The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Monday that absent of reasonable suspicion, the Fourth Amendment prohibits police from extending a traffic stop to wait for drug detection dogs to sniff a vehicle, even if it would only take a few minutes.
"A seizure for a traffic violation justifies a police investigation of that violation....Authority for the seizure thus ends when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are - or reasonably should have been - completed," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the court's majority opinion. "Lacking the same close connection to roadway safety as the ordinary inquiries, a dog sniff is not fairly characterized as part of the officer's traffic mission...Highway and officer safety are interests different in kind from the Government's endeavor to detect crime in general or drug trafficking in particular."
The ruling was made regarding the case Rodriguez v. United States (No. 13-9972), in which a Nebraska police officer stopped a vehicle driven by Dennys Rodriguez after it swerved onto the shoulder of a highway. After performing a routine traffic stop and issuing a written warning for erratic driving, the officer, Morgan Struble, then asked if he could walk his drug-sniffing dog around the vehicle.
Rodriguez refused, yet Struble detained Rodriguez for "seven or eight" minutes until another officer arrived. Struble then retrieved his dog and proceeded to conduct the drug search, resulting in the dog alerting the officer to a bag of methamphetamine. In all, the traffic stop lasted 29 minutes.
Ginsburg was joined in her opinion by the court's three other Democratic-appointed members - Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan - and the Republican-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia.
The dissenting members - GOP appointees Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy - argued that the delay caused by the decision to use the dog was not unreasonable.
"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," Thomas wrote in his 12-page dissenting opinion.
Thomas said the decision "results in a constitutional frame-work that lacks predictability," using the majority's argument to illustrate his point.
"Had Officer Struble arrested, handcuffed, and taken Rodriguez to the police station for his traffic violation, he would have complied with the Fourth Amendment," he wrote.
"But because he made Rodriguez wait for seven or eight extra minutes until a dog arrived, he evidently committed a constitutional violation. Such a view of the Fourth Amendment makes little sense."
Thomas and Alito also noted that other observations made by Struble, like the overwhelming smell of air freshener emanating from the car, provided the officer with reasonable suspicion to carry out the dog sniff.
