Questions about travel plans are not always permitted during traffic stop

Kasper Schirer won in State v. Jimenez, No. 116,250 (Kan. June 22, 2018), affirming Judge Segarra's suppression order in a Geary County transfer of drug proceeds prosecution. When Ms. Jimenez was getting a rental agreement from the glove box during a traffic stop for following too close, the officer saw some money bundled in a rubber band. The officer had Ms. Jimenez go to his car where he questioned her about her trip. Abut five minutes and 34 seconds passed between the vehicle stop and calling in of Ms. Jimenez' drivers' license. Shortly thereafter, the officer deployed his canine unit to sniff the car. It alerted six minutes and 49 seconds after the stop began. The officer asked if there were drugs in the car, which Ms. Jimenez denied. The officer also asked whether there were any large amounts of money in the car, and Ms. Jimenez indicated there was $8,000 in cash to pay rent. Officers searched the car and found no drugs, but several currency bundles totaling about $50,000.

Judge Segarra found that the officer measurably extended the stop with questions about Ms. Jimenez' travel plans, which were unrelated to the purpose of the traffic stop, and that the officer lacked reasonable suspicion to detain her at that time. The COA reversed finding that travel plan questions were always within a stop's scope. The KSC distinguished and limited a previous case that the state touted as justifying travel plan questions during any traffic stop:

The [Rodriguez v. United States, 135 S.Ct. 1609 (2015)] court proclaimed a traffic stop's purpose is addressing the infraction and forbade the stop's duration be any longer than necessary to effectuate that purpose. This leads us to conclude Rodriguez does not envision unbridled travel plan questioning as a staple of traffic stop inquiries. Circumstances will dictate whether and to what extent such questions become part of the mission. 

The KSC recognized that travel plan questions could be appropriate as part of a traffic stop if tied to enforcement of the traffic code, like making sure that a driver can safely operate a vehicle. But the KSC noted that such questions would be harder to justify for many other traffic stops:

These scenarios highlight why circumstances dictate how a court views travel plan questioning. And courts must guard against what might be called "mission creep" by rejecting poorly justified excuses for law enforcement actions that temporally extend traffic stop encounters but lack "the same close connection to roadway safety" as those tasks enumerated in Rodriguez. In other words, when travel plan questions can be seen as having a close connection to roadway safety, they can occur without unconstitutionally extending the stop's scope. See 4 Search & Seizure § 9.3(d) (rejecting argument that travel plan questions are always within the traffic stop's scope and noting Rodriguez' listing did not include such questioning as part of the mission).

The KSC specifically rejected "the State's effort to have Kansas courts condone across-the-board travel plan inquiries."

Applying this test, the KSC agreed with Judge Segarra that "the questioning was unrelated to the infraction or the traffic stop's mission and measurably extended the stop."

Instead of pursuing his mission—inspecting the driver's license, verifying the registration and insurance, and determining if Jimenez was subject to outstanding warrants—Blake chose a different, unrelated investigation into Jimenez' recent activities, but "not to gain some insight into the traffic infraction providing the legal basis for the stop." This prolonged the stop because Blake was doing nothing in the interim to process the traffic violation. And he repeatedly testified he did not suspect criminal activity, so there was no colorable, independent justification for the portions of the detention attributable solely to the unrelated inquiries. As a result, this extended detention violated the Fourth Amendment. 

In conclusion, the KSC also rejected the COA's reasoning that the fact that the entire stop (until the dog alerted) lasted only 6 minutes and 49 seconds.  The KSC clarified that Rodriguez had rejected any sort of "rule-of thumb approach." Because the stop was measurably extended without a sufficient basis, the KSC affirmed the suppression order.