NC: Taking defendant’s driver’s license back to the patrol car to run it is a seizure of the person and not de minimus under Rodriguez; RS required

Taking defendant’s driver’s license back to the patrol car to run it is a seizure of the person and not de minimus under Rodriguez. Reasonable suspicion is required. State v. Leak, 2015 N.C. App. LEXIS 445 (June 2, 2015) (2-1):

When a law enforcement officer took defendant’s driver’s license to the officer’s patrol vehicle to conduct computer research into the status of defendant’s driver’s license, this amounted to a seizure under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In Rodriguez v. United States, __ U.S. __, 191 L. Ed. 2d 492, 135 S. Ct. 1609 (2015), the United States Supreme Court rejected the argument that an otherwise unconstitutional seizure may be justified simply by characterizing it as a brief or “de minimus” violation of a defendant’s rights under the Fourth Amendment.

. . .

… On the basis of Chief Gallimore’s testimony, the holding of Jackson, and our analysis of the totality of the circumstances, we hold that a seizure occurred when Chief Gallimore took defendant’s license back to his patrol car. The trial court erred in ruling that defendant was not seized.

Our conclusion is neither novel nor unusual. See, e.g., United States v. Jones, 701 F.3d 1300, 1315 (10th Cir. Kan. 2012) (“the government acknowledges that Mr. Jones was seized once the officers took Mr. Jones’s license and proceeded to conduct a records check based upon it”) (citing United States v. Lambert, 46 F.3d 1064, 1068 (10th Cir. 1995)); United States v. Farrior, 535 F.3d 210, 219 (4th Cir. 2008) (“The fact that Officer Morris had returned Farrior’s license and registration also strongly indicates that the encounter was consensual and that no seizure occurred within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.”); and Liberal v. Estrada, 632 F.3d 1064, 1083 (9th Cir. 2011) (noting that the case before it was “like [United States v.] ChanJimenez, 125 F.3d [1324,] 1326 [(9th Cir. 1997)] in which we held that the motorist had been seized because the police officer had retained possession of his driver’s license and vehicle’s registration”).