In United States v. Gorman, --- F.3d ---, No. 15-16600 (9th Cir. 2017) -- a civil forfeiture case -- the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order granting claimant’s motion to suppress
evidence seized pursuant to a traffic stop and held that the search of claimant’s
vehicle following coordinated traffic stops violated the
Constitution.
An officer stopped Mr. Gorman, who was driving his motorhome, for a traffic violation. After a few initial questions, the officer became suspicious Mr. Gorman might be transporting drug money. The officer did not have a drug dog available and could not come up with enough for probable cause, so he eventually let Mr. Gorman go. The officer then called another Sheriff's office, and gave them information about Mr. Gorman. Another officer then again stopped Mr. Gorman, this time with a drug dog. The dog altered and the officer found money, which the government went after in a civil forfeiture proceeding.
This case has great language on both the prolonged detention and multiple traffic stops issues. The Court held, the "first roadside detention was
unreasonably prolonged in violation of the Fourth
Amendment. The dog sniff and the search of Gorman’s
vehicle, in turn, followed directly in an unbroken causal
chain of events from that constitutional violation. As a
result, the seized currency is the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' and was properly suppressed under the exclusionary rule."
The discussion of prolonged detentionsis especially helpful:
The Supreme Court has made clear that traffic stops can last only as long as is reasonably necessary to carry out the “mission” of the stop, unless police have an independent reason to detain the motorist longer. The “mission” of a stop includes “determining whether to issue a traffic ticket” and “checking the driver’s license, determining whether there are outstanding warrants against the driver, and inspecting the automobile’s registration and proof of insurance.” A stop that is unreasonably prolonged beyond the time needed to perform these tasks ordinarily violates the Constitution.
This is so because the “[t]emporary detention of individuals during the stop of an automobile by the police, even if only for a brief period and for a limited purpose, constitutes a ‘seizure’ of ‘persons’ within the meaning of [the Fourth Amendment].” The observation of a traffic infraction provides “[a]uthority for the seizure” of the driver only until the “tasks tied to the traffic infraction are – or reasonably should have been – completed.” Thus, “[a] seizure justified only by a policeobserved traffic violation . . . become[s] unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete” the stop’s mission.
The Supreme Court has indicated that within “the time reasonably required to complete” the stop’s mission, the Fourth Amendment may tolerate investigations that are unrelated to the purpose of the stop and that fall outside the scope of that mission. Id. at 1615. The Court is clear, however, that these “unrelated investigations” are impermissible if they “lengthen the roadside detention.” Police simply may not perform unrelated investigations that prolong a stop unless they have “independent reasonable suspicion justifying [the] prolongation.”
Non-routine record checks and dog sniffs are paradigm examples of “unrelated investigations” that may not be performed if they prolong a roadside detention absent independent reasonable suspicion. These inquiries “[l]ack[] the same close connection to roadway safety as the ordinary inquiries.” We have held that prolonging a traffic stop to perform an ex-felon registration check or a dog sniff is unlawful because these tasks are “aimed at detecting evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing” and are not “ordinary inquir[ies] incident to the traffic stop.” “[T]he Government’s endeavor to detect crime in general or drug trafficking in particular . . . cannot justify prolonging an ordinary traffic stop . . . .” “Such on scene investigation into other crimes detours from an officer’s traffic mission.”
