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Lorish, J., dissenting.
Knight-Walker argues that “Officer Allen impermissibly exceeded the bounds of the
traffic mission for which he had stopped Ms. Knight-Walker’s vehicle,” and so the evidence he
uncovered—after she consented to a search—must be suppressed. This is not because Officer
Allen did not have cause to pull her over in the first place (she agrees he did), or because the
mission of the traffic stop had ended (she agrees it had not). Knight-Walker argued below, and
continues to argue on appeal, that the stop was ongoing when Officer Allen asked her whether
there were any guns or drugs in her car.9 Instead, Knight-Walker argues that her stop was
unlawfully extended by “two questions spanning approximately twelve-seconds” of unrelated
questions. This is because, as Knight-Walker readily concedes, “Officer Allen had not yet
returned Knight-Walker’s identification card or issued her a warning or traffic summons with
regard to her offenses” at the time he asked her those questions.
Knight-Walker relies on Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348, 350 (2015), for the
premise that “a police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop
was made violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures.” Based on this,
Knight-Walker argues that if an officer asks any unrelated question during a traffic stop, (1) it is
a per se violation of the Fourth Amendment, and (2) consent to search after that is fruit of the
poisonous tree that must be remedied through the exclusionary rule. As Knight-Walker spelled
out at oral argument, under this interpretation of Rodriguez, any unrelated question an officer
may ask, including “Where are you traveling today?,” “Where are you coming from?,” and “Any
fun plans this weekend?,” all illegally extend a traffic stop. According to Knight-Walker, an
9 While my colleagues in the majority dance around this question, in one place finding
the traffic stop was already concluded by the time the unrelated questioning occurred, in another
describing the stop as “basically finished,” and in another suggesting it was ongoing but
“extended,” Knight-Walker has never waffled. Jump to an indexed page (23 of 23)