On March 19, 2025, the Court of Appeals of Georgia decided the State v. Dean[i], in which the court of appeals examined whether the trial court erred in granting a motion to suppress based on unreasonable delay of a traffic stop. The relevant facts of Dean, taken directly from the case, are as follows:
So viewed, the record shows that on January 18, 2021, Sergeant Adam Pendelton of the Peachtree City Police Department observed Dean driving without a seatbelt or license plate; and so he initiated a traffic stop of the truck for those reasons. When Pendelton approached the passenger-side door of the vehicle, Dean informed him that neither the door nor window on that side was operational. Pendelton then approached the driver’s side, where Dean provided the documents requested by Pendelton through a small triangular vent window on the door—indicating that the main driver’s side window could not open.
During his approach and interaction with Dean, Sergeant Pendelton detected the strong scent of an aerosol air freshener, which led him to believe the interior of the vehicle was recently sprayed. As a result, Pendelton began to consider the potential presence of marijuana because of previous incidents involving the use of aerosol air freshener to conceal the odor of marijuana in vehicles.
Due to the truck’s proximity to the roadway and concern for officer safety, Sergeant Pendelton asked Dean to exit the vehicle and stand near the patrol car while he reviewed the requested documents—which included a recent bill of sale. Pendelton also checked the vehicle’s VIN, ran criminal checks, and then issued a citation. Importantly, Pendelton made this request several times before Dean eventually complied. And while working on the computer in his patrol car to review the produced documents, Pendelton told Dean that (in his experience) people who do not want to exit a vehicle or roll down the windows typically do so to prevent an officer from detecting the odor of marijuana.
Just after Sergeant Pendelton began writing the citation, another law-enforcement officer arrived, at which point Pendelton turned over the task of completing the citation. Pendelton then immediately retrieved a K-9 from his patrol car and began a free-air sniff of the vehicle’s exterior. The K-9 alerted less than 30 seconds later. Pendelton then conducted a search of the vehicle’s interior, where he smelled and located less than one ounce of marijuana and observed a can of air freshener on the floor.[ii]
Dean filed a motion to suppress and argued that the officer unreasonably prolonged the stop to conduct the canine sniff without reasonable suspicion that he had drugs in the vehicle. The trial court agreed and held that the smell of air freshener and using his vent window did not provide sufficient reasonable suspicion to extend the stop for the canine sniff. The State appealed the grant of the motion to suppress.
The court of appeals noted that, in order to conduct an investigatory detention, or second-tier encounter, the officer must have reasonable suspicion that a person is involved in criminal activity. This applies to traffic stops that are extended beyond the initial reason for the stop to investigate other criminal activity. The court stated
During a second-tier encounter, an officer may “stop persons and detain them briefly, when the officer has a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the persons are involved in criminal activity,” which means “more than a subjective, unparticularized suspicion or hunch.” The officer’s actions during a second-tier encounter must be “justified by specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant [the] intrusion,” and there must be “some basis from which the court can determine that the detention was neither arbitrary nor harassing.”[iii]
The court also noted that the Supreme Court of Georgia has previously stated that there are two different types of claims that a defendant can make when the defendant argues that the stop was unreasonably prolonged. The first type is when the officer prolongs the detention after the initial reason for the stop has been completed. The court stated
In the first type of claim,
a detention is prolonged beyond the conclusion of the investigation that warranted the detention in the first place, and in those cases, the courts generally have concluded that such a prolongation—even a short one—is unreasonable, unless, of course, good cause has appeared in the meantime to justify a continuation of the detention to pursue a different investigation.[iv]
The second type of prolonged detention occurs when the officer takes too long on the traffic stop. For example, the defendant alleges that the officer questioned him about matters unrelated to the reason for the stop. The court stated
In the other type of case, the detention is not prolonged beyond the conclusion of the investigation that originally warranted the detention, but it is claimed that “the investigation took too long, perhaps because the deputy spent too much time inquiring about matters unrelated to the investigation.” In this second type of claim, a court must examine “whether the police diligently pursued a means of investigation that was likely to confirm or dispel their suspicions quickly, during which time it was necessary to detain the defendant.”[v]
This is what the Dean alleged in his case. Specifically, he argued that the traffic stop was prolonged beyond the time needed to write his citation without reasonable suspicion that there were illegal drugs in his vehicle, for the purpose of conducting a canine sniff.
Before the court examined the Dean’s argument, the court also noted an additional relevant legal principle. The court stated
[I]t is “permissible to conduct an open-air search around a vehicle while a traffic stop is still in progress so long as the stop has not been unreasonably prolonged for the purpose of conducting the search.”[vi]
The court observed that the officer’s video of the incident showed the following: Upon the arrival of the second officer, Sergeant Pendelton was still writing the citation; the second officer took over the task of writing the citation; while the second officer continued writing the citation, Sergeant Pendelton retrieved his police canine and conducted a free-air sniff of the vehicle, upon which the dog alerted within thirty seconds.
The court also noted that the trial court determined that Sergeant Pendelton retrieved his canine and began the free-air sniff “concurrently to the second officer finishing up the citation.”
The court of appeals then held
[B]ecause the free-air sniff occurred concurrently with the writing of the citation, the stop was not prolonged and the trial court erroneously granted the motion to suppress.[vii]
Therefore, the court of appeals reversed the trial court’s grant of the motion to suppress.
Note: Court holdings can vary significantly between jurisdictions. As such, it is advisable to seek the advice of a local prosecutor or legal adviser regarding questions on specific cases. This article is not intended to constitute legal advice on a specific case.
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[i] A25A0160 (Ga. App. 2025)
[ii] Id. at 1-3
[iii] Id. at 4-5 (emphasis added)
[iv] Id. at 5 (internal citations omitted) (emphasis added)
[v] Id. at 5-6 (internal citations omitted) (emphasis added)
[vi] Id. at 6 (citing Rush v. State, 368 Ga. App. 827, 832 (2023); see also Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348 (2015))
[vii] Id. at 7 (emphasis added)
