The Utah Court of Appeals recently released its opinion in State v. Miller, which is a case about extending the scope of a traffic stop.
Facts:
Defendant was stopped for going 70 mph in a 65 mph zone, a fact that the Trooper acknowledged he usually does not stop people for, but will many times on drivers with out of state plates due to possible drug trafficking activity. Trooper asked Defendant to come back to the patrol car with him. Trooper stated he does this about 90% of the time for two purposes: 1- sometimes he needs additional information to process the stop and this takes away the need to walk back and forth between vehicles; and 2- so Trooper can potentially gain additional reasonable suspicion while actively filling out the citation. Defendant had a noticeable limp as he walked back to Trooper's car, but did not take an "excessive amount of time." After Defendant got into Trooper's car, Trooper asked Defendant, "What'd you do to your ankle?" Trooper walked around to his side of the car after Defendant's response.
Over the next 7 minutes the two conversed about things other than the stop, but Trooper was actively filling out the citation this entire time. Most of the small talk was initiated by Defendant during this period. Trooper had finished all but one portion of the citation before asking dispatch to run a records check on Defendant. Trooper deployed a K9 while waiting for the records check, including a Triple I to come back. About 60 seconds after the dispatch, but before dispatch reported back the records check, the K9 alerted to the presence of a controlled substance. It was "several minutes" after the alert that dispatch finally reported back the criminal history check. 71 pounds of marijuana were found in the car and Defendant was charged with Possession with intent to distribute, along with the speeding violation. Defendant filed a motion to suppress evidence based upon the extension of the scope of the stop.
The question addressed at the district court level was whether the unrelated investigations, including the some of the questioning not related to the speeding violation and the dog sniff, extended the scope of the stop for speeding. The district court denied the motion to suppress, Defendant pleaded guilty and appealed based upon both the Utah and United States constitutions. The court of appeals noted that the state constitutional argument was not sufficiently briefed, so the analysis proceeded based upon the federal issues only.
Issues:
Defendant argued that Trooper illegally extended the scope of the stop in the following three ways: 1- Asking defendant to walk back to the patrol car; 2- engaging him in unrelated questioning before and during the citation process; and 3- waiting to run a criminal history check until later in the stop.
Asking Defendant to Walk Back to Patrol Car:
It is long established case law that an officer may ask occupants of vehicles to exit for officer safety purposes. Courts have long held that traffic stops are "especially fraught with danger to police officers" and "an officer may take certain negligible burdensome precautions in order to complete his mission safely." (internal cites omitted) The court held that the additional request to come back and sit in the patrol car follows this same line of reasoning, and does not require any further reasonable articulable suspicion.
Unrelated Questioning:
The court of appeals acknowledged the Supreme Court has held that officers may ask questions unrelated to the purpose of the traffic stop so long as those inquiries do not measurably extend the duration of the stop. So the ultimate question here is not whether the questioning is always related to the scope of the stop, but if it adds time to the stop. The court acquiesced that there was a de minimis extension in the time it would have taken to complete the stop if some of the questioning would not have happened. We have previous case law stating that even de minimis extension after the scope of the stop is finished. The Court here makes the distinction of when the de minimis extension takes place. Here, this was while the citation process was being completed, whereas prior cases the de minimis extension took place after the stop had been completed. This is an important distinction for this issue, and the court held that Trooper's unrelated questioning did not illegally extend the scope of the stop.
Records Check:
Defendant argued that Trooper's waiting to ask for the record check until that portion of the citation process was just an attempt to get "bonus time" to do other things while dispatch was conducting the criminal history check. Defendant argued that this needs to take place at the beginning so dispatch can be doing the records check while Trooper was filling out the citation. While the court agreed that there could be more efficient ways of completing the citation process, the ultimate issue is whether Trooper "pursued his investigation in a diligent and reasonable manner, not whether the investigation may have been accomplished by a less intrusive means." The court held that Trooper's actions were diligent, and even more important under a 4th Amendment analysis, that they were reasonable. As such, the dog sniff while waiting on the records check results to come back was permissible. Importantly on this issue, the court uses language and other decisions to say that a background check is a "mission-related activity," it could not unlawfully prolong the stop regardless of the order an officer completes each task. This is not new language, but reinforces what was existing in case law and is helpful for officers.
Ultimately, the court rejected all of Defendant's arguments and affirmed the district court's denial of Defendant's motion to suppress. The dissent in this case is worth reading, but seems to ignore several prior precedents in the analysis. It seems the dissent felt this stop was simply a pretext stop and that should not be allowed, even though our courts have rejected that principle pretty clearly.
The full decision can be found here: State v. Miller
