Police May Order a Driver to Exit Their Vehicle During a Traffic Stop

Police Can Command a Person to Exit a Vehicle During a Traffic Stop

Police may order you to exit your vehicle during a traffic stop if it is for reasons of officer safety or to further their investigation. You must comply with their command for you to exit the vehicle. They do not need any additional probable cause or reasonable suspicion behind that which they had to legally pull you over. Failure to comply with that lawful order could be a crime and subject a person to arrest.

Police may NOT extend the stop any longer than is necessary for them to issue the traffic citation, the same as any other traffic stop.

SCOTUS CASES ON THIS ISSUE

Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106 (1977)

Decided December 5, 1977

Syllabus

After police officers had stopped respondent's automobile for being operated with an expired license plate, one of the officers asked respondent to step out of the car and produce his license and registration. As respondent alighted, a large bulge under his jacket was noticed by the officer, who thereupon frisked him and found a loaded revolver. Respondent was then arrested and subsequently indicted for carrying a concealed weapon and unlicensed firearm. His motion to suppress the revolver was denied and after a trial, at which the revolver was introduced in evidence, he was convicted. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed on the ground that the revolver was seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Held:

1. The order to get out of the car, issued after the respondent was lawfully detained, was reasonable, and thus permissible under the Fourth Amendment. The State's proffered justification for such order -- the officer's safety -- is both legitimate and weighty, and the intrusion into respondent's personal liberty occasioned by the order, being, at most, a mere inconvenience, cannot prevail when balanced against legitimate concerns for the officer's safety.

2. Under the standard announced in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 392 U. S. 21-22 -- whether

"the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search 'warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief' that the action taken was appropriate"

-- the officer was justified in making the search he did once the bulge in respondent's jacket was observed.

Certiorari granted; 471 Pa. 546, 370 A.2d 1157, reversed and remanded.

Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, (1996)

• Citations: 517 U.S. 806, 116 S. Ct. 1769, 135 L. Ed. 2d 89, 1996 U.S. LEXIS 3720
• Full Case Name: WHREN Et Al. v. UNITED STATES
• Docket Number: 95-5841
• Judges: Scalia
• Other Dates: Argued April 17, 1996

Stating that the "[t]emporary detention of individuals during the stop of an automobile by the police, even if only for a brief period and for a limited purpose, constitutes a `seizure' of `persons' within the meaning of [the Fourth Amendment]" and therefore must not be unreasonable

(this case's main legal finding is that "subjective intent alone does not make otherwise lawful conduct illegal or unconstitutional")