LAW 605 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: Vice, Road Traffic Safety
23 Dec 2019
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Whren v. united states (1996: facts: plainclothes vice squad officers (not on traffic duty) patrolling high drug area. Saw car w/ temporary license plates stopped for 20 secs at stop sign, driver looking into lap of passenger; when police did a u-turn, car abruptly turned right w/o signaling and sped off. Police caught up to car in traffic, got out, identified self, told driver to put car in park; saw d holding two bags of crack cocaine. Police can"t do this, but it doesn"t violate 4a if police did. All that is mattered for 4a purposes is objective reasonableness of stop: takeaway: court really doesn"t care about subjective intent of the officers, want it to be objective. Helps police know boundaries and helps courts evaluate later: low degree of confidence that we"ll get accurate info from police about why he really did what he did.
