Opinion ID: 852398
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Unrelated Questioning Under the Fourth Amendment

Text: Federal authority is not entirely clear on the permissible scope of questioning under various degrees of detention. First, to the extent the majority opinion addresses investigation for potential underage helmetlessness, I believe its citation of United States v. Childs, 277 F.3d 947 (7th Cir. 2002), is misplaced. The Seventh Circuit en banc opinion in Childs expressly limited the scope of its discussion to arrests with probable cause and disclaimed addressing traffic stops based on the lesser standard of reasonable suspicion. [2] Second, I question the majority's reliance on Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 115 L.Ed.2d 389 (1991), and other cases permitting officers to ask questions of persons who have not been pulled over or otherwise arrested. As I see it, there is a fundamental difference between an officer's approaching a person on the street to ask questions, and an officer's pulling a vehicle over by exercise of law enforcement power. The person on the street may be inclined to submit to questioning, but would not perceive that he or she is required to comply. The driver of a vehicle that has been stopped by law enforcement would assume that compliance with authority is not optional. And that assumption would be correct, because a charge of resisting law enforcement backs up the officer's authority. See Ind.Code §§ 34-28-5-3.5 (2004) (failing to identify self to officer is a Class C misdemeanor), 35-44-3-3 (West Supp.2008) (knowingly or intentionally using a vehicle to flee from a law enforcement officer who has ordered a stop is a Class D felony). At one time the Fourth Amendment rule seemed fairly clear as to the scope of permissible questions in a Terry stop. United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (U.S. 1975), dealt with a Terry stop based on reasonable suspicion but not probable cause. The Court expressed Justice Rucker's view that both scope and duration of questioning were limited by the subject giving rise to the stop. Specifically, the Court held that when an officer's observations lead him reasonably to suspect that a particular vehicle may contain aliens who are illegally in the country, he may stop the car briefly and investigate the circumstances that provoke suspicion. As in Terry, the stop and inquiry must be reasonably related in scope to the justification for their initiation. The officer may question the driver and passengers about their citizenship and immigration status, and he may ask them to explain suspicious circumstances, but any further detention or search must be based on consent or probable cause. Id. at 881-82, 95 S.Ct. 2574. If these limits apply to a stop based on reasonable suspicion of an immigration violation, they certainly apply to a stop based on reasonable suspicion of the lesser offense of a traffic infraction and limit questioning to resolution of the reasonable suspicion justifying the stop. I think, however, that Muehler v. Mena, 544 U.S. 93, 125 S.Ct. 1465, 161 L.Ed.2d 299 (2005), has resolved this issue differently under the Fourth Amendment. Mena dealt with questioning of a person detained during a search of a residence conducted pursuant to a warrant based on probable cause of weapons and gang violations. The Court held that extended questioning regarding immigration status was not prohibited. Mena's basic holding was that the questioning did not violate the Fourth Amendment because it did not extend the detention and was not itself a search or seizure. The Mena majority, in footnote 3, expressly disavowed the view that Brignoni-Ponce created a requirement of particularized suspicion for purposes of inquiry into citizenship status. I take this to mean that no independent reasonable suspicion is required to explore unrelated subjects if the stop itself is lawful. If applied to Terry stops, this footnote may be viewed as dicta, but it seems to me to be a cabining in of Brignoni-Ponce and to apply equally to Terry stops. I therefore agree with the courts that have taken Mena's reasoning to apply to questions asked during traffic stops and that have evaluated unrelated questions solely in terms of whether they significantly extended the duration of the stop. [3] I freely concede that other courts have concluded that under the Fourth Amendment even a stop with probable cause is limited to the reason for the stop, [4] or is limited by some combination of scope and duration. [5] Because this is an issue of federal constitutional law, we are bound by our understanding of the Supreme Court's opinion, even if as some have suggested, permitting unrelated questioning without reasonable suspicion is totally at odds with the Terry line of Supreme Court decisions on the limits applicable to temporary detentions. Wayne R. LaFave, 4 Search & Seizure § 9.3(d), at 391 (4th ed.2004). In view of Mena, I agree with the majority that the Fourth Amendment does not bar brief questioning of a person subjected to a Terry stop.