U.S. v. Sharpe
The next case sheds further light on the permissible scope of investigatory stops based on reasonable suspicion. In particular, it helps to illustrate how long a person may be detained for a “Terry stop.”
Supreme Court of the United States
United States v. William Harris Sharpe
Decided March 20, 1985 – 470 U.S. 675
Chief Justice BURGER delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted certiorari to decide whether an individual reasonably suspected of engaging in criminal activity may be detained for a period of 20 minutes, when the detention is necessary for law enforcement officers to conduct a limited investigation of the suspected criminal activity.
I
A
On the morning of June 9, 1978, Agent Cooke of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was on patrol in an unmarked vehicle on a coastal road near Sunset Beach, North Carolina, an area under surveillance for suspected drug trafficking. At approximately 6:30 a.m., Cooke noticed a blue pickup truck with an attached camper shell traveling on the highway in tandem with a blue Pontiac Bonneville. Respondent Savage was driving the pickup, and respondent Sharpe was driving the Pontiac. The Pontiac also carried a passenger, Davis, the charges against whom were later dropped. Observing that the truck was riding low in the rear and that the camper did not bounce or sway appreciably when the truck drove over bumps or around curves, Agent Cooke concluded that it was heavily loaded. A quilted material covered the rear and side windows of the camper.
Cooke’s suspicions were sufficiently aroused to follow the two vehicles for approximately 20 miles as they proceeded south into South Carolina. He then decided to make an “investigative stop” and radioed the State Highway Patrol for assistance. Officer Thrasher, driving a marked patrol car, responded to the call. Almost immediately after Thrasher caught up with the procession, the Pontiac and the pickup turned off the highway and onto a campground road. Cooke and Thrasher followed the two vehicles as the latter drove along the road at 55 to 60 miles an hour, exceeding the speed limit of 35 miles an hour. The road eventually looped back to the highway, onto which Savage and Sharpe turned and continued to drive south.
At this point, all four vehicles were in the middle lane of the three right-hand lanes of the highway. Agent Cooke asked Officer Thrasher to signal both vehicles to stop. Thrasher pulled alongside the Pontiac, which was in the lead, turned on his flashing light, and motioned for the driver of the Pontiac to stop. As Sharpe moved the Pontiac into the right lane, the pickup truck cut between the Pontiac and Thrasher’s patrol car, nearly hitting the patrol car, and continued down the highway. Thrasher pursued the truck while Cooke pulled up behind the Pontiac.
Cooke approached the Pontiac and identified himself. He requested identification, and Sharpe produced a Georgia driver’s license bearing the name of Raymond J. Pavlovich. Cooke then attempted to radio Thrasher to determine whether he had been successful in stopping the pickup truck, but he was unable to make contact for several minutes, apparently because Thrasher was not in his patrol car. Cooke radioed the local police for assistance, and two officers from the Myrtle Beach Police Department arrived about 10 minutes later. Asking the two officers to “maintain the situation,” Cooke left to join Thrasher.
In the meantime, Thrasher had stopped the pickup truck about one-half mile down the road. After stopping the truck, Thrasher had approached it with his revolver drawn, ordered the driver, Savage, to get out and assume a “spread eagled” position against the side of the truck, and patted him down. Thrasher then holstered his gun and asked Savage for his driver’s license and the truck’s vehicle registration. Savage produced his own Florida driver’s license and a bill of sale for the truck bearing the name of Pavlovich. In response to questions from Thrasher concerning the ownership of the truck, Savage said that the truck belonged to a friend and that he was taking it to have its shock absorbers repaired. When Thrasher told Savage that he would be held until the arrival of Cooke, whom Thrasher identified as a DEA agent, Savage became nervous, said that he wanted to leave, and requested the return of his driver’s license. Thrasher replied that Savage was not free to leave at that time.
Agent Cooke arrived at the scene approximately 15 minutes after the truck had been stopped. Thrasher handed Cooke Savage’s license and the bill of sale for the truck; Cooke noted that the bill of sale bore the same name as Sharpe’s license. Cooke identified himself to Savage as a DEA agent and said that he thought the truck was loaded with marihuana. Cooke twice sought permission to search the camper, but Savage declined to give it, explaining that he was not the owner of the truck. Cooke then stepped on the rear of the truck and, observing that it did not sink any lower, confirmed his suspicion that it was probably overloaded. He put his nose against the rear window, which was covered from the inside, and reported that he could smell marihuana. Without seeking Savage’s permission, Cooke removed the keys from the ignition, opened the rear of the camper, and observed a large number of burlap-wrapped bales resembling bales of marihuana that Cooke had seen in previous investigations. Agent Cooke then placed Savage under arrest and left him with Thrasher.
