United States of America v. Alex Olin Johnson

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 21-3954
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United States of America
Plaintiff - Appellee
v.
Alex Olin Johnson
Defendant - Appellant
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the District of South Dakota - Southern
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Submitted: May 13, 2022
Filed: February 12, 2026
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Before ERICKSON, STRAS, and KOBES, Circuit Judges.
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KOBES, Circuit Judge.
After the district court denied his motion to suppress, Alex Johnson pleaded
guilty to conspiring to distribute a controlled substance, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846.
He argues on appeal that the court should have suppressed evidence that the police
found after unreasonably prolonging a traffic stop. We agree, so we reverse and
remand.

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I.
While investigating a multi-state drug trafficking operation, the South Dakota
Division of Criminal Investigation asked Officer Stevens to pull over a car that was
leaving a surveilled apartment building. He stopped the car on a nearby residential
street for excessive window tint.
The driver, Alex Johnson, told Officer Stevens that his license was suspended,
and Officer Stevens had Johnson get out and join him in his patrol car. By the six-
minute mark in the dash camera video, dispatch confirmed the suspended license.
Officer Stevens told Johnson that he would get a ticket for driving without a license
but only a warning for excessive window tint because the car belonged to his brother.
He also said that they needed to wait for an officer with a working window tint meter
so that he could get a reading for his report. While the two waited, Officer Stevens
had all the information and time he needed to complete the ticket for driving without
a license—a task that usually takes five to six minutes. But he did not do so.
The other officer arrived and took a meter reading 14 minutes and 42 seconds
into the stop. At that point, Officer Stevens also had everything he needed to
complete the warning. But instead, realizing that a K9 unit wasn’t on the way, he
radioed for one and talked shop with the other officer.
After the other officer left, Officer Stevens printed the ticket for driving
without a license. But he didn’t give it to Johnson. He chatted with him about
unrelated topics. Eventually, about 18 minutes into the stop, Johnson asked if he
should call someone to come get the car, and Officer Stevens said, “Here’s the deal.
When we’re done, I’m gonna take off, and I’ll just trust that you’ll get that taken
care of the right way.” Officer Stevens later testified that he was working on the
window tint warning and waiting for the K9 to arrive.
Officer Westrum arrived with his K9 21 minutes and 24 seconds into the stop.
After a few laps around the car, the K9 alerted. Only then did Officer Stevens give

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Johnson the ticket and warning. Officer Westrum told Johnson that he would search
the car. Johnson asked if he should call someone to get his dog, who was inside.
Officer Stevens started to say yes, but Officer Westrum interrupted, saying there was
no reason to if there wasn’t anything incriminating. Johnson took the dog out of the
car, and Officer Westrum started his search.
About ten minutes later, Johnson again asked if he should call someone to get
his dog. Officer Stevens said that he should. A few minutes after that, Officer
Stevens asked if “somebody that can drive the car” was on the way, but corrected
himself, “at least [somebody that can] take the dog.” Johnson said that there was,
and asked if he should have someone come get the car. Officer Stevens wasn’t sure
and went to ask Officer Westrum. But while Officer Stevens and Johnson were
talking, Officer Westrum found drug paraphernalia and methamphetamine, so they
arrested Johnson. After the search, an officer backed up the car a few feet and left
it parked on the residential street with the key inside so that Johnson’s brother could
get it later.
Based on the evidence from the car, the police secured a search warrant for
Johnson’s apartment and found more drugs. The Government charged him with
conspiring to distribute a controlled substance, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846, and he
moved to suppress the evidence from both the car and his apartment.
The district court denied his motion. It found that Officer Stevens would have
completed and explained the ticket and warning by the 20 minute, 42 second mark
if he had been reasonably diligent. But relying on United States v. Soderman, 983
F.3d 369 (8th Cir. 2020), it held that Officer Stevens lawfully prolonged the stop to
address the safety concern posed by Johnson’s legal inability to drive the car away.
It also held that the evidence from his apartment was admissible since it wasn’t the
fruit of a poisonous tree. Johnson then pleaded guilty, reserving his right to appeal
the denial of his motion to suppress.

