Question

A police officer had a hunch, not amounting to probable cause or reasonable suspicion, that a man was a drug dealer. one day while the officer was on highway patrol, her radar gun clocked the man's car at 68 mph in an area where the maximum posted speed limit was 65 mph. the officer's usual practice was not to stop a car unless it was going at least 5 mph over the posted limit, but contrary to her usual practice, she decided to stop the man's car in the hope that she might discover evidence of drug dealing. after she stopped the car and announced that she would be writing a speeding ticket, the officer ordered the man and his passenger to step out of the car. when the passenger stepped out, the officer saw that the passenger had been sitting on a clear bag of what the officer immediately recognized as marijuana. the officer arrested both the man and the passenger for possession of marijuana. at their joint trial, the man and the passenger claim that their fourth amendment rights were violated because the officer improperly (1) stopped the car for speeding as a pretext for investigating a hunch rather than for the stated purpose of issuing a traffic ticket and (2) ordered the passenger to step out of the car even though there was no reason to believe that the passenger was a criminal or dangerous. are the man and the passenger correct

Answer 1

The answer is (A) No, as to both the stop of the car and the officer's order that the passenger step out of the car.

The stop of the car was very much constitutional, because it can be justified objectively (they were speeding no matter what), and both driver and passenger may be ordered to step out of the car in the event of a lawful traffic stop.