and I hear this screwed up all the Time on the bar stool. Uh, I don't go to bars anymore. But you get what I mean. People debate this. People talk about this. People. Uh, in DUIs, for instance, there's always this lore that you should just crack your window a little bit and stick your driver's license out. Uh, there's no quicker way to get arrested for dui. By the way, if, um, you're doing that, what are the police going to think? They're, uh, going to think that you're hiding your guilt because you are. Uh, so, you know, there's all sorts of, uh, misinformation out there. This is one of those things. So this is what we call in law a, uh, MIMS order. What the heck's a MIMS order? There was a case back in 1977 called Pennsylvania vs. Mims. Um, and here's. Here's basically what it says. The police can order somebody out even after a routine traffic ticket, uh, for their own safety. So, look, going Back. There's a case, ah, called Terry versus Ohio. Uh, by the way, Ohio makes it big all the Time with constitutional law. We have had, uh, plenty of U.S. supreme Court cases that started in Ohio. Terry is one of them. And a Terry stop is where the police have to have reasonable suspicion to stop somebody on the street and pat them down and talk to them about criminal, uh, activity that might be afoot. What is reasonable suspicion? I don't know. Take your best guess. It means something more than regular suspicion and maybe less than full blown probable cause. It's all this sliding scale lawyer nonsense. But, uh, these terms are just designed to give lawyers a way to describe stuff. But anyway, the Terry stop has been applied, I think, in a case called Delaware vs. Prowse to a police stop. So a police stop of motor vehicles is a significant intrusion which requires justification under the Fourth Amendment. What's that mean? It means the police can't just stop you willy nilly for no reason. Uh, so once they've got you stopped, Pennsylvania versus Minns comes along and says, look, uh, the police are allowed for officer safety to order the driver and later on, uh, the, uh, occupants. There was another case that came later and the name's escaping me. I'll think of it. Um, even the passengers can be ordered out, uh, of the car for officer safety and briefly detained. Detained is another one of those nonsense words that we like to use in the law to mean like not quite arrested, not quite stopped, but detained, uh, while they investigate. Uh, it doesn't mean they can have their way with you, though. Once they order you out, they can't just rummage, uh, through your car unless there's some, uh, reason to do it. If they see something in plain view, they can't open closed containers in your car without probable cause. Now, there is something called the automobile exception, which I'll get into in another question. If somebody asks it, um, but the short answer is yes, they can order you out. Now why does this matter? Because we've seen all this stuff in the last four or five years, and I'm not going to get political about it, but, uh, I see these people pulled over and for one reason or another, they get police defiant. They say, I'm not getting out of your car. Why are you telling me I got to get out of the car? Um, you know, I'm not doing it. Uh, you don't have any authority. Who's your supervisor, what's your badge number, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, look, some of this may have some merit. Some of it doesn't. I can tell you the quickest way to get arrested is to act like that with a copy. And what I always tell people, I can help you later. If the police do something they shouldn't do. I can help you get out of the trouble. I can't help you on the scene. They have the gun, they have the badge, they have the authority and you don't. Um, and it might not be right, but our system doesn't let us use self help to redress that. If a police gives you an order, you should probably follow it. And if the order is lawful, like get out of the car, sir, you should follow it. Now, again, it doesn't mean they can have their way and just arrest you and do whatever they want after that. But you have to get out of the car. Uh, and if you don't, you're going to be failing to obey a lawful police order and you're probably going to get arrested and things are going to get ugly. Uh, now does it matter if it's a dui? No, it doesn't. Although often in DUI cases, police, uh, order somebody out of the car. What happens is they come to the window, they detect an odor of alcoholic beverage on or about their breath or person. Uh, they ask the person, have you been drinking tonight? Say the person says, yes, I had the, uh, obligatory one or two beers. And the officer says, get out of the car. Uh, you have to comply. And then the officer asks you to do something like field sobriety test. That's a whole different standard. You can say no to that. Uh, but it is true that they have to have some reasonable suspicion to ask you to do field sobriety tests, at least here in Ohio. So I guess this is if we're going to ever satisfy, if we're ever going to settle rather the barstool debate. Do you have to get out of the car when the police order you get out of the car? Take a look at Pennsylvania vs. Mims. I'll give you the site just for giggles here. Uh, the case was back in 1977. You can find it at 43 U.S. 106. That's legal citation mumbo jumbo. But you can just google it too and you'll see Pennsylvania versus Mims. I would bet that you would even see, uh, a, uh, Wikipedia article or a bunch of Google summaries on it. And basically Mims, I think, was pulled over for having, um, an expired tag and the police said they could order them out. So, uh, that's the answer to the question I appreciate it. They keep coming day in and day out. Uh, if you like this content, please like it, please share it. Please subscribe to the podcast. It helps me. Look, I'm not getting paid to do this. I do this for fun. I do this to help the people. I love to, uh, talk to folks about this kind of stuff. And I like to make things simple. And I think almost everything can be made simple, even these stupid legal concepts or seemingly complicated legal concepts. Uh, I like to speak both languages. If you like to speak both languages. And you like Lawyer Talk, again, like, subscribe, Share. Check us out. Lawyer Talk. Off The Record, on the air, Q and A style. At least until now.