Opinion ID: 2627584
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The initial detention and questioning

Text: [¶ 22] The detention and questioning of a person after being stopped by a law enforcement officer must be reasonable in scope, duration, and intensity. Fertig, ¶ 28, 146 P.3d at 501. Factors reviewed by the court include whether the officer engaged in persistent and unduly sustained questioning, and whether the questions asked extended to topics unrelated to the traffic offense. O'Boyle, ¶ 32, 117 P.3d at 410. Typically, a traffic stop must last no longer than it would reasonably take for an officer to request a driver's license and vehicle registration; run a computer check; and issue a citation, and a driver should be allowed to proceed without further delay once the officer determines that the driver has a valid license and is entitled to operate the vehicle. Damato v. State, 2003 WY 13, ¶ 13, 64 P.3d 700, 706 (Wyo. 2003). [¶ 23] The district court did not make a specific finding of how long the initial detention lasted. [3] It did find that the time from the initial traffic stop to arrest lasted approximately thirty minutes. The initial detention, only one stage in that encounter, was necessarily even shorter. The district court also found that Trooper Green asked approximately 12 to 17 questions, and that he did not engage in sustained, persistent questioning and the questions he did ask did not expand the scope of the detention beyond the traffic offense. The Trooper's questions were limited to the topics of Mr. Loo's right to operate the silver vehicle and their travel plans. Based on these findings, the district court concluded that this detention was reasonable. The findings are supported by the evidence of record, and are not clearly erroneous. The district court's conclusions are fully consistent with Wyoming law. [¶ 24] The conclusions are the same under federal law. The reasonableness of a traffic stop detention under the Fourth Amendment is determined by applying the two-part inquiry set forth in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19-20, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1879, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968): (1) whether the initial stop was justified; and (2) whether the officer's actions during the detention were reasonably related in scope to the circumstances that justified the interference in the first instance. Hembree v. State, 2006 WY 127, ¶ 12, 143 P.3d 905, 908 (Wyo. 2006) (some internal punctuation omitted). For purposes of this case, there is no appreciable difference between the federal standards and the Wyoming standards. Because Mr. Loo's initial detention was permissible under the Wyoming Constitution, it was also permissible under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.