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CA4: Defendant's escalating nervousness coupled with another car stopping nearby and then probably calling defendant was RS

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

The officer had reasonable suspicion to stop defendant’s car. Defendant saw the officer and then pulled off the interstate and parked on the off ramp, so the officer pulled up behind him. Defendant was excessively and progressively more nervous, and he said he’d been to Atlanta (a source city) but didn’t know how long he’d been there. Meanwhile, a BMW slowed and stopped about 75 yards behind them for about two minutes. It left and then the cell phone in the car started ringing. The officer asked for consent, and defendant said that he could not give consent because it was not his car, but he would have if it was his. “While none of these items independently amounts to a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, blending each of these ‘tiles’ into the ‘entire mosaic’ of the totality of the circumstances, we believe Crompton had reasonable suspicion to detain Wallace while he walked the drug dog around the car...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on March 13, 2011 (boomark / email).