United States of America v. Martin Devalois

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 24-1787
U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
M ARTIN DEVALOIS ,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Indiana, South Bend Division.
No. 3:21-cr-00052-DRL-MGG-1 — Damon R. Leichty, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED NOVEMBER 12, 2024 — DECIDED F EBRUARY 14, 2025
____________________
Before S YKES , Chief Judge, and BRENNAN and S T. EVE, Cir-
cuit Judges.
BRENNAN , Circuit Judge. Police stopped Martin Devalois
and a travel companion for a traffic violation. During the stop,
a drug-sniffing dog alerted to narcotics in Devalois’s rental
vehicle. Rather than comply with a request to exit the car,
Devalois initiated a high-speed chase that ended in a crash.
Police searched the vehicle and found a small amount of ma-
rijuana as well as a gun.

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2 No. 24-1787
Devalois was charged with illegally possessing a firearm
as a felon. He moved to suppress the gun, arguing police un-
constitutionally prolonged the traffic stop to conduct a dog
sniff. The district court denied his motion, and a jury found
him guilty. On appeal, Devalois again contests the admission
of the gun into evidence at trial.
I
The facts that follow are based on evidence presented at
the suppression hearing, including testimony from LaPorte
County Sheriff’s Deputy Jon Samuelson—which the district
court found “credibly precise.” See United States v. Gholston, 1
F.4th 492, 497 (7th Cir. 2021) (deferring to the district court’s
credibility determinations).
Samuelson stopped a Toyota Highlander sport utility ve-
hicle driving westbound on U.S. Highway 20 near Rolling
Prairie, Indiana, for following too closely behind a semi-truck.
After the vehicle pulled to the side of the road at around 10
a.m., Samuelson approached the passenger-side door. Deva-
lois was seated closest to Samuelson, while a woman was in
the driver’s seat.
Samuelson requested the woman’s license and registra-
tion. She told him the Highlander was a rental from Illinois
and that, although she did not have a paper copy of the rental
agreement with her, she might have a digital copy on her
phone. Consistent with police practice, Samuelson invited the
woman to sit in his squad car so she could search for the
agreement there. See United States v. Ambriz-Villa, 28 F.4th 786,
790 (7th Cir. 2022) (explaining that an officer may ask a driver
to sit in his patrol car while he prepares a ticket). She agreed.

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No. 24-1787 3
The woman sat in the squad car’s passenger seat. Samuel-
son’s trained narcotics canine, Bosco, was in the back. While
the woman tried to find the rental agreement, Samuelson
checked her driver’s license. Such a check will reveal the va-
lidity of a license and any warrants out for the driver’s arrest.
Samuelson also searched for the Highlander’s license plate in
the Illinois fleet system—a program that, among other things,
indicates whether a vehicle is stolen and provides officers
with information pertinent to writing a citation. But the fleet
system ran slowly. As Samuelson waited for a return, he no-
ticed the woman was trembling and nervous. He asked where
she and Devalois were traveling from, and she told him South
Bend. She also informed him she could not find the rental car
agreement.
Without the rental agreement or information from the fleet
system, Samuelson walked back to the Highlander and asked
Devalois for the vehicle’s registration. While Devalois
searched for the registration, Samuelson also asked him
where the pair was driving from. Like the woman, Devalois
said South Bend. Samuelson followed up, asking how long
they had been there. Devalois, upset with the number of ques-
tions, responded to the officer with profanity. Eventually, he
located the registration, and gave it to Samuelson, who took
it back to his squad car.
At that point, Samuelson had what he needed to begin
writing the warning. The woman, still seated in the squad car,
continued to appear nervous. To calm her down, Samuelson
told the woman he was only issuing a warning. Because she
remained anxious, he asked her several questions, including
whether there were drugs or other contraband in the

