Picture the scene: Your team just scored a huge victory over the No. 11 team in the nation — you earned your highest grade of the semester in a subject that’s a “weed out class” for your major — or you finally built up the courage to ask for the number of that special someone in your class.
Now you’re driving home, celebrating today’s victory with your music blaring. You’re loving life. Suddenly — wee ooh wee ooh wee, like a cop car — APD’s lights are flashing in your rearview mirror. After running your license and registration, the officer discovers that you have a pre-existing warrant and places you under arrest.
This scene was the reality for a UNMstudent who was in the news earlier this week.
Today, I will discuss your rights against illegal searches and seizures that protect you while driving your vehicle.
The Fourth Amendment of our Constitution protects individuals from illegal searches and seizures. Because of these rights, the police can only stop your vehicle when they have a reasonable suspicion to believe that you have violated a law. In other words, the officer must reasonably believe that you have violated a law in order to stop your vehicle.
Assuming the officer has a legitimate reason to stop your vehicle, the length of the stop is limited to the time it takes to conduct an investigation regarding the basis for the stop or a slight extension of time after the stop is complete.
Courts generally hold that a reasonable amount of time to conduct a traffic stop includes the time necessary for the officer to check a driver’s license, insurance and registration.
In addition, time is allowed to complete any paperwork connected with the citation or written warning and to run a computer check for any outstanding arrest warrants for the driver or the passengers.
After this process is complete, the officer is only allowed to extend the stop for a short period of time to ask additional questions that can be answered quickly. Always remember the officer is using your answers and observing your nonverbal behavior to form the reasonable suspicion necessary to ask additional questions, prolonging the stop.
Your answers and behavior will be used against you — the officer is not asking you questions to see if there’s a love connection. Also, even a minor traffic violation gives the officer the right to place you under arrest and to check your front pockets, passenger compartment and arguably anywhere in the interior of your vehicle.
You are throwing away your constitutional rights whenever you consent to an officer’s request to search your vehicle.
Once the basis for the stop has been investigated, the officer is required to return your license and documentation, allowing you to leave the scene. At this point, the officer must possess a reasonable suspicion of additional criminal activity or have concerns for the officer’s safety to continue the detention beyond the time necessary to ask a few quick question such as “do you have any drugs, illegal items or weapons in the vehicle?”
By answering yes to any of these questions, you are providing the officer with the necessary reasonable suspicion to continue the detention and also the basis for the probable cause necessary for your arrest.
Assuming the circumstances and your nonverbal behavior do not suggest any danger to the officer or additional criminal activity at hand, then you are free to leave once the officer has given you a ticket and/or returned your license and documentation.
At this point, any interaction with the officer becomes consensual and the officer is free to continue asking questions: questions that can and will be used to develop the reasonable suspicion to extend the scope of the initial investigation or to develop the probable cause necessary to place you under arrest.
Therefore, once you are free to leave: leave.
Matthew Legan Sanchez practices 4th Amendment illegal search and seizures in Albuquerque, NM.