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MD: Removal of occupants from car is irrelevant if there is cause for stop

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Defendant's removal from the car is "utterly immaterial" to the question of the cause for the stop. The eight minutes for the dog to arrive was not unreasonable. Jackson v. State, 2010 Md. App. LEXIS 24 (February 4, 2010). This is another entertaining opinion by Retired Judge Moylan, inter alia, describing the Arvizu/Sokolow totality of the circumstances approach as "If It Looks Like a Duck and Walks Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck…": . . . As long as the automobile itself was being constitutionally detained as of the moment the dog made its positive alert, whatever may have been happening to the appellant in the meantime, good or bad, is utterly immaterial. Whether the appellant was being royally wined and dined, on the one hand, or was being greeted as if exiting the Biograph Theatre in Chicago, on the other, is an extraneous consideration that had no impact on the legitimacy of the dog sniff...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on February 08, 2010 (boomark / email).