Opinion ID: 2800433
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Unusual Travel Plans

Text: We have consistently held that “[i]mplausible travel plans can contribute to reasonable suspicion.” Santos, 403 F.3d at 1129; see also United States v. White, 584 F.3d 935, 951 (10th Cir. 2009). Mr. Pettit argues that the district court erred by relying on statements concerning his travel plans made during his unlawful detention—that is, after 3:43 p.m., when the trooper could have issued his citation and returned his driver’s license. Mr. Pettit is correct that reasonable suspicion of illegal activity must have existed prior to 3:43 p.m. in order for the trooper to further detain and question him. Bradford, 423 F.3d at 1156–57. Yet, contrary to Mr. Pettit’s assertions, the trooper obtained enough detail about Mr. Pettit’s unusual travel plans before 3:43 p.m. to contribute to an objectively reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. By the time he had completed Mr. Pettit’s citation, the trooper had learned that Mr. Pettit was driving a vehicle registered to a third party who was not present. In the trooper’s professional experience, and in our case law, driving a vehicle registered to an absent third party can indicate drug trafficking. See, e.g., United States v. - 13 - Ludwig, 641 F.3d 1243, 1249 (10th Cir. 2011); United States v. Turner, 928 F.2d 956, 959 (10th Cir. 1991). Furthermore, by 3:43 p.m. the trooper had learned that Mr. Pettit had flown to California to pick up the vehicle he was now driving one way across the country alone. Of course, we have held that “a one-way flight in one direction and a one-way rental vehicle in the other direction is not the type of unusual itinerary that gives rise to reasonable suspicion.” United States v. Karam, 496 F.3d 1157, 1165 (10th Cir. 2007). And we have been “reluctant to deem travel plans implausible . . . where the plan is simply unusual or strange because it indicates a choice that the typical person, or the officer, would not make.” Simpson, 609 F.3d at 1149. For example, the defendant in Wood, an “unemployed painter,” informed a trooper that he was driving a rental car one way across the country after visiting California with his sister on vacation. 106 F.3d at 946. His sister had returned by plane, while he chose to drive to enjoy the scenery. Id. at 947. We held that those travel plans could not contribute to reasonable suspicion because “[t]here is nothing criminal about traveling by car to view scenery.” Id.; see also Salzano, 158 F.3d at 1112–13 (holding that a defendant’s travel plans were unusual but not suspicious when he was driving a rented motor home across the country on vacation). Yet, Mr. Pettit was not driving a vehicle rented in his own name across the country on an extended vacation, but rather a vehicle registered to an absent third - 14 - party as a purported favor. The trooper explained that, in his experience, this travel pattern is consistent with that of a drug courier. And, while Mr. Pettit’s travel plans may not have been so strange or implausible as to independently suggest criminal activity, they were worthy of consideration alongside several other suspicious factors. Karam, 496 F.3d at 1165.