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4 No. 24-1787
Highlander. The woman responded in the negative, but Sam-
uelson still asked if he could search the car. She said no.
Four minutes after Samuelson stopped the Highlander,
Deputy Corey Chavez arrived to assist with the traffic stop.
Samuelson told Chavez that he was preparing a warning be-
cause the woman had been following too closely behind a
semi-truck. He passed the warning to Chavez to complete and
then let Bosco out of the squad car to conduct a dog sniff
around the exterior of the Highlander. When Devalois real-
ized what was happening, he became “irate.”
About six minutes after Samuelson’s initial contact with
Devalois and the woman, Bosco alerted to the presence of nar-
cotics in the rental vehicle. Samuelson returned Bosco to his
squad car and informed Chavez, who was still working on the
warning ticket, about the positive alert. Samuelson returned
to the Highlander and asked Devalois to step out. When he
refused, Samuelson called Chavez for backup. Devalois then
slid from the passenger’s seat to the driver’s seat, prompting
both officers to draw their weapons. Devalois sped off, and a
hot pursuit ensued.
Throughout the chase, officers observed Devalois throw-
ing items out of the vehicle. After about thirty minutes, police
finally apprehended Devalois, who had crashed the rental car
into a snowbank. Following his arrest, officers searched the
Highlander and found a handgun as well as some marijuana.
They also discovered a magazine for the handgun in the vehi-
cle’s trunk.
Devalois, a convicted felon, was charged with illegally
possessing a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He
moved to suppress the handgun, arguing police obtained it

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No. 24-1787 5
only after Samuelson prolonged the traffic stop to conduct a
dog sniff in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The district
court held a suppression hearing, and Samuelson testified to
the facts above. Based in large part on his testimony, the dis-
trict court denied Devalois’s motion, finding that Samuelson
did not extend the length of the stop. The case proceeded to
trial, and a jury found Devalois guilty on the gun charge. The
district court sentenced him to 92 months’ imprisonment. He
timely appeals, challenging the denial of his motion to sup-
press.
II
Devalois renews his contention that police violated his
Fourth Amendment rights by prolonging the traffic stop to
conduct a dog sniff. As a result, he claims the district court
should have refused to admit into evidence the gun police
later seized from his rental vehicle.1 Although Devalois does
not directly invoke it, he seems to rely on the exclusionary
rule, which “requires trial courts to exclude unlawfully seized
evidence in a criminal trial.” Utah v. Strieff, 579 U.S. 232, 237
(2016). The rule bars the admission of “‘evidence obtained as
a direct result of an illegal search or seizure’ and, relevant
here, ‘evidence later discovered and found to be derivative of
an illegality.’” Id. (quoting Segura v. United States, 468 U.S. 796,
804 (1984)).
1 Neither party raised the issue, but we note the Supreme Court has
held “that, as a general rule, someone in otherwise lawful possession and
control of a rental car has a reasonable expectation of privacy in it even if
the rental agreement does not list him or her as an authorized driver.”
Byrd v. United States, 584 U.S. 395, 398–99 (2018).

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6 No. 24-1787
Where, as here, we are “evaluating the denial of a motion
to suppress, we review the [district] court’s factual findings
for clear error, while legal conclusions and mixed questions
of law and fact are reviewed de novo.” United States v. Yang,
39 F.4th 893, 899 (7th Cir. 2022) (citing Gholston, 1 F.4th at 496).
The Fourth Amendment protects persons against unrea-
sonable searches and seizures. U.S. C ONST. amend. IV. “[T]he
ultimate touchstone … is reasonableness.” United States v.
Cole, 21 F.4th 421, 427 (7th Cir. 2021) (en banc) (quoting Lange
v. California, 594 U.S. 295, 301 (2021)). Because traffic stops
constitute “seizure[s]” of “persons,” they are subject to this
reasonableness standard. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806,
809–10 (1996). A constitutionally reasonable traffic stop may
last no longer than what is necessary for officers to complete
their “mission.” Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348, 354
(2015). “Authority for the seizure thus ends” when the mission
is “or reasonably should have been” accomplished. Id. (citing
United States v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675, 686 (1985)).
Broadly speaking, the mission of a traffic stop involves
“address[ing] the traffic violation that warranted the stop and
attend[ing] to related safety concerns.” Id. (internal citations
omitted). Police may check the driver’s license, seek the vehi-
cle’s registration, request proof of insurance, and investigate
whether there are warrants out for the driver’s arrest.
Gholston, 1 F.4th at 496 (citing Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 355); Yang,
39 F.4th at 903. An officer may also ask the driver questions
pertinent to the stop, including questions related to travel
plans. Cole, 21 F.4th at 430.
Beyond this mission, police are free to engage in certain
additional activities as long as they do “not prolong the traffic
stop.” Id. at 429; Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 354 (“[T]he Fourth

