Eight minutes. Is eight minutes of delay enough time to violate your Constitutional rights? Is it enough of an issue to bring before the Supreme Court in order to affirm Fourth Amendment rights? Evidently so—in a decision from April 2015, the highest court in the land handed down a decision regarding whether it was lawful for an officer to delay a suspect for 8 minutes in order to use drug dogs to search the driver's vehicle.
Here's the story:
One day, a K-9 officer pulled over a Nebraska driver for driving on the shoulder. The officer checked the driver's license and the passenger's license, wrote the driver a warning, and then asked the driver if he could walk his dog around the car. The driver refused.
Upon refusal, the officer detained the driver and asked for a second officer to arrive so he could use his drug-sniffing dog. The second officer arrived 8 minutes later, at which time the officer used his dog partner to find methamphetamine in the driver's vehicle. The defendant filed a motion to suppress the drugs as evidence on the grounds that the officer never had any reasonable suspicion to suspect the drugs existed—and the defendant was unlawfully detained in order to recover them. The motions were denied and the defendant was sentenced to 5 years' prison time.
The grounds for the motion's denial observed that an 8-minute delay was not enough to constitute an intrusion on the driver's personal liberty—which would have made it a Fourth Amendment issue. The courts never addressed whether the K-9 officer ever had reasonable suspicion to call for a drug dog's inspection in the first place—all they noted was that 8 minutes wasn't enough time to consider it a Constitutional violation by any means.
In January 2015, the case was argued before the Supreme Court, who handed down a 6-3 ruling.
The Supreme Court Affirms Fourth Amendment Rights
In their decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the driver was unlawfully detained—not because it took too much or too little time, but because the officer lacked the reasonable suspicion necessary to detain the driver and passenger. Without reasonable suspicion, the officer violated the driver's protection from unlawful search and seizure.
The decision also affirmed that the purpose of a traffic stop is to ensure that cars are driven safely and responsibly. Any actions beyond the scope of that mission—specifically with regard to investigating potential criminal activity—requires reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed. When an officer has completed every task necessary for a traffic stop investigation (checked for arrest warrants, checked the driver's condition, etc.), then any investigative action past that point requires reasonable suspicion.
In effect, the Supreme Court made this case about the power to conduct investigations rather than how long it delays a driver in order to conduct those investigations. By doing so, they prevented an issue with the lower court's decision that would have incentivized officers to conduct brief traffic stops to buy them "bonus time" for investigation outside the scope of the traffic violation.
How Does This Affect You?
Well, on an immediate level, you can't be subjected to a drug-sniffing dog unless police have reasonable suspicion. On a broader level, the Supreme Court's decision affirms that the police are unable to sneak extra investigative efforts into routine stops. While police can use the vehicle code as a pretext to investigate the possibility that a crime has been committed, there's a limit to how long the pretext can keep you detained—and as soon as the officer has completed the traffic stop, they've reached the limit.
This decision affirms your right to being stopped or arrested without good reason, and acts as another layer of protection against police power over your person and property.