Opinion ID: 4148521
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Legality of Continued Detention

Text: We hold that Krause did not have reasonable suspicion to prolong the stop to await the drug dog. The government points to three suspicious factors justifying detention: (1) Adrienne was nervous; (2) Adrienne asked Krause not to look at the backseat because it was messy even though it was not; and (3) Defendants’ travel plans were implausible.2 As for Adrienne’s nervousness, we have consistently assigned this factor limited significance because its measure is so subjective and innocent people can vary widely in how they respond to an encounter with police. See Pettit, 785 F.3d at 1380. Only extreme nervousness can substantially contribute to reasonable suspicion. See id. (“[W]e require specific indicia that the defendant’s nervousness was extreme . . . .” (internal quotation marks omitted)). The district court did not find that either Adrienne or Angela was extremely nervous, Krause did not so testify, and it is not apparent on the videotape of the encounter. At the suppression hearing Krause recalled that he and Adrienne were having a “casual conversation,” with the only suggestion of nervousness being that Adrienne was overly talkative. Suppression Hr’g at 68. And even that suggestion of nervousness had an explanation. Given Adrienne’s story that it was her sister who was 2 The district court also noted that Adrienne had a record of drug offenses. But Krause did not learn about her record before he detained Defendants to await the drug dog. As the government concedes, he therefore could not rely on her record to support reasonable suspicion. Also, we do not consider that Adrienne falsely stated that she and Angela were cousins or that Adrienne stated that she wanted some marijuana, because the government does not rely on these facts and neither did the district court. 7 being abused and that she recruited Angela to come along on the rescue mission, it would make sense for her, rather than the driver, to be the one communicating with Krause. Adrienne’s comment about the backseat also is very little support for reasonable suspicion. With the benefit of hindsight, the comment seems revealing, because methamphetamine was hidden in the blue cooler. One could surmise that Adrienne was concerned that the officer was looking in the backseat, blurted out that he should not look there, and then, realizing that she had to give a reason for him not to look, concocted the silly reason that the backseat was messy. But at the time she made her comment, there was nothing incriminating in view on the backseat, and her comment could hardly have dissuaded Krause from taking a closer look through the back window. At best, Adrienne’s comment was a cue for Krause that something was odd and he should be alert for evidence of crime. The evidence he found, however, was inadequate. The government’s chief justification for expanding the traffic stop is Defendants’ allegedly implausible travel plans. But Adrienne’s fictionalized account held together rather well. Given the purpose of the trip—to rescue a sister from an abusive boyfriend—the travel plans made sense. Adrienne would want to act as quickly as possible to get to her sister and bring her to safety. A last-minute airline flight could be quite expensive, and driving might be a more flexible way to rescue her sister and some of her things. To travel through the night required recruiting a companion to share the driving. Trying to make the round-trip within the time limits of the rental agreement might well have been overly ambitious (or foolish, because they were traveling more than 20% too fast when stopped), but if they 8 did not spend too much time in Kansas City (or Nebraska), it could be reasonable to rent only for two days rather than three. Although Krause testified at the suppression hearing that his suspicions were aroused because “[i]t’s not normal for somebody to rent a car for two days and travel halfway across the country and expect to be back,” Suppression Hr’g at 20–21, Adrienne gave an explanation for the rapid travel. Even the vagueness of the final destination—Nebraska or Kansas City—was understandable if the sister needed to move to protect herself from her boyfriend. Kansas City is about 100 miles from the Nebraska border, so the vagueness of the destination still had the rescuers going in the correct direction (plausibly assuming that any destination in Nebraska would be in the part of the state closest to Kansas City), and the rescuers would not need more precise directions until they were closer to Kansas City. Adrienne explained that she did not yet have the final destination because her cell phone had not been working, and Krause testified that cell service in the area of the stop could be unreliable. Perhaps additional questioning of Defendants (particularly if they were not together) would have elicited internal contradictions, inconsistencies between their stories, or inexplicable vagueness. We have said that such flaws in purported travel plans can be a significant factor in assessing reasonable suspicion. See Davis, 636 F.3d at 1292 (driver and passenger gave conflicting accounts of travel plans); Simpson, 609 F.3d at 1149 (“[L]ies, evasions or inconsistencies . . . may contribute to reasonable suspicion.”); United States v. Kopp, 45 F.3d 1450, 1453–54 (10th Cir. 1995) (noting evasions and inconsistencies). But Krause did very little to pursue his suspicions, and he uncovered no flaws of that nature. 9 Although our precedents may not be totally consistent in this regard, we have generally been reluctant to give weight in the reasonable-suspicion analysis to unusual travel purposes, at least absent lies, inconsistencies, or the like. For example, in United States v. Wood, 106 F.3d 942, 944 (10th Cir. 1997), the driver said that he was an unemployed painter in Kansas who had flown with his sister to California for a two-week vacation and was returning in a rental car to view the scenery while his sister had flown back. The district court found it “implausible that an unemployed painter in Kansas could afford to take a two-week vacation in California, to fly there one way in a commercial airplane, to rent a 1995 Mercury Marquis in California, and then to drive the rental car back to Kansas.” Id. at 946 (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). But, we said, “[t]here is nothing criminal about traveling by car to view scenery.” Id. at 947. We reasoned that since the driver was unemployed and not expecting to return to work for six weeks, he had time for a leisurely vacation and he may have saved money for the trip. See id. Similarly, in United States v. Salzano, 158 F.3d 1107 (10th Cir. 1998), the trooper was suspicious that the driver would rent a motorhome to drive from California to Massachusetts to visit his father instead of making the more economical choice of flying or renting a smaller vehicle, especially because the driver was the only person in the vehicle. See id. at 1110–11, 1113 n.2. We disagreed, explaining that the driver said he planned to drive his father back to California and he “may have chosen to travel by motor home in order to save on lodging costs, to avoid the hassles of finding accommodations that accept large pets such as his dog, and to enable him and his father 10 to visit relatively out-of-the-way locales where temporary lodging is not readily available.” Id. at 1112. When we have said that reasonable suspicion is buttressed by simply the implausibility of purported travel plans (when there were no inconsistencies, internal contradictions, or vagueness), it has been because it begged credulity to think that the purported purpose of the trip could justify the travel plans, as when the suspect says that he had driven 1200 miles just to spend a day with relatives and was now driving back, see United States v. Contreras, 506 F.3d 1031, 1036 (10th Cir. 2007); or had driven “across the country from New York to California for a one-and-a-half-day visit during which he purchased a not-unusual used vehicle for $4,000,” gave a California address for the registration, and was driving the car back, United States v. Alcaraz-Arellano, 441 F.3d 1252, 1260 (10th Cir. 2006); or is making a round-trip across the country just to deliver a dilapidated sofa to friends, see Kopp, 45 F.3d at 1453–54. As we have explained, however, Defendants’ travel plans were quite consistent with the trip’s purported purpose of rescuing a sister in danger. In our view, the fit between purpose and travel plans was at least as good as in Wood and Salzano. This is a close case. But viewing the totality of the circumstances in light of our precedents, the particularized objective facts did not suffice to justify continuing the detention of Defendants. The evidence seized from the car must be suppressed. 11