Opinion ID: 2444991
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: federal precedents

Text: As I previously have noted herein, I do not dispute the majority's conclusion that recent federal precedent suggests that the permissibility of a consent search following a routine traffic stop is dictated by the duration of the stop. For the reasons that follow, however, it is my view that such a holding constitutes a substantive departure from settled fourth amendment jurisprudence. As both the majority and the state properly recognize, the reasonableness of traffic stops under the fourth amendment is analyzed under the framework established in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). See Arizona v. Johnson, 555 U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 781, 786, 172 L.Ed.2d 694 (2009); State v. Wilkins, supra, 240 Conn. at 508-509, 692 A.2d 1233. Under Terry, [c]ertain seizures are reasonable under the fourth amendment even in the absence of probable cause if there is a reasonable and articulable suspicion that a person has committed or is about to commit a crime. Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 498, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983); Terry v. Ohio, [supra, at 24, 88 S.Ct. 1868].... When a reasonable and articulable suspicion exists, the detaining officer may conduct an investigative stop of the suspect in order to confirm or dispel his suspicions. (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Brown, 279 Conn. 493, 517, 903 A.2d 169 (2006). The United States Supreme Court had been careful, however, to limit the boundaries of such warrantless stops. The court acknowledged that it had held in the past that a search which is reasonable at its inception may violate the [f]ourth [a]mendment by virtue of its intolerable intensity and scope.... The scope of the search must be strictly tied to and justified by the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible. (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Terry v. Ohio, supra, 392 U.S. at 17-19, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Although the court declined to set out bright-line limitations on the scope of the search, it warned that [t]he manner in which the seizure and search were conducted is, of course, as vital a part of the inquiry as whether they were warranted at all. The [f]ourth [a]mendment proceeds as much by limitations upon the scope of governmental action as by imposing preconditions upon its initiation.... The entire deterrent purpose of the rule excluding evidence seized in violation of the [f]ourth [a]mendment rests on the assumption that limitations upon the fruit to be gathered tend to limit the quest itself. (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., at 28-29, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Subsequently, in Florida v. Royer, supra, 460 U.S. at 500, 103 S.Ct. 1319, the court clarified that [t]he scope of [an investigative] detention must be carefully tailored to its underlying justification ... [and the] investigative detention must be temporary and last no longer than is necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop. Drawing from the scope analyses set forth in Terry and Royer, several federal courts had required that routine traffic stops, justified under Terry, be reasonable in both duration and manner. See, e.g., United States v. Boyce, 351 F.3d 1102, 1111 (11th Cir.2003) ([T]here are two possible tests for when a police investigation exceeds the scope of a routine traffic stop.... The first test comes from the Tenth Circuit and limits the questions a police officer may ask to those questions that are justified by reasonable suspicion of criminal activity or reasonable safety concerns.... The second test comes from the Fifth Circuit and holds that questions unrelated to the reason for the initial stop are only unlawful if they extend the duration of the initial seizure. [Citations omitted.]); United States v. Holt, 229 F.3d 931, 935 (10th Cir.2000) (the [United States] Supreme Court has indicated that although the permissible scope of an investigatory detention depends on the particular facts and circumstances of each case, it must in any case last no longer than is necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop and be carefully tailored to its underlying justification  [emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted]). Accordingly, these courts had required that, during a routine traffic stop, an officer's actions must be reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.... The traffic stop may be expanded beyond its original purpose ... if during the initial stop the detaining officer acquires reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, that is to say the officer must acquire a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity. (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) United States v. Clarkson, 551 F.3d 1196, 1201 (10th Cir.2009); see also United States v. Henderson, 463 F.3d 27, 46 (1st Cir.2006) (concluding that traffic stop exceeded bounds of Terry stop because officer's demand for [the defendant's] identifying information and his subsequent investigation of [the defendant] expanded the scope of the stop, changed the target of the stop, and prolonged the stop); United States v. Alix, 630 F.Supp.2d 145, 156 (D.Mass. 2009) (The District Court cited First Circuit cases that analyzed the scope of traffic stops and concluded that they suggest a functional standard as well as a temporal one: What degree of intrusiveness and what duration was justified by the rationale for the stop?). The United States Supreme Court recently seemed to refute this reasonableness in manner approach in Arizona v. Johnson, supra, 129 S.Ct. at 783, wherein it addressed whether police questioning of a detained motorist during a traffic stop had exceeded the scope of the initial detention. Ultimately, the court stated a broad, unqualified conclusion that [a]n officer's inquiries into matters unrelated to the justification for the traffic stop ... do not convert the encounter into something other than a lawful seizure, so long as those inquiries do not measurably extend the duration of the stop. Id., at 788. In reaching this conclusion, the court relied heavily on its prior decision in Muehler v. Mena, 544 U.S. 93, 96, 125 S.Ct. 1465, 161 L.Ed.2d 299 (2005), which in turn had relied on Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 407, 125 S.Ct. 834, 160 L.Ed.2d 842 (2005), neither of which involved Terry stops, or searches that were independent of the underlying justifications. See Arizona v. Johnson, supra, at 788; Muehler v. Mena, supra, at 101, 125 S.Ct. 1465. [3] The majority reads this recent jurisprudence as dictating that the requirement of reasonableness in Terry is satisfied as long as the duration of a routine traffic stop is not unreasonably extended. This conclusion, if correct; see footnote 3 of this dissenting opinion; indicates that the United States Supreme Court has departed significantly from its prior jurisprudence requiring Terry stops to be both substantively and temporally reasonable. I find the reasoning of Royer and the federal cases applying Royer to be persuasive because they best effectuate the scope limitation originally established in Terry, and consistently followed by this court. Accordingly, I believe that a more exacting analysis of the scope of a Terry stop than the purely temporal approach endorsed by the majority is required under the Connecticut constitution. Indeed, it is precisely in situations in which the United States Supreme Court has eschewed precedents protective of individual rights in favor of more permissive approaches that this court has found that the Connecticut constitution requires adherence to the earlier, more protective doctrines. See State v. Linares, 232 Conn. 345, 382-83, 655 A.2d 737 (1995) (rejecting modern public forum analysis established by United States Supreme Court in favor of traditional case-by-case balancing approach); State v. Marsala, supra, 216 Conn. at 171, 579 A.2d 58 (rejecting good faith exception to exclusionary rule adopted by United States Supreme Court); State v. Dukes, supra, 209 Conn. at 120, 547 A.2d 10 (disavowing United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 234-35, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 [1973], which allowed suspicionless full body searches in situations beyond full custodial arrest).