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Supreme Court Rules Extending Traffic Stop For Dog Sniff Unconstitutional
bmxeroh writes: The Supreme Court ruled today (PDF) that a police officer may not extend a traffic stop beyond the time needed to complete the tasks related to that stop for the purposes of allowing a trained dog to sniff for drugs. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority (6-3) that police authority "ends when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are — or reasonably should have been — completed." The case, Rodriguez v. United States, 13-9972, all started with Rodriguez was stopped in Nebraska for driving out of his lane. After he was given the ticket for that infraction, he was made to wait an additional seven to eight minutes for a drug dog to arrive which promptly alerted to the presence of drugs in the car. Upon search, the officers found a small bag of methamphetamine in his possession.
The dissenters' statements agree in principle with the majority but cite reasons that the majority's opinion is in error in this case, i.e. that there was reasonable cause to call in the dog and that the delay was not excessive.
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You're a fucking idiot. Did you know that these dogs can be trained to alert on cash? You know, the cash you might have in the car because you just sold your motorcycle like I did last October. Do you know what happens when the cops find cash? They steal it from you under the pretense that you MIGHT have been involved in a drug transaction or some other nefarious crime. Civil Forfeiture Laws are a thing and this ruling will help protect the innocent from those who would police for profit. Sit. Stay. Moron. P.
To be honest, I figured that it /had/ to be a bad ruling and ...
No, it's all due to the stupid vague line between a "temporary stop", a "detention", and an "arrest". Our various branches of government have struggled with it for two centuries now.
Police need people to interact with them so the officers can do the job of investigating crimes. But legally in order to do that they must seize the thing, seize the person, seize the property, whatever. The requirements about due process, seizure of people and property, the law needed to allow for certain types of temporary seizures of people, and the balance is a hard one.
The traffic stop is just that, a stop. A temporary detention that can only last as long as necessary for the administrative task.
In the ruling (and according to most judges already), the officer stopped the individual and performed the task of writing a citation. Anything more than that is no longer a stop, it becomes either a detention or an arrest.
The ruling is clear on what the problem was here. The officer testified that they "had all their documents back and a copy of the written warning. I got all the reasons for the stop out of the way." Then after the stop was complete he did not allow the man to leave, even after the man asked to go, so the officer could call in a drug-sniffing dog. That was a second detention, done without probable cause (since he had already dealt with the reason for the stop), and was therefore unlawful.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
No, the point is that in order to use the dog, they need to have probable cause of another crime having been committed. There wasn't any probable cause here, so they couldn't use the dog (whether it took longer or not).
In the UK at least (not sure about the US on this part), at a traffic stop, the police absolutely are not allowed to search your car in any way, unless you give them permission, or they have reasonable suspicion of another crime having been committed.
Just because the supreme court says you cant, doesnt mean departments wont push the envelope to see if they can challenge it, and for how long. Most minorities arrested for example never see a courtroom, but instead are strong-armed. Typically a prosecutor meets with the accused, threatens them with a dozen or so charges from failure to yield to a stop sign to improper socks after labour day and throws a random double digit integer of years in a prison described like Auschwitz. Once the accused is terrified into pleading guilty for a "reduced sentence" the prosecutor packs up their briefcase and bellies up to the local pub assured he will get to keep his job. Prosecutors that are fair and pursue lenient charges tend to prevent the DA and Judges from getting re-elected, and will eventually get shown the door.
Good people go to bed earlier.
>> In the UK at least (not sure about the US on this part), at a traffic stop, the police absolutely are not allowed to search your car in any way, unless you give them permission, or they have reasonable suspicion of another crime having been committed.
It's the same here in the USA. "Reasonable Suspicion" is a pretty low bar, however. There was a line of cases (from the 70s/80s I believe) that outlined what constituted reasonable suspicion, and it included things such as "actively not looking at a cop car when it drove past," "looking at a cop car the entire time it was driving past," "waving to the police car," "not waving back to the officer," etc. In other words, if the officer can argue "something seemed fishy" to him given basically any set of circumstances, then it is reasonable suspicion.
You need probable cause to do an actual search, however, and a warrant. The exception is for when things are in plain sight: if you can see/hear/smell something illegal from outside. E.g., there is a crack pipe sitting on the seat next to you, then they can seize it and arrest you. Where it becomes controversial is when the senses are augmented: night vision, heat vision, bionic ears, a dog's sensitive nose. Those photons, sound waves, odor molecules obviously aren't contained within your private space (which requires a warrant to search) or they wouldn't have been detected. These cases are about defining those lines.
Reaching back to law school memories here, but I recall a case (decided in the 80s or 90s?) where the Court ruled that drug-sniffing dogs do not require any suspicion, because you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the scent of drugs coming from your stuff. So this ruling just addresses a follow-on question: If the police are permitted to use drug-sniffing dogs at will, can they also detain you without reasonable suspicion and make you wait around for the dog to show up. The answer was a very reasonable "no." If they don't have evidence that you've done something wrong, they can't detain you.
I think this rule is reasonable on both counts. The Fourth Amendment doesn't give you a substantive right to commit crimes and not be found out. It only protects you from unreasonable police procedures. If you are carrying an illegal substance that a dog can detect without invading your privacy, that's your problem. But the police should never be able to detain a citizen for any reason, for any amount of time, without probable cause that the person has committed or is committing a crime. To rule otherwise is to place us in a police state.
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