North Carolina Supreme Court Affirms Post-Rodriguez Court of Appeals Ruling in State v. Warren

Last April, 2015, the United States Supreme Court in Rodriguez v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 1609 (2015), significantly limited the scope of a traffic stop. The Court ruled that an officer may not extend a completed traffic stop for any period of time, no matter how brief, to conduct a dog sniff—absent reasonable suspicion of criminal activity (or consent). The Court rejected the government’s argument that an officer may incrementally prolong a traffic stop, which some lower courts, including North Carolina’s, had justified as a de minimis intrusion. The Court reasoned that a dog alert is not a permissible part of a traffic stop because it detects evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing, which is not part of an officer’s traffic mission. The Court, however, clearly indicated that if a dog sniff or other non-traffic-related activity does not add any time to the stop (in this case, it added 7–8 minutes), then the dog sniff or other activity is valid under the Fourth Amendment, as it previously had ruled in Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405 (2005). My January 27, 2016, post, available here, discussed the two post-Rodriguez published North Carolina appellate cases, State v. Leak, ___ N.C. App. ___, 773 S.E.2d 340 (June 2, 2015), and State v. Warren, ___ N.C. App. ___, 775 S.E.2d 362 (August 4, 2015). As I noted in the post, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed Leak and vacated the court of appeals decision and remanded the case to the trial court to reconsider the [...]