Cooke returned to the Pontiac and arrested Sharpe and Davis. Approximately 30 to 40 minutes had elapsed between the time Cooke stopped the Pontiac and the time he returned to arrest Sharpe and Davis. Cooke assembled the various parties and vehicles and led them to the Myrtle Beach police station. That evening, DEA agents took the truck to the Federal Building in Charleston, South Carolina. Several days later, Cooke supervised the unloading of the truck, which contained 43 bales weighing a total of 2,629 pounds. Acting without a search warrant, Cooke had eight randomly selected bales opened and sampled. Chemical tests showed that the samples were marihuana.
B
Sharpe and Savage were charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute it. The United States District Court for the District of South Carolina denied respondents’ motion to suppress the contraband, and respondents were convicted. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed the convictions. We granted the petition, vacated the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and remanded the case for further consideration. On remand, a divided panel of the Court of Appeals again reversed the convictions. We granted certiorari and we reverse.
II
The only issue in this case [] is whether it was reasonable under the circumstances facing Agent Cooke and Officer Thrasher to detain Savage, whose vehicle contained the challenged evidence, for approximately 20 minutes.2 We conclude that the detention of Savage clearly meets the Fourth Amendment’s standard of reasonableness.
Obviously, if an investigative stop continues indefinitely, at some point it can no longer be justified as an investigative stop. But our cases impose no rigid time limitation on Terry stops. While it is clear that “the brevity of the invasion of the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests is an important factor in determining whether the seizure is so minimally intrusive as to be justifiable on reasonable suspicion,” we have emphasized the need to consider the law enforcement purposes to be served by the stop as well as the time reasonably needed to effectuate those purposes. Much as a “bright line” rule would be desirable, in evaluating whether an investigative detention is unreasonable, common sense and ordinary human experience must govern over rigid criteria.
In assessing whether a detention is too long in duration to be justified as an investigative stop, we consider it appropriate to examine whether the police diligently pursued a means of investigation that was likely to confirm or dispel their suspicions quickly, during which time it was necessary to detain the defendant. A court making this assessment should take care to consider whether the police are acting in a swiftly developing situation, and in such cases the court should not indulge in unrealistic second-guessing. A creative judge engaged in post hoc evaluation of police conduct can almost always imagine some alternative means by which the objectives of the police might have been accomplished. But “[t]he fact that the protection of the public might, in the abstract, have been accomplished by ‘less intrusive’ means does not, itself, render the search unreasonable.” The question is not simply whether some other alternative was available, but whether the police acted unreasonably in failing to recognize or to pursue it.
We readily conclude that, given the circumstances facing him, Agent Cooke pursued his investigation in a diligent and reasonable manner. During most of Savage’s 20-minute detention, Cooke was attempting to contact Thrasher and enlisting the help of the local police who remained with Sharpe while Cooke left to pursue Officer Thrasher and the pickup. Once Cooke reached Officer Thrasher and Savage, he proceeded expeditiously: within the space of a few minutes, he examined Savage’s driver’s license and the truck’s bill of sale, requested (and was denied) permission to search the truck, stepped on the rear bumper and noted that the truck did not move, confirming his suspicion that it was probably overloaded. He then detected the odor of marihuana.
Clearly this case does not involve any delay unnecessary to the legitimate investigation of the law enforcement officers. Respondents presented no evidence that the officers were dilatory in their investigation. The delay in this case was attributable almost entirely to the evasive actions of Savage, who sought to elude the police as Sharpe moved his Pontiac to the side of the road. Except for Savage’s maneuvers, only a short and certainly permissible pre-arrest detention would likely have taken place. The somewhat longer detention was simply the result of a “graduate[d] … respons[e] to the demands of [the] particular situation.”
We reject the contention that a 20-minute stop is unreasonable when the police have acted diligently and a suspect’s actions contribute to the added delay about which he complains. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Notes, Comments, and Questions
The Court decided in Illinois v. Caballes (Chapter 5) that when a motorist is lawfully held for a traffic stop, police use of drug-sniffing dogs to investigate a vehicle is not a “search.” In Rodriguez v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 1609 (2015), the Court considered whether police may lengthen a traffic stop for the purpose of conducting such a dog sniff.
