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OR: Stalling decision to give a ticket to keep conversation going unlawfully extended the stop

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Officer stalled his decision whether to give the defendant a traffic ticket and instead kept the conversation going to find whether he could find more. State v. Broughton, 2008 Ore. App. LEXIS 1128 (August 13, 2008): The officer had all the information he needed to cite defendant for the malfunctioning brake light. Instead of issuing the citation or informing defendant that she was free to leave, the officer delayed by doing neither while he contemplated whether or not to issue the citation. That delay was not an "unavoidable lull in the investigation" as we described in Rodgers. Rather, the officer engaged defendant in a conversation unrelated to the traffic stop that was not supported by reasonable suspicion of other criminal activity and that had the "effect of detaining defendant beyond a completed traffic stop[,]" resulting in an unlawful extension of what initially was a lawful traffic stop...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on August 18, 2008 (boomark / email).