Court Opinion

ID: 9587639
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:24:38.213445+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:47:57.008072
License: Public Domain

RUFFIN, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur with the majority opinion and with Presiding Judge Pope’s concurring opinion. I write separately to further address why *867a police officer who stops a motorist for a routine traffic violation is not permitted to expand the detention into a fishing expedition for evidence of unrelated offenses.
The dissent posits that the officer was permitted to interrogate Stinemetz concerning a host of matters, unrelated to the seat belt violation, for the ostensible purpose of protecting the public and preventing crime. Although states clearly have a legitimate interest in preventing crime, “the permissibility of a particular law enforcement practice is judged by balancing its intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate governmental interests.”2
The initial intrusion in this case was justified by Stinemetz’s violation of the seat belt statute.3 Obviously, the State’s interest in enforcing the statute outweighed Stinemetz’s right to proceed along the roadway without any interference. In addition, the United States Supreme Court has recognized that once a motorist is detained for a routine traffic violation, the investigating officer has a right to inspect the driver’s license and registration papers4 and to ask him to get out of the car.5 Finally, under such circumstances, the officer would have been justified in asking Gibbons questions necessary to prosecute the seat belt violation and to issue him a citation.6
7Again, the State’s interest in prosecuting the observed seat belt violation clearly outweighed Stinemetz’s right to be free from such questioning.
The record does not contain any evidence, however, which justified the officer’s interrogation into other matters, and the United States Supreme Court has proscribed such conduct. In Knowles v. Iowa,7 an officer stopped a motorist for speeding. The officer issued a citation and thereafter searched the driver’s car under the guise of a “ ‘search incident to citation.’ ”8 The Court found that the search violated the driver’s Fourth Amendment rights.9 Significantly, the Court reasoned that
[office [the driver] was stopped for speeding and issued a citation, all the evidence necessary to prosecute that offense had been obtained. No further evidence of excessive speed *868was going to be found either on the person of the offender or in the passenger compartment of the car.10
Though the search at issue in Knowles may be considered by many a more serious intrusion than the interrogation at issue here, the reasoning employed by the Court is nonetheless applicable. The officer only had probable cause to stop the driver for a specific traffic violation, and the permissible scope of the detention was limited to investigating and prosecuting only that violation.
It does not matter, as the dissent here suggests, that the inappropriate questioning in this case took place “in the middle of a valid traffic stop.” The officer’s probing interrogation was unrelated to the safety belt violation, no matter when it occurred. Moreover, the dissent assumes that because the stop was valid at its inception, it was valid until the officer issued Stinemetz a citation. This assumption, however, ignores the fact that the continued detention became illegal because of the inappropriate questioning. If we were to adopt , the position taken by the dissent, then officers could merely delay issuing a citation while they conduct a fishing expedition for evidence of criminal activity. That is, after all, exactly what happened in this case.
Finally, I note that the Eleventh Circuit considered a case with almost identical facts and reached the same conclusion that the majority has here. In United States v. Pruitt, 11 the court considered the propriety of an officer’s interrogation of a driver during a routine traffic stop for speeding. As in this case, once the officer in Pruitt advised the driver of the reason for the stop, he did not issue a citation, but instead began questioning him on unrelated matters such as where his family resided and how he was employed. The officer further “postpon [ed] the writing of [the traffic] ticket,” while attempting to determine whether he possessed any contraband.12 The court concluded that the Fourth Amendment did not authorize the officer’s extended interrogation into unrelated matters:
Lengthening the detention for further questioning beyond that related to the initial stop is permissible in two circumstances. First, the officer may detain the driver for questioning unrelated to the initial stop if he has an objectively reasonable and articulable suspicion illegal activity has occurred or is occurring. Second, further questioning unre*869lated to the initial stop is permissible if the initial detention has become a consensual encounter.13
In Pruitt, as in this case, the circumstances did not permit such extended detention. There, the officer had no “objectively reasonable and articulable suspicion” that the driver committed any offense other than the traffic violation, and because the officer had not returned the driver’s license, the initial detention had not become a consensual encounter.14 Relying on Knowles, the court concluded that the “ ‘fishing expedition’ . . . [was] simply irrelevant, and constitute[d] a violation of Terry .”15 reach the same conclusion here.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Smith, Judge Miller and Judge Phipps join in this special concurrence.

 Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U. S. 648, 653-654 (99 SC 1391, 59 LE2d 660) (1979).

 See OCGA § 40-8-76.1; Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U. S. 33, 38 (117 SC 417, 136 LE2d 347) (1996) (in light of speeding violation, officer had probable cause to stop motorist).

 See Prouse, supra, 440 U. S. at 659.

 See Robinette, supra, 519 U. S. at 38.

 See Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U. S. 113, 118 (119 SC 484, 142 LE2d 492) (1998).

 Id.

 Id.

 See id.

 Id.

 174 F3d 1215 (11th Cir. 1999).

 Id. at 1218.

 (Citations omitted.) Id. at 1220.

 Id.

 Id. at 1221.