The Right to Life, Liberty, and Fifteen Additional Days to Renew Your Registration

Before I became a lawyer, I finished everything ahead of time. Term paper? Completed two weeks early. Trip? Packed a week in advance. Taxes? Filed in February. Alas, those days are nearly two decades behind me. Now I squeak in just under the wire with everything I do—including my weekly blog posts. I could proffer a host of reasons, but don’t think I need to so long as I meet the deadline. My modus operandi may explain why I was particularly troubled by the traffic stop in State v. Baskins, ___ N.C. App. ___ (May 17, 2016). Facts. An undercover Greensboro narcotics detective was monitoring the activities of passengers who disembarked from a bus early in the morning of October 6, 2014, when the actions of one passenger caught his attention. The passenger and his companion got off of the bus and walked into a nearby convenience store. The passenger came back out of the store a couple of minutes later, walked backwards towards the detective’s unmarked car, looked into the car, shooed the detective away, and walked back into the store. A burgundy Buick then pulled into the parking lot. The bus passenger got into the passenger seat of the Buick and his companion got into the right rear seat. The Buick then left the parking lot. The detective entered the Buick’s license plate into his mobile computer terminal, which accessed information from the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The detective, who suspected the pair of drug trafficking activity, subsequently radioed [...]