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No. 24-1787 7
Amendment tolerate[s] certain unrelated investigations that
d[o] not lengthen the roadside detention.”). An officer may,
for instance, ask questions that have nothing to do with either
the traffic violation or safety matters. Cole, 21 F.4th at 429.
And, particularly relevant here, police may “even conduct a
dog sniff.” Id.; Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 354.
A
The district court found, as a factual matter, that Samuel-
son did not prolong Devalois’s temporary seizure to conduct
a dog sniff. See Gholston, 1 F.4th at 497; see also United States v.
Goodwill, 24 F.4th 612, 616 (7th Cir. 2022). “A factual finding is
clearly erroneous only if, after considering all the evidence,
we cannot avoid or ignore a definite and firm conviction that
a mistake has been made.” Yang, 39 F.4th at 899 (quoting
United States v. Burnside, 588 F.3d 511, 517 (7th Cir. 2009))
(cleaned up).
The record here firmly supports the district court’s find-
ing. While “we repeatedly have declined to adopt even a rule
of thumb” as to how long a reasonable stop may last, Gholston,
1 F.4th at 496, we note that about six minutes passed between
Samuelson’s first contact with the driver and Bosco’s alert. See
id. at 494–95 (concluding police did not unreasonably prolong
a stop when a dog sniff occurred more than fourteen minutes
after initial contact).
During that time, Samuelson diligently pursued tasks that
fell within the stop’s mission. Indeed, many of his activities
were directly related to the objective of the stop: issuing a
warning for following too closely behind a semi-truck. See
Yang, 39 F.4th at 902–03. At the outset, Samuelson sought the
driver’s license. He then began a license status check and ran

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8 No. 24-1787
a search for the vehicle in the Illinois fleet system. When the
driver could not produce the vehicle’s rental agreement, Sam-
uelson sought the registration card. Once he had the infor-
mation he needed to write a warning, he began drawing one
up. And although Devalois seems to suggest Samuelson’s au-
thority to continue the seizure ended then, he cannot be cor-
rect, as the officer still needed time to write the warning.
Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 354–55 (describing the mission of a traf-
fic stop as embracing the time needed to “issu[e] a warning
ticket”) (emphasis added). All these tasks related to the stop’s
mission. Cole, 21 F.4th at 428–29.
Throughout the stop, Samuelson asked several questions,
none of which, the district court found, prolonged it. That
finding was not clearly erroneous. To start, Samuelson was
free to ask from where Devalois and the woman were travel-
ing. “[T]ravel-plan questions ordinarily fall within the mis-
sion of a traffic stop,” as they “supply important context for
the violation at hand.” Id. at 429. Reasonable follow-up ques-
tions are permissible, too. Id. at 431. Samuelson also asked the
woman a series of questions to find out if there were drugs or
other contraband in the car. To be sure, those questions were
unrelated to the traffic stop. But they did “not convert the en-
counter into something other than a lawful seizure” because
Samuelson was still actively preparing the warning ticket. Ar-
izona v. Johnson, 555 U.S. 323, 333 (2009). Moderate “ques-
tion[ing] that do[es] not increase the length of the detention
… do[es] not make the custody itself unreasonable.” United
States v. Childs, 277 F.3d 947, 949 (7th Cir. 2002) (en banc).
Nor, as Devalois argues, did Samuelson’s decision to hand
off the warning to Chavez render the seizure unreasonable.
When Chavez arrived, Samuelson had filled out only a few

