Facts
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At 2:38 a.m. on July 26, 2021, Officer April Rose was performing a beat check at a mall in Ridgeland, Mississippi, when she noticed Terrence Wogan and Heather Wilkes asleep in their car in the mall parking lot. They explained to Officer Rose that they had pulled off the interstate into the parking lot because they were getting sleepy. As Officer Rose was asking questions, she noticed an empty Fireball whiskey bottle in the backseat. They denied drinking any whiskey that night. Several minutes later, Officer Hunter Bridges and K-9 Officer Ben Johnson arrived on the scene. Officer Johnson conducted a dog sniff, which led to a positive alert for narcotics. The Officers then searched the car. When they found drug paraphernalia in Wilkes’s purse, they arrested her.
The district court held that the facts alleged in the complaint are sufficient to state a claim against Officers Rose and Bridges for unlawful detention in violation of plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment rights and to overcome qualified immunity. The court explained that Officers Rose and Bridges allegedly detained Appellees too long without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, which could reasonably be found to be longer than was reasonably necessary. Second, the court held that Officer Johnson was obviously not entitled to qualified immunity as to the Fourth Amendment unreasonable search claim because he allegedly manufactured a “positive alert” during the dog sniff to find probable cause to search the vehicle. The 5th reversed on both matters.
Analysis
A stop violates the Fourth Amendment if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to resolve the matter that occasioned the stop. See SCOTUS Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348 (2015). But if the officer develops reasonable suspicion of additional criminal activity, he may further detain the occupants of the vehicle for a reasonable time while appropriately attempting to dispel this reasonable suspicion. See Andres. Reasonable suspicion exists when the officer can point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant the search and seizure.
Applying Rodriguez, the district court ruled that the Officers unreasonably prolonged the stop by conducting a dog sniff. The Officers disagree. They argue they properly extended the stop because Officer Rose had reasonable suspicion to believe they had violated Ridgeland’s open container ordinance. That ordinance makes it unlawful for the driver and/or passenger of a motor vehicle to have on his person or in his possession, beer, light wine or an alcoholic beverage in an open container. See Ridgeland Ordinance No. 200119, § V, Sec. 6-5.2 To support their argument, they point to two facts: (1) the empty liquor bottle in the car, and (2) Wogan’s admission that he had parked at the mall because he was getting sleepy.
We agree with the Officers. Even where it is not part of the initial stop, a dog sniff does not unreasonably prolong the stop if reasonable suspicion of additional criminal activity justifies it. It was reasonable for Officer Rose, after hearing of Wogan’s drowsiness and upon discovering a liquor bottle in the vehicle, to suspect that they had violated Ridgeland’s open container ordinance.
It makes no difference that the whiskey bottle was empty, as Wogan and Wilkes argue. Adopting the district court’s reasoning, they argue that an empty liquor bottle could not have raised reasonable suspicion of criminal activity because the ordinance requires liquid to be in the bottle. The ordinance’s text does not support that counterintuitive reading. Regardless, it was reasonable for Officer Rose to believe that they had recently consumed the whiskey or that more bottles may have been in the car. And Officer Rose could have reasonably extended the stop to investigate whether the bottle contained alcohol anyway. Officer Rose thus had reasonable suspicion that additional criminal activity may have been afoot, justifying a prolonged stop.
Officer Rose’s reasonable suspicion extends to Officer Bridges, who helped search the car, and Officer Johnson, who conducted the dog sniff, under the doctrine of collective knowledge. Under that doctrine, an officer initiating the stop or conducting the search need not have personal knowledge of the evidence that gave rise to the reasonable suspicion or probable cause, so long as he is acting at the request of those who have the necessary information. Wogan and Wilkes do not deny that the Officers could have relied on the collective knowledge doctrine to transfer reasonable suspicion, and the cases they cite do not dispute this.
Accordingly, we conclude that the Officers did not subject them to an unlawful detention or search in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. This means that they cannot satisfy the first prong of qualified immunity, namely that they suffered a constitutional injury. But even if they could, they have not carried their burden of pointing us to any cases showing the Officers’ conduct violated clearly established law. Nor did the district court cite any such precedent. The Officers were therefore entitled to qualified immunity.
We REVERSE the district court’s judgment and RENDER judgment dismissing the officer’s Fourth Amendment claims on the ground of qualified immunity.
https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/25/25-60439.0.pdf