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II.
We review the denial of a motion to suppress de novo and any underlying
factual determinations for clear error, “giving ‘due weight’ to the inferences of the
district court and law enforcement officials.” United States v. Robbins, 682 F.3d
1111, 1115 (8th Cir. 2012) (citations omitted).
A traffic stop is a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, so it “must be
supported by either reasonable suspicion or probable cause.” Soderman, 983 F.3d
at 374. A stop that is lawful at the start still violates the Fourth Amendment “if it
lasts longer than necessary to effectuate its mission—to address the traffic violation
that warranted the stop and attend to related safety concerns.” United States v.
Navarette, 996 F.3d 870, 874 (8th Cir. 2021) (cleaned up) (quoting Rodriguez v.
United States, 575 U.S. 348, 354 (2015)). “Beyond determining whether to issue a
traffic ticket, an officer’s mission includes ordinary inquiries incident to the traffic
stop,” like “checking the driver’s license, determining whether there are outstanding
warrants against the driver, and inspecting the automobile’s registration and proof
of insurance.” Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 355 (cleaned up) (quoting Illinois v. Caballes,
543 U.S. 405, 408 (2005)).
Officers must be “reasonably diligent” and should act “expeditiously” in
carrying out these tasks. Id. at 357. When complications arise, they “may
reasonably detain a driver for a longer duration than when a stop is strictly routine,”
United States v. Olivera–Mendez, 484 F.3d 505, 510 (8th Cir. 2007), but they must
take care “to limit any subsequent detention or search,” United States v. Peralez, 526
F.3d 1115, 1120 (8th Cir. 2008) (citation omitted). Without reasonable suspicion of
separate criminal behavior, they “may not conduct unrelated checks that extend the
stop beyond the time reasonably required to complete its original mission.”
Soderman, 983 F.3d at 374. A K9 sniff is an unrelated check. Rodriguez, 575 U.S.
at 356.

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Officer Stevens prolonged the stop beyond the time needed to address
Johnson’s traffic violations. Cf. Peralez, 526 F.3d at 1120 (officer’s “drug
interdiction questions,” interspersed with “routine processing of a traffic stop,”
unreasonably prolonged the stop). In his own words, it normally takes him five or
six minutes to complete and explain a traffic ticket. So if he had diligently written
the window tint warning, he would have completed it by 20 minutes and 42 seconds
into the stop at the latest and Johnson would have been free to go before Officer
Westrum and the K9 arrived.
The Government nonetheless argues that a longer stop was needed to “attend
to related safety concerns.” Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 354. Relying on Soderman, it
says that Officer Stevens’s “discovery that [Johnson’s] license had been suspended
justifiably extended the lawful scope of the traffic stop because of [his] legal inability
to remove the vehicle from the scene and the consequential need for a licensed driver
or a tow truck to do so.” 983 F.3d at 374.
In Soderman, we held that officers lawfully prolonged a stop to fulfill the
“community caretaking function” of ensuring that a vehicle dangerously positioned
on the road was safely removed by a tow truck or licensed driver. Id. Not only did
the car pose a safety risk because it was on the shoulder of a turn in the road, but
there was also a tow truck on the way to remove it when one of the officers conducted
the drug investigation. Id. at 373–74. Similarly, in United States v. Ovando-Garzo,
we held that an officer lawfully prolonged a stop “to engage in a community
caretaking function of safely moving the vehicle and its occupants from the side of
the road” after he arrested the only licensed driver “five miles from the nearest town
in freezing temperatures.” 752 F.3d 1161, 1164 (8th Cir. 2014). The
“circumstances” required the officer to engage in a community caretaking function,
and the questioning that prolonged the stop “was necessary to accomplish” that task.
Id.

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The circumstances that justify prolonging a stop for community caretaking are
absent here.1 Granted, Johnson’s license was suspended, so he could not drive away.
And a reasonable officer may have been justified in fulfilling the community
caretaking function of waiting for a licensed driver or tow truck to arrive to make
sure that Johnson didn’t get behind the wheel. But there is no indication in the record
that the officers were engaging in that function. No one was ever called to move the
car. There is no evidence that there was even a plan to call someone. And Officer
Steven told Johnson to take care of the car after the stop. Because no one was asked
to come for the car, no one did. After the search was over, the officers left the car
where it was with the key inside. There is no evidence showing that the “length of
the stop was directly related to [a] community caretaking function.” Soderman, 983
F.3d at 374; see also Ovando–Garzo, 752 F.3d at 1164 (the questioning that
prolonged the stop “was necessary to accomplish” the “community caretaking
function of safely moving the vehicle and its occupants from the side of the road”).
The stop was unreasonably prolonged, so the evidence from the car should
have been suppressed.2 See United States v. Davis, 760 F.3d 901, 903 (8th Cir.
1 We pass no judgment on whether Officer Stevens’s subjective intent to leave
Johnson with the car and trust that he would properly remove it plays any role in our
analysis. The objective facts show that the officers did not engage in community
caretaking. See Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 404 (2006) (“An action is
reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, regardless of the individual officer’s state
of mind, as long as the circumstances, viewed objectively, justify the action.”
(cleaned up) (citation omitted)).
2 The Government conceded at oral argument that it did not rely on the
inevitable discovery doctrine before the district court and did not “specifically”
mention it in its brief. But it suggested that an inevitable discovery argument is
“inherent” in its community caretaking argument. It is well-settled that a “litigant
may not advert perfunctorily to an argument, hoping that we will do its work for it
by developing the argument and putting flesh on its bones.” Sturgis Motorcycle
Rally, Inc. v. Rushmore Photo & Gifts, Inc., 908 F.3d 313, 324 (8th Cir. 2018). Nor
does the Government argue that the exclusionary rule should not apply to this
constitutional violation. See United States v. Riesselman, 646 F.3d 1072, 1079 (8th
Cir. 2011).

