Court Opinion

ID: 9624049
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:49:29.891003+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:38.082318
License: Public Domain

*282Eldridge, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur with the judgment in this case. I write because it bears recognition that not four months after deciding State v. Gibbons, 248 Ga. App. 859 (547 SE2d 679) (2001), we are trying to find a way around its irrational holding, which has already become the basis for numerous appeals.
No matter how artfully the majority attempts to distinguish this case from Gibbons by suggesting two officers make a difference because the drug questioning does not then “prolong” a valid seat belt detention, there is no difference between Gibbons and the instant case.
Here, as in Gibbons, in the middle of a brief (four-minute) lawful detention for seat belt violation, an officer asked about drugs and requested consent to search. In Gibbons, this Court held specifically that it was the content of the officer’s questions, themselves, that made the detention illegal.26 That is why the entire colloquy between the police officer and the detainee was cited by the majority in Gibbons27 when affirming the trial court’s finding that “by asking questions unrelated to the seat belt violation, the trooper exceeded the authorized scope of the original stop.”28 As further stated by Judge Ruffin in his special concurrence, which was joined by four judges, including the author of the current majority:
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. . . . The officer’s probing interrogation was unrelated to the [seat] belt violation, no matter when it occurred. . . . [T]he continued detention became illegal because of the inappropriate questioning.29
In both Gibbons and Berry v. State,30 decided at the same time, the detentions were no longer than the one in the instant case. In fact, in Berry, the officer and Berry were waiting for information to come back from a police radio check on Berry’s license and registration when the K-9 free-air search was conducted; thus, the K-9 *283search did not “prolong” the detention.
Decided June 29, 2001
Gilbert J. Murrah, for appellant.
J. Brown Moseley, District Attorney, for appellee.
And giving pause especially is the majority’s invocation of United States v. Purcell,31 which held “a police officer’s questioning, even on a subject unrelated to the purpose of the stop, is not itself a Fourth Amendment violation. Mere questioning is neither a search nor a seizure.”32 Purcell, cited only in dissent by this writer, was ignored completely by the Gibbons majority.33
In a word, I concur with the judgment in this case. I welcome the retrenchment from Gibbons. And I predict ever more novel and interesting methods of attempting to circumvent its eminently wrongheaded holding until reversal is finally demanded — or, as reflected in the instant case, sufficient contrary precedent is established to allow us to disregard Gibbons totally as we evolve into the law as put forward in Purcell, i.e., “only unrelated questions which unreasonably prolong the detention are unlawful.”34

 Contrary to the majority’s assertion, only two judges — not six —joined with Judge Pope’s special concurrence in Gibbons which tried to temper the effect of the majority opinion. Unfortunately, it could not because the facts in Gibbons could not be altered, i.e., during a brief (four-minute) valid detention for seat belt violation, the officer questioned Gibbons about drugs before issuing him a citation.

 Supra at 860-863.

 Id. at 863.

 (Emphasis supplied.) Id. at 868 (Ruffin, J., concurring specially).

 248 Ga. App. 874 (547 SE2d 664) (2001).

 236 F3d 1274 (11th Cir. 2001).

 Id. at 1279-1280.

 State v. Gibbons, supra at 870-871 (Eldridge, J., dissenting).

 Id., citing United States v. Purcell, supra at 1280.