United States v. Sowers

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that post-stop behavior such as the inability to confirm identity, excessive nervousness and conflicting stories provided adequate justification to prolong stop
• holding it was not an impermissible de facto arrest to detain driver while officer talked to passenger
• noting that “Terry sanctions a brief detention of an individual to confirm or allay a police officer’s reasonable suspicions” and approving officer’s separate questioning of driver and passenger of car during 30 minute stop that eventually led to discovery of contraband
• approving increasingly intrusive unrelated questions after suspicions escalated during a traffic stop
• police are permitted to continue to pursue their mounting suspicions gleaned during the brief investigatory stop
• passenger's lack of identification papers, nervousness of driver and passenger, and fact that driver and passenger told conflicting stories sufficient to prolong their detention

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).