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asks the driver if he likes the book, that question is clearly unrelated to the purpose of the traffic
stop. And asking the question, and waiting for an answer, adds some measurable amount of time
to the traffic stop beyond what a reasonable officer expeditiously completing the stop would
have required. If the officer then sees a passenger in the backseat shift her foot to expose
potential drug paraphernalia, giving her reasonable suspicion of drug activity, the evidence found
from a resulting search would not need to be suppressed simply because unrelated questioning
added some time to the stop. That is because the officer developed an independent basis to
search the vehicle well within the time period during which “tasks tied to the traffic infraction
. . . reasonably should have been” completed. Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 355. Said another way,
any incriminating evidence ultimately found would not be the product of the brief delay because,
even without the questioning, the officer would have had cause to search within the time period
authorized by the original stop.
An analogous situation occurred in a case from the Idaho Supreme Court where a traffic
stop included 28 seconds of questioning and delay that was unrelated to the mission of the stop.
State v. Riley, 514 P.3d 982 (Idaho 2022). Even so, the evidence found after a drug dog alerted
on the car did not need to be suppressed because the alert came 48 seconds before the tasks
related to the traffic stop were completed. Id. at 989. In other words, had the extra questioning
not taken place, the drug dog still would have alerted within the period of detention authorized
by the original purpose and mission of the traffic stop.
On the other hand, imagine that the same officer finished writing up a ticket for speeding,
went back to the car with the ticket and license in hand, and only then engaged the driver over
the novel in the front seat. Only after this exchange does the passenger in the backseat shift her
foot to expose potential contraband. This would be a different case entirely. The factfinder
would then have to scrutinize whether the traffic stop would have already ended before the foot Jump to an indexed page (23 of 23)