A police officer pulled over Dennys Rodriguez for driving on the shoulder of a Nebraska state highway, which is unlawful. During the stop, the officer asked Rodriguez why he had driven on the shoulder and, after receiving an answer, “gathered Rodriguez’s license, registration, and proof of insurance.” He then ran “a records check on Rodriguez” before returning to question Rodriguez and his passenger. Next, the officer returned to his car again, ran a records check on the passenger, and “began writing a warning ticket for Rodriguez for driving on the shoulder of the road.” Rodriguez made no objection to any of this conduct.
After writing the warning ticket and presenting it to Rodriguez (along with other documents the officer had collected during the stop), the officer asked Rodriguez for permission to walk a drug dog around Rodriguez’s vehicle. Rodriguez declined, and the officer ordered Rodriguez to stay put, which he did. The officer brought the dog, and when the dog “alerted to the presence of drugs,” the officer searched the car and found “a large bag of methamphetamine.” Rodriguez was eventually convicted of “possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine.”
Rodriguez argued that the officer impermissibly extended the traffic stop—after it was essentially finished—so that he could conduct the dog sniff. Rodriguez argued further that the extension constituted an unlawful seizure. The Court agreed.
In an opinion by Justice Ginsburg, the Court wrote:
“A seizure for a traffic violation justifies a police investigation of that violation. ‘[A] relatively brief encounter,’ a routine traffic stop is ‘more analogous to a so-called “Terry stop” … than to a formal arrest.’ Like a Terry stop, the tolerable duration of police inquiries in the traffic-stop context is determined by the seizure’s ‘mission’—to address the traffic violation that warranted the stop and attend to related safety concerns. Because addressing the infraction is the purpose of the stop, it may ‘last no longer than is necessary to effectuate th[at] purpose.’ Authority for the seizure thus ends when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are—or reasonably should have been—completed.”
The Court wrote that while activities related to traffic enforcement—such as checking a driver’s license and registration—are permissible parts of a traffic stop, “[a] dog sniff, by contrast, is a measure aimed at ‘detect[ing] evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing.’ Candidly, the Government acknowledged at oral argument that a dog sniff, unlike the routine measures just mentioned, is not an ordinary incident of a traffic stop. Lacking the same close connection to roadway safety as the ordinary inquiries, a dog sniff is not fairly characterized as part of the officer’s traffic mission.”
The Court rejected the prosecution’s argument that so long as the total length of the stop remains reasonable, an officer may extend it to conduct a dog sniff.
“The Government argues that an officer may ‘incremental[ly]’ prolong a stop to conduct a dog sniff so long as the officer is reasonably diligent in pursuing the traffic-related purpose of the stop, and the overall duration of the stop remains reasonable in relation to the duration of other traffic stops involving similar circumstances. The Government’s argument, in effect, is that by completing all traffic-related tasks expeditiously, an officer can earn bonus time to pursue an unrelated criminal investigation. The reasonableness of a seizure, however, depends on what the police in fact do. In this regard, the Government acknowledges that ‘an officer always has to be reasonably diligent.’ How could diligence be gauged other than by noting what the officer actually did and how he did it? If an officer can complete traffic-based inquiries expeditiously, then that is the amount of ‘time reasonably required to complete [the stop’s] mission.’ [A] traffic stop ‘prolonged beyond’ that point is ‘unlawful.’ The critical question, then, is not whether the dog sniff occurs before or after the officer issues a ticket but whether conducting the sniff ‘prolongs’—i.e., adds time to—‘the stop.’”
In his dissent, Justice Alito first argued that the Court should have avoided the constitutional question decided in the case because “the police officer did have reasonable suspicion [of illegal drug activity], and, as a result, the officer was justified in detaining the occupants for the short period of time (seven or eight minutes) that is at issue.”3 Then, he argued that the Court’s holding was baseless and impractical, suggesting that officers will delay completing the permitted activities of a traffic stop if they wish to conduct dog sniffs.
“The Court refuses to address the real Fourth Amendment question: whether the stop was unreasonably prolonged. Instead, the Court latches onto the fact that Officer Struble delivered the warning prior to the dog sniff and proclaims that the authority to detain based on a traffic stop ends when a citation or warning is handed over to the driver. The Court thus holds that the Fourth Amendment was violated, not because of the length of the stop, but simply because of the sequence in which Officer Struble chose to perform his tasks.”
“The rule that the Court adopts will do little good going forward. It is unlikely to have any appreciable effect on the length of future traffic stops. Most officers will learn the prescribed sequence of events even if they cannot fathom the reason for that requirement.”
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