Some Good News from SCOTUS

[Content Note: War on drugs.]

For a change:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the police may not prolong traffic stops to wait for drug sniffing dogs to inspect vehicles.

"A police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution's shield against unreasonable seizures," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. The vote was 6 to 3.

The case, Rodriguez v. United States No. 13-9972, started when a Nebraska police officer saw a Mercury Mountaineer driven by Dennys Rodriguez veer onto the shoulder of a state highway just after midnight. The officer, Morgan Struble performed a routine traffic stop, questioning Mr. Rodriguez and his passenger and running a records check. He then issued Mr. Rodriguez a written warning.

That completed the stop, Justice Ginsburg wrote. But Officer Struble then had his drug-sniffing dog, Floyd, circle the vehicle. Floyd smelled drugs and led his officer to a large bag of methamphetamine. About eight minutes elapsed between the written warning and Floyd's alert.

..."An officer, in other words, may conduct certain unrelated checks during an otherwise lawful traffic stop," she wrote. But, she added, "he may not do so in a way that prolongs the stop, absent the reasonable suspicion ordinarily demanded to justify detaining an individual."

This is a good ruling. Without any reasonable suspicion to search a vehicle for drugs (and, as was argued in this case, the scent of air freshener in a car does not, in fact, constitute reasonable suspicion), police should not be allowed to detain drivers to allow drug-sniffing K-9 units to do a random search.

Police aren't meant to subject people to fishing expeditions to see if they've done anything wrong, and that's exactly what holding someone at a traffic stop to bring in dogs is. Well done, SCOTUS.