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2014). And because the evidence from the apartment is the fruit of that constitutional
violation, it should have been suppressed too. See United States v. Swope, 542 F.3d
609, 613–14 (8th Cir. 2008) (“The exclusionary rule reaches not only primary
evidence obtained as a direct result of an illegal search or seizure but also evidence
later discovered and found to be derivative of an illegality or fruit of the poisonous
tree.” (cleaned up) (quoting Segura v. United States, 468 U.S. 796, 804 (1984))).
III.
We reverse the district court’s denial of Johnson’s motion to suppress, vacate
his conviction, and remand for further proceedings.
STRAS, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
The real question here is whether a reasonable officer can detain a car when
the driver has a suspended license. The court concludes that the answer is no. I
disagree.
Consider the facts. Officer Stevens had just pulled Johnson over. And, as far
as he knew, no one was coming to get him or the car. It would have been reasonable
to stick around to make sure Johnson did not get back behind the wheel, which could
expose others to danger. See United States v. Soderman, 983 F.3d 369, 374 (8th Cir.
2020) (explaining that “complications [that] arise” during a traffic stop can justify
“detain[ing] [the] driver . . . longer” (citation omitted)); see also Rodriguez v. United
States, 575 U.S. 348, 355 (2015) (recognizing that keeping unlicensed drivers off
the road helps “ensur[e] that vehicles . . . are operated safely and responsibly”).
Except Officer Stevens had a different motive for detaining him: he suspected there
were drugs in the vehicle and was waiting for a trained canine to confirm his
suspicions. See Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 354–55 (acknowledging “that the Fourth
Amendment tolerate[s]” dog sniffs “during . . . otherwise lawful traffic stop[s]”).

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Turns out that the Fourth Amendment does not care about an officer’s actual
motive. See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996) (explaining that
officers need “not have the state of mind which is hypothecated by the reasons which
provide the legal justification for [their] action[s]” (citation omitted)). Under the
objective-reasonableness standard, what counts is “what [he] in fact d[id],” not why.
Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 357 (emphasis added); see United States v. Demilia, 771 F.3d
1051, 1055 (8th Cir. 2014) (reviewing whether a traffic stop was “objective[ly] . . .
justifi[ed]”). An officer can take “certain actions”—like detaining an unlicensed
driver—“in certain circumstances . . . whatever the subjective intent.” Devenpeck v.
Alford, 543 U.S. 146, 153 (2004) (citation omitted); cf. id. at 154 (emphasizing that
“an arrest under a given set of known facts” is either constitutional or not, regardless
of “whether the arresting officer . . . correctly identifies” the justification for it).
And here, a reasonable officer could act exactly as Officer Stevens did. Even
if Johnson should have been free to walk away, as the court concludes, a reasonable
officer had every reason to stay with the car and make sure that he did not try to
drive it home. See United States v. Lillich, 6 F.4th 869, 878–79 (8th Cir. 2021)
(explaining that “detention of [the defendant’s] person had nothing to do with the
car remaining stationary” when he “legally was unable to drive it”). At least until
another driver or a tow truck showed up to retrieve it. Until then, it was just “a car
parked on a public street” subject to a dog sniff. United States v. $409,905.00 in
U.S. Currency, 182 F.3d 643, 647 (8th Cir. 1999) (explaining that it is not a search
in those circumstances); see Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1, 11 (2013)
(distinguishing cars from homes).
It is true that Officer Stevens misled Johnson about the reason for the delay.
But the Fourth Amendment is concerned with “reasonableness,” not candor.
Devenpeck, 543 U.S. at 153 (citation omitted). So I agree with the district court that
there was no reason to suppress the drugs and other incriminating evidence found in
Johnson’s trunk. See Soderman, 983 F.3d at 374; Lillich, 6 F.4th at 878.
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