Cases involving the Fourth Amendment and unreasonable searches and seizures — beyond body-cavity or thermal-imaging searches — rarely make headlines. But this norm is slowly beginning to erode in the wake of Ferguson and Baltimore, as average citizens are beginning to understand the importance of our constitutional rights and the limits placed on both citizens and police when encountering each other, particularly during traffic stops. A recent Supreme Court decision in April, Rodriguez v United States, ruled that “a police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable seizures.”
This decision will have large ramifications for law enforcement because a lot can happen when police extend a traffic stop, even if just for a few moments. One evening around midnight, Nebraska Officer Morgan Struble saw Dennys Rodriguez driving his car as it slowly drifted onto the shoulder of a highway and then jerk suddenly back onto the road. After Office Struble pulled him over, checked his license and issued a written warning about his erratic driving, the stop of the car for traffic reasons was over.
That when when Officer Struble decided to ask Rodriguez if he could walk his patrol dog around the car. When Rodriguez refused, the officer ordered him out of the car and detained him and the passenger for about eight minutes as he called for backup. When the second officer arrived, the dog sniff was conducted and a bag of methamphetamine was found.
Police are able to stop anyone who they observe as violating traffic laws–that’s called probable cause, and having it gives police the authority to stop you. But if the police also suspect you are “up to no good” without probable cause, can they hold you while they call in the dogs–as happened in Rodriguez?
The lower courts that first considered the case decided yes, because they didn’t consider it a significant intrusion on a driver’s freedom of movement. But the Supreme Court has decided otherwise. “Authority for the seizure ends when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are–or reasonably should have been–completed,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Once it goes beyond why you were stopped then, according to our highest Court, it’s a constitutional violation.
Officer Struble had no reason to believe Rodriguez was carrying drugs; his decision to detain him was a display of arbitrary power. This ruling will affect law enforcement agencies nationwide and will influence training programs for new recruits and seasons officers alike by curbing the arbitrary detainment of citizens by police without reasonable suspicion.
