{"id":7569,"date":"2012-08-12T10:37:04","date_gmt":"2012-08-12T10:32:39","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-08-12T10:32:39","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=7569","title":{"rendered":"NC adopts CA8’s de minimus standard for extending dog stops"},"content":{"rendered":"

NC adopts the de minimus seizure standard of the Eighth Circuit\u2019s Alexander<\/a> in traffic stops extended for the drug dog to arrive. State v. Sellars<\/a>, 2012 N.C. App. LEXIS 949 (August 7, 2012):<\/p>\n

There are two lines of cases from the North Carolina Court of Appeals which appear to reach contradictory conclusions on the question of whether a de minimis delay implicates a defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights. Upon closer examination of the facts and timing of these decisions, we hold that they are reconcilable.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

In United States v. Alexander<\/a>, 448 F.3d 1014 (8th Cir. 2006), the 8th circuit expanded upon the reasoning in Caballes and embraced the de minimis approach to traffic stops. Defendant, Alexander, was stopped due to his car having only one of the required two California license plates. After the officer indicated that he was only going to issue him a warning, the officer then asked for permission to search the vehicle. Alexander declined. Id. at 1017. The officer then told Alexander that he would be conducting a dog sniff test on the car and if nothing was detected he would be free to leave. Id. The drug dog alerted to the car and a subsequent search revealed drugs in the vehicle. The drug sniff test was completed approximately four minutes after Alexander was told he would be receiving a warning ticket. Id. The court held that this four-minute detention was de minimis:<\/p>\n

Once an officer has decided to permit a routine traffic offender to depart with a ticket, a warning, or an all clear, the Fourth Amendment applies to limit any subsequent detention or search. United States v. $404,905.00 in U.S. Currency, 182 F.3d 643, 648 (8th Cir.1999). We recognize, however, that this dividing line is artificial and that dog sniffs that occur within a short time following the completion of a traffic stop are not constitutionally prohibited if they constitute only de minimis intrusions on the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights. Id. at 649; see also Martin, 411 F.3d at 1002.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

448 F.3d at 1016. The court went on to hold that the artificial line marking the end of a traffic stop does not foreclose the momentary extension of the detention for the purpose of conducting a canine sniff of the vehicle’s exterior. Id. at 1017.<\/p>\n

We conclude that the Falana line of cases did not consider the de minimis analysis created by Caballas and Alexander. However, the latter case of Brimmer allowed police to extend a traffic stop for the purpose of a dog sniff for a de minimis amount of time. Under Brimmer this de minimis rule applies in North Carolina.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Get used to it because this is the wave of the future. From my rules:<\/p>\n

4. A seizure and a search are separate constitutional events. (Soldal) <\/p>\n

5. Both recognize de minimus intrusions as being unreasonable (seizures (Delgado); searches (Hicks)), but lower courts like finding seizures de minimus more than searches.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}