The police conduct a traffic stop, find an illegal weapon, and arrest the driver. The driver asserts that the stop was pretextual, and the officer testifies and is then cross-examined by counsel for the defendant.
I'm not certain whether the defendant's counsel was constitutionally ineffective in arguing the motion to suppress, and neither is the Court of Appeal, which holds that the more appropriate route is for this issue to be raised on habeas rather than on direct appeal.
Regardless of those merits, I thought that it was cold -- albeit perhaps appropriate -- for the trial court to say while denying the motion to suppress "that if defense counsel had 'simply refrained from cross-examining I would have granted your motion, because I regard the littering as pretextual, as a basis for a traffic stop, and the prosecution did not bring out either that there were other vehicles on the road, which is important to whether it is illegal to fail to use your turn signals, or, for that matter, consent to the vehicle search. However, those were brought out by the defense.'"
Ouch.
Not really what you want to hear. As either the defendant or his lawyer.
