Myers McNeill and What Happens When Reasonable Suspicion Dissipates

Last week, the court of appeals ruled that during a traffic stop, an officer may require a driver to produce his or her license and may run computer checks on it -- even when the reasonable suspicion that initially supported the traffic stop has been dispelled before the officer asks for the license. This issue comes up regularly and has divided courts in other jurisdictions, so I thought it worth discussing here. The case in question is State v. Myers McNeil. Facts. Raleigh officers were running computer checks on the license plates of passing vehicles. When they determined that the registered owner of one passing car was a man with a suspended license, they pulled the car over to determine whether the owner was driving unlawfully. An officer approached the vehicle and noticed immediately that the driver was a woman. She did not roll her window down at first, instead fumbling with her wallet. When the officer knocked on the window and asked her to roll it down, she opened it about two inches. He asked her for her license, and she said that she had one, but kept going through her wallet without producing one. At that point, the officer smelled the odor of alcohol coming from the vehicle, and also noticed that the driver was slurring her words slightly. The officer then began a DWI investigation that culminated in the defendant’s arrest. Procedural history. The defendant was convicted in district court and appealed to superior court. She moved to [...]