- Click here for the scoop from ScotusBlog.
From ScotusBlog's analysis:
The Court issued a seemingly simple rule today in Rodriguez v. United States: “A seizure for a traffic violation justifies a police investigation of that violation” – not more — and “authority for the seizure . . . ends when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are – or reasonably should have been—completed.” Because being stopped by police officers for traffic violations is a common occurrence for us all (not just drug dealers), this six-to-three decision probably gives some (small) comfort to many. Traffic stops have to be reasonably short, and unless there is reasonable suspicion of some other crime, officers can’t use the stop as a subterfuge for extraneous investigation. Most specifically, says Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s opinion for the Court, officers can’t prolong a traffic stop just to perform a dog-sniffing drug search.
But as Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas point out in separate dissents, the world is usually more complicated and nuanced than sound-bite summaries can accommodate. In fact, says Justice Thomas, the majority’s rule will lead to “arbitrary results,” depending on how efficient, or technology-adept, the individual officer who stops a car is. And Justice Alito predicts, whether cynically or just realistically, that officers will now be trained on the “prescribed” protocols that will still enable them to conduct traffic-stop dog sniffs if they want to. (He says he “would love to be the proverbial fly on the wall” for such training sessions – really?) Moreover, he finds it “perverse” that if the officer in this case had not waited for a back-up officer for safety reasons, he could have performed a solo dog sniff without any constitutional problem.
- Here's more from Oyez.
- Plus an analysis from CityLab.
