Search & seizure; Motion to suppress evidence; Whether a traffic stop was “unreasonably prolonged”; Illinois v Wardlow; Whether an officer’s retention of the driver’s license “coerced” the driver into consenting to a search of the car; Whether defendant was “unreasonably searched”; Minnesota v Dickerson

[This appeal was from the WD-MI.] The court affirmed the district court’s denial of defendant-Santos’s motion to suppress evidence, holding that the trooper who conducted the traffic stop did not unreasonably prolong the stop by asking the driver to exit the vehicle and asking “‘forty seconds’ worth of questions.” Santos was a passenger in a car that was stopped for an expired registration. The trooper learned during the stop that Santos “was a convicted felon known to be potentially armed and dangerous. In the course of removing the driver and Santos from the car, the trooper found that Santos had a gun[,]” leading to his indictment for FIP. He moved to suppress the gun, arguing that it was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The district court denied the motion. Santos argued on appeal that the trooper’s decision to question the driver outside of the car unreasonably prolonged the traffic stop and thus, the authority for the search had ended. While it was unclear “whether the trooper’s questions of the driver outside the car measurably extended the” stop, all the questions “were within the scope of the stop because they helped ensure officer safety.” Additionally, the court found that “Santos’s furtive behavior about his cross-body bag added another red, or at least maroon, flag to the encounter.” The court held that “the trooper permissibly asked the driver forty seconds’ worth of questions and did not unreasonably prolong the stop. The ‘collective weight’ of” the various “factors ‘justified’ the trooper’s conduct.” It rejected Santos’s argument that the trooper’s retention of the driver’s license “coerced” the driver into consenting to a search of the car. He did not offer any “cases from this circuit for the proposition that retaining a driver’s license throughout the completion of a valid traffic stop coerces her consent to a search.” Lastly, the court considered his argument that the search of his person was unreasonable, and held that by that “point in the encounter, the trooper already had reasonable suspicion that Santos had a weapon. That justified his request to frisk” him.