OR: Questions about drugs without RS during a traffic stop exceeded the basis of the stop

“ Officers conducting a traffic stop may only conduct investigation unrelated to that traffic stop if they have independent constitutional justification for further inquiries. Neither line of inquiry here (first, whether defendant had drugs, and second whether she illegally possessed a gun) was related to the basis of the traffic stop. The only remaining question is whether that nontraffic-stop-related inquiry was justified by reasonable suspicion of a crime. It plainly was not.” State v. Hallam, 307 Ore. App. 796, 2020 Ore. App. LEXIS 1514 (Dec. 9, 2020).

Defendant can’t challenge the search here without challenging the predicate steps to the ultimate search. He assumes the dog sniff was unreasonable in his argument, but it was ever litigated before the USMJ, so this claim fails. Besides, there was probable cause after all. United States v. Hussein, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 233289 (D. Minn. Dec. 11, 2020).

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