By Marcia Coyle, From Supreme Court Brief

Police violate the Fourth Amendment if they extend a lawful traffic stop to conduct a dog sniff for drugs without reasonable suspicion that drugs are present, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.

In Rodriguez v. United States, the justices, voting 6-3, held that a police stop that exceeds the time needed to handle the reason for the stop “violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures” if it is justified only by the police-observed traffic violation.

Justice Samuel Alito Jr., writing in dissent, called the ruling “unnecessary, impractical and arbitrary.” He and Justice Anthony Kennedy also joined a separate dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas.

The high court in a 2005 decision, Illinois v. Caballes, had held that a search by a drug-sniffing dog conducted during a lawful traffic stop did not violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable seizures. With the Rodriguez case, the justices agreed to resolve a split in the lower courts on whether police, without reasonable suspicion, routinely may extend an otherwise completed traffic stop to conduct a dog sniff.

The majority, led by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, rejected a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit that the “seven- or eight-minute delay” that ensued after Dennys Rodriguez’s traffic stop was completed was an acceptable “de minimis intrusion on Rodriguez’s personal liberty.”

In the high court, the United States had argued that police could conduct the dog sniff as long as the overall duration of the stop was reasonable in relation to the duration of other traffic stops involving similar circumstances. But Ginsburg wrote, “The government’s argument, in effect, is that by completing all traffic-related tasks expeditiously, an officer can earn bonus time to pursue an unrelated criminal investigation.”

During a traffic stop, the majority emphasized, an officer can make ordinary inquiries incident to the stop, not just a decision on whether to issue a ticket.

“Typically such inquiries involve checking the driver’s license, determining whether there are outstanding warrants against the driver and inspecting the automobile’s registration and proof of insurance,” Ginsburg wrote. “These checks serve the same objective as enforcement of the traffic code: ensuring that vehicles on the road are operated safely and responsibly.”

But a dog sniff, she added, “is a measure aimed at ‘detecting evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing.’ ”

Rodriguez and a passenger were stopped in 2012 at 12:06 a.m. after a police officer saw their vehicle veer onto the shoulder of a Nebraska highway for several seconds and then jerk back onto the road. State law prohibited driving on highway shoulders. Rodriguez told the officer he’d swerved to avoid a pothole.

After completing a records check on both men and calling for a second officer, the officer issued a written warning at 12:27 or 12:28 a.m. He then asked for permission to walk his drug dog around the vehicle. Rodriguez said no and was ordered to exit the vehicle and stand in front of it and wait for the second officer.

At 12:33 a.m., the second officer arrived and the dog sniff was conducted. The dog alerted to the presence of drugs and the officers discovered a large bag of methamphetamine.

Although a magistrate judge and the district court found no reasonable suspicion to support detaining Rodriguez after officers issued the traffic warning, the court denied his motion to suppress the drug evidence. It found that, under Eighth Circuit precedent, the delay was a de minimus intrusion on Rodriguez’s Fourth Amendment rights. Rodriguez entered a conditional guilty plea and was sentenced to five years in prison.

The Eighth Circuit affirmed on the de minimus ground and declined to consider whether the officer had reasonable suspicion to continue Rodriguez’s detention. The question of reasonable suspicion remains open on remand, Ginsburg wrote.

In his dissent, Thomas said that because the traffic stop was reasonably executed, there was no Fourth Amendment violation.

“Approximately 29 minutes passed from the time Officer Struble stopped Rodriguez until his narcotics-detection dog alerted to the presence of drugs,” Thomas wrote. “That amount of time is hardly out of the ordinary for a traffic stop by a single officer of a vehicle containing multiple occupants even when no dog sniff is involved.”

The majority’s approach, he wrote, “draws an artificial line between dog sniffs and other common police practices. Its reasoning appears to come down to the principle that dogs are different.”

Alito, in his separate dissent, said the officer could have done the dog sniff while waiting for the records check on the two men and before the second officer arrived. That would have been lawful under the majority’s approach, he said, but a greater risk to the officer’s safety.

“Thus, an action that would have been lawful had the officer made the unreasonable decision to risk his life became unlawful when the officer made the reasonable decision to wait a few minutes for backup,” he wrote.

He predicted the majority’s rule would do “little good” going forward.

“It is unlikely to have any appreciable effect on the length of future traffic stops,” he wrote. “Most officers will learn the prescribed sequence of events even if they cannot fathom the reason for that requirement. (I would love to be the proverbial fly on the wall when police instructors teach this rule to officers who make traffic stops.)”

IMAGE: jtyler/iStockphoto.com

For more on this story go to: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/supremecourtbrief/id=1202724127791/Court-Sets-Limits-on-Dog-Sniffs-During-Traffic-Stops#ixzz3Y3JxpJ14