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Constitution and Article I, § 8 of the Constitution of Virginia. Knight-Walker argued that Allen
“lacked reasonable suspicion that [she] was armed and dangerous” and “lacked a reasonable
suspicion [that] she had committed a crime for which evidence could be gathered through a
search of her car[.]” Knight-Walker also argued that Allen “impermissibly extended her
detention by pursuing an unrelated line of inquiry during his handling of a routine traffic offense
in contravention of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Rodriguez v. United States”
and that he “lacked [her] free, voluntary, and unequivocal consent to search her vehicle and
could not have obtained as much in any event, as a reasonable person would not have felt free to
disregard his request under the circumstances.”
On September 22, 2022, the trial court heard oral arguments on the motion to suppress
and noted that neither Knight-Walker nor her passenger was authorized to drive the vehicle. The
trial court further explained that if Allen left Knight-Walker at the scene and “then 20 minutes
later he sees her driving the car” that he would have to stop her again. The trial court noted that
“she stopped . . . and that car is not going anywhere unless someone shows up that’s a licensed
driver and can drive the car,” and if that was not possible the next step would be to call a tow
truck. The trial court then articulated that it “would not be unreasonable to say, okay, we’ll wait,
we’ll get somebody here and drive the car away . . . but leaving [Knight-Walker] with the car . . .
and [the officer] driv[ing] away means she’s going to drive the car, and that’s a crime, and he
can’t let that happen.”
The trial court distinguished the stop here from Rodriguez stating that “Mr. Rodriguez
had a valid driver’s license. He was eligible to leave the scene until something else happened at
that point. So [the stop] was extended by that.” The trial court ultimately ruled that “[on] the
issue of extending the stop, the [car] was going nowhere at that point. That car was not moving
. . . the Motion to Suppress is denied.” Jump to an indexed page (23 of 23)