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violated is a question to be determined from all the circumstances.” McCain v. Commonwealth,
275 Va. 546, 552 (2008).
A. The Bounds of the Traffic Mission for Which Allen stopped Knight-Walker
Allen initially pulled Knight-Walker over because a license check on the registered
owner of the vehicle indicated that the owner had a suspended license. Determining that
Knight-Walker “also matched” the DMV photo of her mother, the registered owner, Allen
initiated a traffic stop to inform her that the registered owner of the vehicle had a suspended
license. After Knight-Walker informed Allen that her mother was the registered owner of the
vehicle, Allen collected Knight-Walker’s driver’s license and returned to his patrol car to run her
information, discovering that her license was also suspended. Allen kept Knight-Walker’s
license in his car, returned to Knight-Walker’s door, and informed her that her license was
suspended, that she had received notice, and that she could not drive the vehicle away from the
stop. Once it was determined that Knight-Walker’s passenger was also unable to drive the
vehicle and that Allen was not going to arrest Knight-Walker even though it was her third
offense for driving on a suspended license, Knight-Walker stated that she would call her son to
come get them. Allen failed to return Knight-Walker’s license to her as it remained in his patrol
car. When Knight-Walker pulled out her cell phone to contact her son, Allen began inquiring
about whether there were guns or drugs in the vehicle.3
As the Supreme Court of the United States articulated in Rodriguez v. United States, 575
U.S. 348 (2015), “[b]eyond determining whether to issue a traffic ticket, an officer’s mission
includes ‘ordinary inquiries incident to [the traffic] stop.’ Typically such inquiries involve
3 Once Knight-Walker got out of the vehicle, Allen asked the other officer on scene to
have the passenger get out of the vehicle as well and asked Knight-Walker if he could pat her
down before commencing his search of the vehicle, further delaying the completion of the traffic
stop. Jump to an indexed page (23 of 23)