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WY: 17 minute traffic stop up to dog alert was not unreasonable

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Seventeen minutes from a traffic stop to a dog alert was not an unreasonable amount of time for the stop. Wallace v. State, 2009 WY 152, 2009 Wyo. LEXIS 170 (December 14, 2009)*: [*P16] Here, Wallace does not dispute the validity of the initial stop and, typically, that leads us to the second prong of the analysis under Terry (i.e., were the officer's actions during the detention reasonably related in scope to the circumstances that justified the interference in the first instance). Damato, P 9, 64 P.3d at 705. However, in this case, we need not look beyond the initial stop because Wallace admits that it was lawful, and also because the record is clear that no improprieties occurred so as to violate Wallace's constitutional rights. The record shows precisely how many minutes Wallace had been detained before the drug dog alerted to drugs at the scene -- just over seventeen minutes elapsed from the time Deputy Stinson stopped the vehicle until the dog alerted...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on December 18, 2009 (boomark / email).