Going to Jail Over Seatbelts
by Allison Pries and David Mitchell, Medill News Service
Unlike many other criminals, Gail Atwater did not attempt to get away with it. Several months earlier, suspected of the same offense, the mother of two managed to avoid any charges against her.
But this time, while driving her four and six-year-old children home from a soccer practice on a spring afternoon in March of 1997, the law caught up with her, and she admitted fault. When Lago Vista police officer Michael Barton Turek stopped Atwater, neither she nor her children were wearing a seat belt.
It was not the first time that Atwater and Turek had met. Turek was the one who stopped Atwater months earlier believing then that her son was not wearing a seat belt. He approached her car only to find that he was mistaken, and sent her on her way.
But the March incident, which could have ended with a $50 fine, was not dismissed so easily. Now, many are wondering how it could have gotten this far. In a case where a routine traffic stop left a mother in custody and a child in counseling, the U.S. Supreme Court on June 26, 2000 granted certiorari and will decide whether it is constitutional for a person to be taken to jail for a misdemeanor traffic offense.
The case stemmed from a March 26, 1997, incident in Lago Vista, Texas, about 20 miles outside of Austin. According to her petition to the Supreme Court, Atwater was driving her son, Mac, then 4, and daughter, Anya, then 6, home from a soccer practice when a toy fell out of the car window. Atwater unfastened her seat belt, turned her pickup truck around and drove down the street looking for the toy. Her children also unfastened their seat belts to help look for the toy.
Atwater said Turek stopped her and, after approaching the vehicle, began shouting at her. When she asked him to calm down so that he wouldn't frighten her children, he became more irate and said that he was taking her to jail. Pursuant to a Texas law that allows police officers to arrest people for minor traffic violations, Atwater was handcuffed from behind and taken into custody.
Atwater was charged with seat belt violations, driving without a license and failure to provide proof of insurance. Atwater spent an hour in jail, pled no contest to the seat belt violations, and was released. The driver's license and insurance charges were dropped.
But Atwater couldn't forget what happened. Neither could her children.
"Initially, our son was the most obviously affected," Atwater said. "The very next morning, we were leaving for school, and he totally, unexpectedly ran and hid because he thought he had seen the cop outside."
According to Atwater, the problem got worse until "anytime he saw any vehicle that a 4-year-old could construe as 'police-like,' he would hide, crawl under the car or truck, anything to flee."
After seeing a child psychologist for several months, it was determined that Atwater's son Mac was suffering from a feeling of guilt over his inability to help.
Though Turek is no longer a police officer in Lago Vista, city officials have stood by his actions since the events took place.
In fact, according to Pamela McGraw, an attorney for Atwater, "the city indicated they would move to seek attorney fees from Ms. Atwater unless Ms. Atwater apologized to the officer who arrested her."
Prior to seeking court action, Atwater first appealed to the city in the hopes of changing the policy that allowed Turek to arrest her. When the city declined, Atwater filed suit in federal court, an act that unleashed a flurry of impassioned opinions from the federal bench.
In succession, a district judge granted summary judgment in favor of Lago Vista, a unanimous 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel reversed, and a full 5th Circuit review resulted in 11 judges siding with the city, and six finding for Atwater. The interpretation of events ranged from a police officer acting totally reasonably to a belief that the actions were so lamentable that they amounted to a blatant and unconstitutional vendetta.
One 5th Circuit judge, Reynaldo G. Garza, pointed out that a member of Austin's police recruitment unit stated "without reservation that he would not have recommended (Michael Barton Turek) to be hired by the Austin Police Department." The reasons cited were a lack of maturity and the fact that Turek failed two of three psychological tests administered by the department.
Another 5th Circuit judge, Jacques L. Wiener, Jr., wrote that "the evidence would allow a jury reasonably to infer that Officer Turek had been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to threaten, frighten, and humiliate Gail Atwater: Approximately two months prior to the incident in question, Officer Turek had pulled Atwater over for a putative seatbelt violation; however, much to his dismay, he had been forced to let her drive off without his issuing her a citation when he discovered that she and the other occupants of her car had their seatbelts securely fastened."
Robert DeCarli, who represents Atwater along with McGraw, underscored the importance of the case.
"Arresting someone for not wearing a seat belt, or any other minor traffic violation where the penalty is supposed to only be a fine, is just plain ridiculous, not to mention unreasonable in a constitutional sense," DeCarli said.
DeCarli added that their main goal "is to get the Supreme Court to state that police officers cannot handcuff and take people to jail for violating fine-only traffic offenses, absent some extraordinary circumstances."
A decision in favor of the city could have dire consequences, not just for Atwater, but for "every licensed driver in the country," McGraw added.
Now, for Atwater, a primary concern is simply to have her story heard.
"This story is so much more than the arrest and lawsuit," Atwater said. "Additionally, for us it has been a story of a city's arrogance in addressing citizen concerns, a newspaper so biased to have printed article after article on the front page from the city's perspective, while relegating our point to 'letters to the editor' or not asking us at all for our comments, and finally not even mentioning when certiorari was granted in June. All of this, when I have lived and volunteered in this community since before Lago Vista existed."