State v. Wilson

CourtSupreme Court of Kansas
DecidedMay 30, 2025
Docket125283
StatusPublished

This text of State v. Wilson (State v. Wilson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Wilson, (kan 2025).

Opinion

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF KANSAS

No. 125,283

STATE OF KANSAS, Appellee,

v.

GINA L. WILSON, Appellant.

SYLLABUS BY THE COURT

A drug dog's sniff of the exterior of a vehicle is not a search for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Review of the judgment of the Court of Appeals in an unpublished opinion filed December 29, 2023. Appeal from Sedgwick District Court; KEVIN M. SMITH, judge. Oral argument held September 12, 2024. Opinion filed May 30, 2025. Judgment of the Court of Appeals affirming the district court is affirmed. Judgment of the district court is affirmed.

Peter Maharry, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, argued the cause, and Grace E. Tran, of the same office, was on the brief for appellant.

Julie A. Koon, assistant district attorney, argued the cause, and Marc Bennett, district attorney, and Kris W. Kobach, attorney general, were with her on the brief for appellee.

The opinion of the court was delivered by

STEGALL, J.: Two Wichita police officers performed a traffic stop of Gina Wilson after they twice observed her fail to properly signal after leaving the location of a known drug house. Wilson admitted to the officers that her license was suspended, but claimed

1 she did not have anything illegal in the vehicle and would not consent to a search of the vehicle. Officers called for a K-9 unit, ran Wilson's information, and performed a criminal history check.

The K-9 unit—a trained officer with a trained canine named Oden—arrived at the scene at 4:51 p.m., nine minutes after it was called. About 40 seconds later, the officer in the patrol car finished the failure to signal citation and met the K-9 unit to initiate a dog sniff. Although officers had completed Wilson's citation, Wilson was not allowed to leave. At that point, the vehicle was legally parked in the street and Wilson was outside the vehicle. At 4:55 p.m., Oden indicated there were drugs in the car. Based on Oden's alert, the officers searched the car and found 30 oxycodone pills in an envelope in the console. Wilson was then arrested and charged.

Before trial, Wilson moved to suppress all evidence relating to the pills arguing that the search of her car violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The district court held a hearing but found no constitutional violation and denied Wilson's suppression motion. The district court found that the stop had not been meaningfully extended in light of the fact that Oden arrived 40 seconds before officers had completed Wilson's citation. A jury convicted Wilson of possession of an opiate under K.S.A. 2019 Supp. 21-5706(a) and driving while suspended.

Wilson appealed, arguing again that the search was unconstitutional. The Court of Appeals affirmed, finding that "there [was] no evidence that the dog sniff meaningfully extended the duration of the original stop" and concluding that there was no Fourth Amendment violation. State v. Wilson, No. 125,283, 2023 WL 9016144, at *4-5 (Kan. App. 2023) (unpublished opinion). On appeal to this court, Wilson reprises her arguments from below. Because we find the search was constitutional—albeit for different reasons from those stated in the lower courts—we affirm.

2 The basic facts of the case are not disputed by the parties. And neither is the constitutionality of the initial stop. The sole issue here is whether the search of the vehicle was permissible under the Fourth Amendment's restrictions against unreasonable searches and seizures. Likewise, the parties do not dispute the fact that it is well settled law that if a drug dog alerts to the presence of illegal drugs within a vehicle, a warrantless search of that vehicle will not violate the Fourth Amendment under the automobile exception (discussed in detail below).

Hence, to prevail, Wilson must show that the drug dog sniff itself was unconstitutional. And to make this showing, she is required to demonstrate an unlawful seizure of the vehicle (as opposed to an unlawful stop) which enabled the officers time to conduct Oden's drug sniff. When a lawful vehicle seizure occurs on our public roadways—typically referred to as a "stop"—law enforcement are prohibited from extending the time of that seizure beyond the lawful purposes of the stop unless additional reasonable suspicion or probable cause is found during the duration of the lawful portion of the stop. See Muehler v. Mena, 544 U.S. 93, 100-01, 125 S. Ct. 1465, 161 L. Ed. 2d 299 (2005) (officers may perform actions unrelated to the justification for the stop, so long as those actions do not measurably extend the stop); State v. Jimenez, 308 Kan. 315, 323-24, 331, 420 P.3d 464 (2018) (questioning driver about recent activities unrelated to the justification for the traffic stop is unconstitutional unless there is a reasonable suspicion of or probable cause to believe there is other criminal activity, or consent); see also Arizona v. Johnson, 555 U.S. 323, 333, 129 S. Ct. 781, 172 L. Ed. 2d 694 (2009) (questioning passenger and subsequent pat-down performed concurrent with another officer's processing the driver's license, registration, and insurance was constitutional); United States v. Alcaraz-Arellano, 441 F.3d 1252, 1259 (10th Cir. 2006) (because trooper diligently wrote speeding warning in the patrol car while another trooper asked the driver questions unrelated to the stop, there was no measurable extension);

3 United States v. Purcell, 236 F.3d 1274, 1280 (11th Cir. 2001) (question regarding weapons did not extend the duration of the stop because was asked while officer was still writing out the citation and awaiting the results of a computer check); United States v. Crain, 33 F.3d 480, 485 (5th Cir. 1994) ("[W]hen questioning takes place while officers are waiting for the results of a computer check—and therefore does not extend the duration of the stop—the questioning does not violate Terry."). But see United States v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675, 685-87, 105 S. Ct. 1568, 84 L. Ed. 2d 605 (1985) (once officers have completed their tasks pertaining to the justification for the stop, additional actions, taken without proper legal justification, are improper, regardless of whether they take a few moments or several minutes); State v. Mitchell, 265 Kan. 238, 245, 960 P.2d 200 (1998) (although the extension of a stop may be very short, the extension is unconstitutional if it lasts beyond the length necessary for its legitimate purpose); State v. Coleman, 292 Kan. 813, 822, 257 P.3d 320 (2011) (detaining a driver for even a few minutes in order for a K-9 unit to arrive will unconstitutionally extend the stop if the officer does not need additional time to ask exploratory questions or to process the traffic citation). Extending the stop in this manner makes the ongoing seizure of the vehicle unlawful and may result in the suppression of any evidence obtained during the period of the unlawful seizure. 292 Kan. at 823 ("An officer may not arbitrarily detain a driver in order to procure a drug-sniffing dog . . .

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State v. Wilson, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-wilson-kan-2025.