Tuesday, May 19, 2015

US Supreme Court Rodriguez v. US 13-9927

Decided 4-21-15

   Rodriguez was driving on a Nebraska highway when he was stopped by police for drifting out of his lane.  During the traffic stop, the officer checked both Rodriguez and his passenger for warrants, asked them questions about their travel plans and eventually gave Rodriguez a written warning for the traffic violation.  He then asked Rodriguez for permission to run a drug dog on the outside of the car.  Rodriguez refused.

   The officer instructed Rodriguez to shut off the car and wait by the patrol car.  He did so.  When another officer arrived (7 or 8 minutes later), the officer ran the dog on the car.  During the second pass around the outside of the car, the dog alerted.  A subsequent search of the car revealed distribution amounts of meth.

   In court, Rodriguez moved to suppress the meth.  A magistrate heard testimony from the officer, and then ruled that although there had been no reasonable suspicion to detain Rodriguez once the traffic stop was concluded, the 7 or 8 additional minutes of detention were a de minimus intrusion and therefore permissible under the Fourth Amendment (I was shocked by that reasoning; it wouldn't have worked in Colorado.  But apparently the 8th Circuit was good with it).  Rodriguez appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court.

   The court held that the reasonableness of a stop (in terms of duration) depends on the time needed to handle the reason for which the stop was made.  In this case, a traffic violation.  The court has long recognized certain things as being an acceptable part of a traffic investigation (such as questioning the person stopped, checking insurance and registration, and checking a database for arrest warrants and license status).  The court views those things as serving the underlying purpose of the traffic stop.  Other things (like asking questions which aren't related to the stop, or like running a dog on the outside of the car) aren't specifically prohibited, but prolonging the stop beyond the amount of time required to address the reason for the stop is prohibited.*

   The Court emphasizes that it's not just a question of whether the additional detention occurs before or after the summons/warning is issued.  The amount of time the police have to handle a traffic stop is however long it reasonably takes them to handle a traffic stop, and you can't drag that out in order to address things outside the scope of the stop.**  The Court also emphasizes that an officer can't simply hurry through the traffic stop business and then use the time it normally would have taken to complete a traffic stop to detain someone for a drug sniff.  If you can work quickly to get through a traffic stop in half the time that it normally takes, then it only means that your traffic stops now take less time than they used to.

   Accordingly, the court ruled that the additional detention could not simply be ignored as a "de minimus" intrusion on Rodriguez's liberty.  Instead, that was a real detention, no longer justified by the traffic violation because the traffic violation had already been fully investigated and addressed by the written warning.  But that doesn't necessarly mean that the additional detention was unjustified.  The magistrate had held that there was not reasonable suspicion of drug activity, but the court of appeals never reviewed that part of the decision (since the court of appeals had agreed that the detention could be justified under the "just because" theory).  The case is remanded back to the court of appeals to review whether or not there was reasonable suspicion of additional criminal activity at the time that the officer decided to detain Rodriguez.***

*Unless, of course, new information comes to light during the stop which justifies the additional detention.

**Again, unless something happens during the stop which creates reasonable suspicion or probable cause.

***Most of the justices who dissented from this opinion would have simply ruled that there was reasonable suspicion to justify the additional detention, based on details not mentioned in the majority opinion.  Things like the overwhelming air fresheners, the passenger's abnormal level of nervousness, and the strange explanation that Rodriguez gave for his late night travel.
   

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