IN: Conditioning getting out of a vehicle during a traffic stop on a patdown was valid consent

Unless police have reasonable suspicion that a subject is armed and dangerous, they may generally conduct a pat-down for officer safety only with the subject’s voluntary consent. Here, Defendant asked to step out of his truck during a traffic stop, and police made their permission conditional on a pat-down. Defendant argues that choice was inherently coercive and rendered his consent involuntary, but we disagree. Police could simply have required Defendant to remain in the truck, with no option of getting out, as part of their authority to control the scene of a traffic stop. Therefore, they could also make permission to exit conditional on consent to a pat-down, since Defendant had the option of staying in the truck and thus avoiding the search. We granted transfer after oral argument, and now reverse the trial court’s grant of Defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained as a result of the pat-down.” State v. Cunningham, 2015 Ind. LEXIS 145 (March 2, 2015).

The trial court’s decision not to credit the officer’s testimony because of memory problems of remembering a 2000 traffic stop in 2014 led to granting the motion to suppress. That’s binding on appeal. State v. Castillo, 2015 Ga. App. LEXIS 70 (March 2, 2015).*

After a foreign website was tracked to a child pornography shipping site in the U.S., a search warrant issued for defendant’s house for receiving some of it. It was issued with probable cause to believe that evidence of child pornography would be find. The request for a Franks hearing falls short. United States v. Hood, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24394 (N.D. Ga. February 6, 2015).*