U.S. v. Alexander

• Decision Date: 15 May 2006
• Docket Number: No. 05-3378.,05-3378.
• Citation: 448 F.3d 1014
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. James Stephen ALEXANDER, II, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

448 F.3d 1014

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. James Stephen ALEXANDER, II, Appellant.

No. 05-3378.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: February 15, 2006.

Filed: May 15, 2006.

Assistant Federal Public Defender, Omar F. Greene, argued, Little Rock, AR, for appellant.

Assistant U.S. Atty., Anne Gardner, Little Rock, AR, for appellee.

Before WOLLMAN, FAGG, and ARNOLD, Circuit Judges.

WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

James Stephen Alexander appeals from the district court's¹ denial of his motion to suppress evidence. We affirm.

I.

At approximately 1:49 p.m. on January 25, 2004, Trooper Kyle Drown, a canine officer with the Arkansas Highway Patrol, stopped Alexander as he was driving an automobile that bore only one of two required California license tags. Drown asked Alexander to sit in his patrol car while Drown checked Alexander's Alabama driver's license. While they were in the patrol car, Drown asked Alexander about the details of his trip. Alexander said he had flown to California on January 22 to purchase the car and was returning home to Alabama. As Drown later testified, he was concerned about conflicts and inconsistencies in Alexander's account of his trip, and he noticed that Alexander appeared nervous and very tired.

At approximately 2:01 p.m., Drown told Alexander that he would give him a written warning. Immediately thereafter, Drown asked Alexander whether there was anything illegal in his car and requested Alexander's consent to search the car. Alexander replied that he did not know of any contraband in his car but that because he had not searched it yet himself, he would not consent to a search. At approximately 2:03 p.m., Drown told Alexander that he was going to conduct an exterior search of the vehicle with his drug dog and that if the dog did not alert, Alexander would be free to go.

Drown conducted the exterior search by leading the dog around the car, whereupon the dog alerted to the odor of narcotics. The entire dog sniff search was completed by approximately 2:05 p.m., four minutes after Drown told Alexander that he would be given a warning ticket and sixteen minutes after the traffic stop commenced.

During their subsequent search of the car's interior, Drown and his fellow officer found several duct-taped packages containing methamphetamine and placed Alexander under arrest. Following the district court's denial of his motion to suppress, Alexander entered a conditional guilty plea to one count of possession with intent to distribute more than 500 grams of a mixture or substance containing methamphetamine in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(A). The district court sentenced Alexander to eighty-seven months' imprisonment and five years' supervised release.

II.

A canine sniff of the exterior of a car conducted during a traffic stop that is lawful at its inception and otherwise executed in a reasonable matter does not infringe upon a constitutionally protected interest in privacy. United States v. Martin, 411 F.3d 998, 1002 (8th Cir.2005). Such a dog sniff may be the product of an unconstitutional seizure, however, if the traffic stop is unreasonably prolonged before the dog is employed. Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 407, 125 S.Ct. 834, 160 L.Ed.2d 842 (2005); Martin, 411 F.3d at 1002. Once an officer has decided to permit a routine traffic offender to depart with a ticket, a warning, or an all clear, the Fourth Amendment applies to limit any subsequent detention or search. United States v. $404,905.00 in U.S. Currency, 182 F.3d 643, 648 (8th Cir.1999). We recognize, however, that this dividing line is artificial and that dog sniffs that occur within a short time following the completion of a traffic stop are not constitutionally prohibited if they constitute only de minimis intrusions on the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights. Id. at 649; see also Martin, 411 F.3d at 1002.

Although Alexander concedes that the traffic stop was based on probable cause, he argues that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated because the traffic stop concluded at the point he was notified that he would receive a warning ticket, he did not consent to the dog sniff, and no reasonable suspicion existed to further detain him. We need not determine the exact point at which the traffic stop concluded, however, or whether reasonable suspicion existed to continue to detain Alexander. Even if the lawfully initiated traffic stop terminated at the point at which Trooper Drown told Alexander that he would receive only a warning, our decisions in $404,905.00 and Martin compel the conclusion that the subsequently conducted dog sniff was a de minimis intrusion on Alexander's Fourth Amendment rights.

In $404,905.00, we upheld as constitutional a dog sniff that was performed two minutes after the traffic stop had technically ended, observing that "[w]hen the constitutional standard is reasonableness measured by the totality of the circumstances, we should not be governed by artificial distinctions." 182 F.3d at 649. We concluded that "when a police officer makes a traffic stop and has at his immediate disposal the canine resources to employ this uniquely limited investigative procedure, it does not violate the Fourth Amendment to require that the offending motorist's detention be momentarily extended for a canine sniff of the vehicle's exterior." Id.

In Ma...