There was a time when a suspects made efforts to suppress evidence by alleging that the stop (i.e., the 4th Amendment action) was pretextual. The U.S. Supreme Court put that to rest with the case of Whren v. U.S.
In Whren, plain clothes officers of the Washington D.C. Metro Police were patrolling a high crime area. In doing so, they observed a vehicle that seemed suspicious, but the all agreed that the observations did not amount to reasonable suspicion. However, the officers noticed the vehicle made a turn without signaling. The unmarked vehicle followed the car and when it got hung up at a red light, the officers went approached the vehicle conducting a traffic stop – based solely on the minor traffic violation. During the traffic detention, officers noticed Mr. When holding bags of crack cocaine. Whren was arrested and charged with possessing that cocaine base.
Whren sought to suppress the evidence by alleging the traffic stop was pretextual and used as a simply a cover to investigate drug activity. The Supreme Court held that so long as there is an objective basis for the stop, the officer’s subjective intent plays no role in the analysis. In fact, this traffic stop was arguably in violation of D.C. Metro policy – but the Court essentially held that citizens are protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the 4th Amendment did not guarantee strict adherence to policy, which varies from location to location.
Legal Supplement
Whren v. U.S., 517 U.S 806 (1996),
Not only have we never held, outside the context of inventory search or administrative inspection (discussed above), that an officer's motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the Fourth Amendment; but we have repeatedly held and asserted the contrary.
in Scott v. United States … we said that "[s]ubjective intent alone ... does not make otherwise lawful conduct illegal or unconstitutional."
We of course agree with petitioners that the Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race. But the constitutional basis for objecting to intentionally discriminatory application of laws is the Equal Protection Clause, not the Fourth Amendment. Subjective intentions play no role in ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis.
[P]olice enforcement practices … vary from place to place and from time to time. We cannot accept that the search and seizure protections of the Fourth Amendment are so variable … The difficulty is illustrated by petitioners' arguments in this case. Their claim that a reasonable officer would not have made this stop is based largely on District of Columbia police regulations which permit plainclothes officers in unmarked vehicles to enforce traffic laws "only in the case of a violation that is so grave as to pose an immediate threat to the safety of others." This basis of invalidation would not apply in jurisdictions that had a different practice. And it would not have applied even in the District of Columbia, if Officer Soto had been wearing a uniform or patrolling in a marked police cruiser.
