Court of Appeals Finds Extension of Traffic Stop Unsupported by Reasonable Suspicion

Last week, the court of appeals decided State v. Bedient, a significant post-Rodriguez opinion on traffic stops. The court ruled that an officer lacked reasonable suspicion to extend a stop by a few seconds to ask the driver for consent to search. This post summarizes and analyzes the case. Facts. A deputy stopped the defendant at 11:30 p.m. for failing to dim her high beams. The two had a brief preliminary discussion, during which the defendant identified the sole passenger in the vehicle as her daughter. The officer then asked the defendant for her license. The defendant took 20 seconds to locate it, and the officer thought that she “seemed nervous because she was fidgety and was reaching all over the car and in odd places such as the sun visor.” The deputy determined that he had seen the defendant the night before at the home of a local drug dealer, and remembered that the defendant’s husband had called the sheriff’s office to complain that the defendant “was taking up residence” with the drug dealer. The officer then returned to his vehicle to run the defendant’s license and to run a warrant check on the driver and her passenger. While doing so, the officer saw the defendant “moving around her car and reaching for her sun visor again.” The officer issued a verbal warning for the headlight violation, spoke briefly with the defendant about whether the address listed on her license was current, then asked the defendant (1) whether she had [...]