U.S. v. Harrell, 75 M.J. 359

Core Criminal Law Subjects: Evidence: Search and Seizure › Automobile exception

1. an automobile traffic stop is subject to the constitutional imperative that it will not be unreasonable under the circumstances
2. generally, the decision to stop an automobile is reasonable where the police have probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred
3. a police officer’s authority to keep an individual at a traffic stop ends when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are, or reasonably should have been, completed
4. there is no bright-line rule governing whether the length of a traffic stop is reasonable; rather, it is appropriate for a court to examine whether the police diligently pursued a means of investigation that was likely to confirm or dispel their suspicions quickly, during which time it was necessary to detain the accused
5. during a traffic stop, an officer may continue detention where he has a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity sufficient to justify that detention; a reasonable suspicion is less than probable cause, and has been defined as a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity; this inquiry must be based on the totality of the circumstances; the analysis proceeds with various objective observations, including consideration of the modes or patterns of operation of certain kinds of lawbreakers; from this data, a trained officer draws inferences and makes deductions that might well elude an untrained person; recognizing that this process of inferences and deductions does not deal with hard certainties, but with probabilities, due weight is afforded to the factual inferences drawn by the law enforcement officer
6. in this case, during the traffic stop, the officer observed that the accused driver was unkempt and unclean in appearance, her eyes were not completely open, her hands shook as the officer questioned her, she took long pauses before responding, and when she did speak, her responses were mumbled; based on these observations, the officer believed the accused was under the influence of alcohol or drugs; in addition, the officer believed that the accused might have been engaged in drug trafficking because she had driven a rental car a long distance from St. Louis in order to reach an area locally known for drug activity, but an area that would likely be unknown to most people coming from St. Louis; furthermore, the officer testified that in his fifteen years of experience, every person that he had stopped who was on his or her way to this local area was also in possession of drugs; taken together and based on the officer’s training and experience, these observations establish a particularized and objective basis to suspect that the accused was involved in drug use or trafficking; because a reasonable suspicion of drug use or activity existed, the traffic stop was not unreasonably extended when the officer requested the assistance of a canine drug-detection unit and the time period from the dispatch request to the end of the dog sniff was only about seven or eight minutes in total
7. conducting a dog sniff does not change the character of a traffic stop that is lawful at its inception and otherwise executed in a reasonable manner, unless the dog sniff itself infringed on appellant’s constitutionally protected interest in privacy
8. a dog sniff conducted during a lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment
9. in this case, the military judge did not clearly err by finding that a drug dog sniff complied with the Fourth Amendment where he reviewed the patrol car’s dashboard footage of the dog sniff and determined that when the dog alerted at the driver’s side door, he reached his paws up the side of the car to get his nose closer to the open window but did not extend his nose into the passenger compartment; when the evidence is considered in the light most favorable to the government, there was no basis for concluding the military judge’s factual findings were clearly erroneous
10. in this case, where the police did not impermissibly extend a traffic stop nor did the military judge clearly err when he concluded the drug dog’s nose did not penetrate the interior of the open car window, the dog sniff and subsequent search of appellant’s vehicle did not violate the Fourth Amendment

Trial Stages: Appeals: Standards of Review, Burdens, etc.

1. an appellate court reviews a military judge’s ruling on a motion to suppress for abuse of discretion, considering the evidence in the light most favorable to the prevailing party; while a military judge’s findings of fact are reviewed for clear error, conclusions of law are reviewed de novo