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No. 24-1787 9
basic pieces of information on the warning—including the
date and location of the violation, the woman’s name, and
some details about the vehicle. The district court found that
the transfer of duties required only a brief officer-to-officer
conference; it did not delay the stop. Given Samuelson’s cred-
ible testimony on that point, this finding was not clearly erro-
neous either. And despite Devalois’s position to the contrary,
so long as the transfer of duties does not prolong a traffic stop,
the officer who begins to write a citation need not be the one
to complete it.
In the end, we agree with the district court’s conclusion
that, at all times during the encounter, Samuelson pursued
the stop’s mission with “diligence, not delay.”
B
Because the record supports the finding that Samuelson
did not prolong the traffic stop, the remaining legal ques-
tion—whether the handgun should have been suppressed
based on a Fourth Amendment violation—proves straightfor-
ward. The district court refused to preclude admission of the
handgun at Devalois’s trial, concluding it was not the fruit of
an unlawful search or seizure. We review legal issues de novo.
Yang, 39 F.4th at 899 (citing Gholston, 1 F.4th at 496).
When Samuelson ultimately conducted the dog sniff,
Chavez was still preparing the warning. Authority for the sei-
zure was thus ongoing. An officer may employ a drug-sniff-
ing canine to search a vehicle’s exterior without violating the
Fourth Amendment while another officer continues to dili-
gently pursue the mission of the stop. Illinois v. Caballes, 543
U.S. 405, 410 (2005). This remains true whether police have a
reasonable suspicion that the vehicle contains drugs or not.

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10 No. 24-1787
United States v. Lewis, 920 F.3d 483, 491 (7th Cir. 2019). Accord-
ingly, Samuelson was free to conduct a dog sniff without vio-
lating Devalois’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Bosco alerted Samuelson to the presence of narcotics in the
vehicle. Devalois has not challenged Bosco’s reliability, so the
positive alert provided police with probable cause to believe
the vehicle did, in fact, contain drugs. United States v. Johnson,
93 F.4th 383, 388–89 (7th Cir. 2024). And, although most war-
rantless searches “are per se unreasonable under the Fourth
Amendment,” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357 (1967),
the automobile exception to the warrant requirement permits
“authorities to search a car without a warrant if they have
probable cause,” United States v. Jackson, 103 F.4th 483, 486 (7th
Cir. 2024) (citing cases). So, officers were permitted to search
Devalois’s rental car based on Bosco’s positive alert, even
without a warrant. Because that search was lawful, the district
court was right to deny Devalois’s motion to suppress its
fruits—namely, the handgun.2
* * *
The district court found, as a factual matter, that Samuel-
son did not prolong Devalois’s traffic stop to conduct a dog
sniff. That was not clearly erroneous. Accordingly, police
2 Because the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment’s war-
rant requirement justified the officers’ warrantless search, we need not
reach Devalois’s cursory argument that police exceeded the search inci-
dent to lawful arrest exception by searching his rental car after he had been
detained and could no longer access the vehicle. See Arizona v. Gant, 556
U.S. 332, 343 (2009) (explaining police may “search a vehicle incident to a
recent occupant’s arrest only when the arrestee is unsecured and within
reaching distance of the passenger compartment” or when there is reason
to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the crime of arrest).

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No. 24-1787 11
uncovered Devalois’s handgun as a result of a lawful search
and seizure. The district court’s decision denying his motion
to suppress the gun is therefore A FFIRMED.

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