{"id":63851,"date":"2026-04-16T09:32:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T14:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=63851"},"modified":"2026-04-16T09:32:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T14:32:27","slug":"ma-waiting-24-hours-after-the-alleged-traffic-violation-to-make-a-stop-was-unreasonable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=63851","title":{"rendered":"MA: Waiting 24 hours after the alleged traffic violation to make a stop was unreasonable"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Waiting 24 hours after the alleged traffic violation to make a stop was unreasonable under the state constitution. Commonwealth v. Arias<\/a>, 2026 Mass. LEXIS 161 (Apr. 15, 2026):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\n

Regarding the defendant\u2019s interests, while a traffic stop conducted immediately upon observing a traffic violation \u201ccannot be \u2018arbitrary,\u2019 because it is predicated on a driver violating a traffic law,\u201d 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 (\u201ccentral concern\u201d in assessing seizures short of arrest is \u201cto assure that an individual\u2019s reasonable expectation of privacy is not subject to arbitrary invasions solely at the unfettered discretion of officers in the field\u201d). The risk of arbitrary police conduct is heightened in the context of civil traffic infractions, because \u201c[t]he nature of traffic citations renders them uniquely suited to manipulation and misuse.\u201d Commonwealth v. Pappas, 384 Mass. 428, 431, 425 N.E.2d 323 (1981) (discussing \u201cnormally fleeting and nonserious nature of most traffic infractions\u201d). See Commonwealth v. Long, 485 Mass. 711, 739, 152 N.E.3d 725 (2020) (Budd, J., concurring), quoting LaFave, The \u201cRoutine Traffic Stop\u201d from Start to Finish: Too Much \u201cRoutine,\u201d Not Enough Fourth Amendment, 102 Mich. L. Rev. 1843, 1853 (2004) (collecting statistics illustrating that \u201c[v]ery few drivers can traverse any appreciable distance without violating some traffic regulation\u201d). Indeed, in part \u201cto prevent such abuses by eliminating unreasonable or unnecessary delay,\u201d Pappas, supra, our Legislature has provided a defense to \u201cautomobile law violations\u201d \u2014 whether civil or criminal \u2014 where a citation is not issued \u201cat the time and place of the violation,\u201d subject only to limited exceptions, Commonwealth v. Foley, 496 Mass. 320, 324, 262 N.E.3d 202 (2025), quoting G. L. c. 90C, \u00a7 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201ccontemporaneity requirement\u201d or other \u201cspecific time limitation.\u201d 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 \u201cradioed information about the turn-signal violation to his colleagues as soon as he saw it occur\u201d and no officer was \u201cin position to stop the vehicle at the time\u201d); United States v. Copeland, 321 F.3d 582, 594-595 (6th Cir. 2003) (stop one mile away from parking violation reasonable where officers \u201cimmediately circled the block to further investigate\u201d violation, third-party vehicle \u201centered the road between the defendants\u2019 vehicle and the patrol car,\u201d and officers made stop \u201c[o]nce this third vehicle turned off the road\u201d); 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 \u201cto gain a tactical advantage\u201d in making stop and where \u201cobvious rationale\u201d 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 \u201cimpaired or non-attentive driver \u2026 might have been dangerous to other traffic\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We agree that, while there is no \u201cspecific time limitation\u201d on stopping a driver for a civil traffic violation, \u201cthe elapsed time between an observed violation and any subsequent stop must be reasonable upon consideration of the totality of the circumstances.\u201d Zuniga, 860 F.3d at 282. Because art. 14 protects defendants from arbitrary police conduct, an observed civil traffic infraction \u201ccannot 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.\u201d 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, \u201cthe individual[‘s] interests prevail, and police authority to conduct a motor vehicle stop on the basis of [the] observed traffic violation terminates.\u201d 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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the record before us, the Commonwealth has not met its burden. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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):<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63852,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63851\/revisions\/63852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}