As we addressed recently here, it sometimes seems like you get legally be pulled over for anything. And once that happens, well you’d better hope that you weren’t doing anything illegal like driving drunk or holding illegal drugs or the like. Continue reading
Category Archives: Reasonable Suspicion
Virginia Traffic Law: What It Takes to Beat a Traffic Stop
In Virginia, you can get pulled over for almost anything. That raises the question: what has to happen for a traffic stop to be illegal? Turns out a lot of things need to go in your favor. Continue reading
Virginia Traffic Law: Poorly Applied Sticker Causes A Sticky Situation
As we’ve said in past posts, it sometimes feels like you can get pulled over for anything in Virginia. Now you can get pulled over for something you can’t get pulled over for. Continue reading
Virginia Traffic Law: No Signal is a Signal to Pull You Over
Sometimes it feels like you can get pulled over for anything in Virginia. Continue reading
Virginia Traffic Law: What’s a Fog Line? . . . or Don’t Drive on a Fog Line
In U.S. v. Williams, Criminal No. 3:13MJ137 (2013), a criminal defendant was charged with possession of marijuana, among a bunch of other crimes. He moved the court to suppress all evidence of his crimes on the ground that the arresting officer lacked reasonable suspicion to stop the defendant’s vehicle in the first instance. The arresting officer claimed that he did have reasonable suspicion to believe that the defendant had committed a crime: his car touched one of the fog lines on at least five occasions. As such, the court was faced with some interest questions: (i) um, what is a fog line?, (ii) does simply touching a fog line constitute a crime?, and (iii) does simply touching a fog line at least give an officer reasonable suspicion that a crime was committed? Richmond U.S. District Magistrate Judge David J. Novak fortunately had answers to these questions. Continue reading
Virginia DUI: I Saw Him Speeding There
Can you be convicted of speeding on the basis of an officer’s estimation of your speed?
In Lewis v. Commonwealth of Virginia, Record No. 1195-12-1 (unpublished), an officer was running his radar gun from his moving police cruiser. He clocked a driver going 56 mph in a 35 mph zone going the opposite direction. He turned around, flashed his lights, and tracked down the driver who weaved ever so slightly within his driving lane but otherwise was not driving erratically. The driver looked drunk, smelled of alcohol, admitted to having one beer and one shot, and failed five field sobriety tests. The officer arrested him for speeding and driving under the influence of alcohol. Continue reading