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shift had the officer not pursued questions unrelated to the stop. If the stop would have ended,
then the questioning prolonged the stop making the detention illegal by the time the officer
developed reasonable suspicion to search the vehicle based on the foot shift.
This scenario is analogous to cases where an officer deliberately delays handling a traffic
stop to buy time for a drug dog to arrive on the scene. For example, when “police body camera
footage ma[d]e it clear that during” the execution of a traffic stop the officer’s “supervisor
instructed him to ‘just hold off’ and ‘just wait for the K-9, he’s on the way’” before completing
the stop, and other evidence confirmed that the stop should have been completed before the drug
dog arrived, suppression of the evidence was required. United States v. Clark, 2022 U.S. Dist.
LEXIS 194538, at *18 (W.D. Va. Oct. 2022). That is because after the tasks related to the
infraction should have been completed, the driver’s detention was illegal. And evidence that was
only uncovered because of an illegal detention must be suppressed. Id. at *17.
When the tasks related to a traffic stop should have been completed was a question for
the factfinder. Here, Knight-Walker never argued that the mission of the traffic stop was
complete before the 12 seconds of unrelated questioning took place, so the trial court never made
a factual finding on this point. Likewise, Knight-Walker never argued that Officer Allen
“interrupted” or delayed her ability to call her son for a ride. In fact, counsel at argument very
respectfully “push[e]d back” on questions about the phone call and said, “It doesn’t matter
whether she called her son or not.” Undeterred, the majority finds its own facts, and concludes
that the mission of the traffic stop ended when Officer Allen “merely warned her that she should
not continue driving because her license was suspended” and that “[t]here was every indication
that Allen was basically finished with the stop, except for returning Knight-Walker’s license” but
then Officer Allen delayed her ability to “get somebody here and drive the car away” through his
12 seconds of questioning. In the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the mission of the Jump to an indexed page (23 of 23)