Iowa adopts Rodriguez under state constitution after a lengthy comparison of its own cases and cases from around the country. A claim of officer safety has to be objectively justified by the record; merely stating it doesn’t make it so. State v. Coleman, 2017 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 11 (Feb. 10, 2017), overruling Jackson v. State, 315 N.W.2d 766 (Iowa 1982):
We recognize, however, that officer safety is a legitimate and weighty interest in the context of traffic stops. See Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 110, 98 S. Ct. 330, 333, 54 L. Ed. 2d 331, 336-37 (1977) (per curiam). Yet, as the Supreme Court stated in Knowles, the safety concerns arising out of a potential traffic citation are “a good deal less than in the case of a custodial arrest.” 525 U.S. at 117, 119 S. Ct. at 487, 142 L. Ed. 2d at 498. Nonetheless, in Mimms, the Supreme Court held that an officer can direct a driver to get out of the car to ensure the officer’s safety. 434 U.S. at 110-11, 98 S. Ct. at 333, 54 L. Ed. 2d at 337.
Yet, for a more intrusive Terry-type stop, reasonable suspicion is constitutionally required before the officers may engage in a pat-down search. United States v. Clark, 24 F.3d 299, 303 (D.C. Cir. 1994); United States v. Coley, 974 F. Supp. 41, 44 (D.C. Dist. 1997). There is no categorical approach to pat-down searches. The validity of a pat-down search, an important part of ensuring officer safety, depends upon the facts of each case. See Ramirez v. City of Buena Park, 560 F.3d 1012, 1022 (9th Cir. 2009) (rejecting Terry-type pat-down based on “conclusory references to ‘officer safety'”).
The same is true in the context of extending the duration of an automobile stop when the underlying problem has been resolved. While in most extended traffic-stop cases an officer safety claim has not been asserted, in cases where officer safety has been raised, the courts have repeatedly rejected generalized, unsubstantiated claims related to officer safety as a basis for extending a traffic stop. See, e.g., United States v. Henderson, 463 F.3d 27, 45-46 (1st Cir. 2006) (conclusory argument of officer safety not based on facts insufficient); Smith, 37 F. Supp. 3d at 812-13 (insufficient evidence of threat to safety to justify extended stop); State v. McCaulley, 831 N.E.2d 474, 476-77 (Ohio Ct. App. 2005) (no safety reasons for detention of driver in back seat of squad car). Here, there is no indication in the record that the officer feared for his safety. Indeed, the officer allowed the unhandcuffed driver to accompany him back to the vehicle when the officer conducted the search.
Further, our holding does not increase the risks of harm to officers, but in fact lessens it. Under the result in this case, the officer is required to allow the driver to go on his or her way after the resolution of the reason for the stop. This can be accomplished by a brief gesture, an announcement from the back of the vehicle, or a brief conversation at the driver’s window. In this case, it would have simply only required the officer to say “good-bye” to the driver and allow him to return to the car. In fact, any increased officer danger arises from continuing the detention of the driver while the license and warrant checks are conducted. Thus, the very outcome sought by the State in this case would increase danger to officers, not lessen it. Officer safety might be a valid concern when tethered to a suspect’s continuing detention, but not when the suspect is free to go. The State is not entitled to relief from an exigency of its own creation.
As indicated above, it is not clear whether Jackson was a Fourth Amendment or article I, section 8 case. In any event, to the extent that Jackson is inconsistent with our holding today, we overrule it. We conclude that when the reason for a traffic stop is resolved and there is no other basis for reasonable suspicion, article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution requires that the driver must be allowed to go his or her way without further ado.
by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book www.johnwesleyhall.com
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams
v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold,
J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws,
or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that
bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the
police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater
than it is today."
— Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their
property."
—Entick
v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have
frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And
so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his
case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth
Amendment."
—United
States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated
here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman
v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the
bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona
v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly
exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth
Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in
an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz
v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to
protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born
to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United
States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted
intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by
government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose
it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United
States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want /
But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration
camp]
“You know, most men would get discouraged by
now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers,
is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which
reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that
those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being
judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting
out crime."
—Johnson
v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)