Waiting 24 hours after the alleged traffic violation to make a stop was unreasonable under the state constitution. Commonwealth v. Arias, 2026 Mass. LEXIS 161 (Apr. 15, 2026):
Regarding the defendant’s interests, while a traffic stop conducted immediately upon observing a traffic violation “cannot be ‘arbitrary,’ because it is predicated on a driver violating a traffic law,” Buckley, 478 Mass. at 869, the passage of time after such a violation increases the possibility of arbitrary police conduct, see Hensley, 469 U.S. at 228-229, citing Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 51, 99 S. Ct. 2637, 61 L. Ed. 2d 357 (1979). See Brown, supra (“central concern” in assessing seizures short of arrest is “to assure that an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy is not subject to arbitrary invasions solely at the unfettered discretion of officers in the field”). The risk of arbitrary police conduct is heightened in the context of civil traffic infractions, because “[t]he nature of traffic citations renders them uniquely suited to manipulation and misuse.” Commonwealth v. Pappas, 384 Mass. 428, 431, 425 N.E.2d 323 (1981) (discussing “normally fleeting and nonserious nature of most traffic infractions”). See Commonwealth v. Long, 485 Mass. 711, 739, 152 N.E.3d 725 (2020) (Budd, J., concurring), quoting LaFave, The “Routine Traffic Stop” from Start to Finish: Too Much “Routine,” Not Enough Fourth Amendment, 102 Mich. L. Rev. 1843, 1853 (2004) (collecting statistics illustrating that “[v]ery few drivers can traverse any appreciable distance without violating some traffic regulation”). Indeed, in part “to prevent such abuses by eliminating unreasonable or unnecessary delay,” Pappas, supra, our Legislature has provided a defense to “automobile law violations” — whether civil or criminal — where a citation is not issued “at the time and place of the violation,” subject only to limited exceptions, Commonwealth v. Foley, 496 Mass. 320, 324, 262 N.E.3d 202 (2025), quoting G. L. c. 90C, § 2.
Acknowledging the salience of the passage of time in this context and guided by the touchstone of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment, other courts presented with claims that delay in conducting a traffic stop for a motor vehicle violation rendered the stop unreasonable have considered all of the circumstances surrounding the stop to determine whether the delay rendered the stop unreasonable, without imposing a “contemporaneity requirement” or other “specific time limitation.” United States v. Zuniga, 860 F.3d 276, 281-282 (5th Cir. 2017). These courts have considered factors including the length of the delay, any justification for the delay, and the nature of the violation. See, e.g., id. at 282 (fifteen-minute delay reasonable where officer “radioed information about the turn-signal violation to his colleagues as soon as he saw it occur” and no officer was “in position to stop the vehicle at the time”); United States v. Copeland, 321 F.3d 582, 594-595 (6th Cir. 2003) (stop one mile away from parking violation reasonable where officers “immediately circled the block to further investigate” violation, third-party vehicle “entered the road between the defendants’ vehicle and the patrol car,” and officers made stop “[o]nce this third vehicle turned off the road”); United States v. Mendonca, 682 F. Supp. 2d 98, 101, 104 (D. Mass. 2010) (one-hour delay following series of traffic violations unreasonable where not required “to gain a tactical advantage” in making stop and where “obvious rationale” for stop was to investigate unrelated conduct; defendant had loaded suspicious packages into vehicle during delay). See also State v. Myers, 490 So. 2d 700, 701-702, 704 (La. Ct. App. 1986) (same-morning stop reasonable based on police report from neighboring State of driver leaving scene of one-vehicle accident, where “impaired or non-attentive driver … might have been dangerous to other traffic”).
We agree that, while there is no “specific time limitation” on stopping a driver for a civil traffic violation, “the elapsed time between an observed violation and any subsequent stop must be reasonable upon consideration of the totality of the circumstances.” Zuniga, 860 F.3d at 282. Because art. 14 protects defendants from arbitrary police conduct, an observed civil traffic infraction “cannot hang over a suspect indefinitely until a time at which he has engaged in some other suspicious activity that officers believe warrants a pretextual stop.” Daveiga, 489 Mass. at 353, quoting Mendonca, 682 F. Supp. 2d at 104. When, based on the totality of the circumstances, there is an unreasonable delay between a traffic infraction and a stop, “the individual[‘s] interests prevail, and police authority to conduct a motor vehicle stop on the basis of [the] observed traffic violation terminates.” Daveiga, supra at 353-354. As with all warrantless seizures, the Commonwealth bears the burden to establish that the stop was reasonable. See Commonwealth v. White, 475 Mass. 583, 587-588, 59 N.E.3d 369 (2016); Commonwealth v. Shields, 402 Mass. 162, 164, 521 N.E.2d 987 (1988).
On the record before us, the Commonwealth has not met its burden. …
