Rhode Island Bars Police From Even Asking to Search a Traffic-Stop Car

The operative rule is a prohibition on the request, not on the search. Section 31-21.2-5(b) states that no operator or owner-passenger of a motor vehicle shall be requested to consent to a search of the vehicle where the car was stopped solely for a traffic violation, unless reasonable suspicion or probable cause of criminal activity exists. Because the bar attaches to the asking, a Rhode Island driver who says yes to a request that should never have been made has not cured the defect. The same subsection extends the rule to pedestrians asked to consent to a search of their person, and to juveniles asked to consent to any search.

Juveniles get an additional warning right. Where a warrant would otherwise be required, § 31-21.2-5(b) requires the officer to advise the juvenile that he or she may refuse to consent to, or limit the scope of, any requested search. Age is judged on the perception of the officer making a good faith effort in advance of requesting consent, so an officer cannot avoid the duty by declining to ask. Nothing in the subsection restricts a pat down for weapons based on a reasonable belief that the officer's personal safety may be jeopardized, which is the same protective search R.I. Gen. Laws § 12-7-2 has long allowed during questioning.

The remedy is unusually direct. Section 31-21.2-5(f) provides that any evidence obtained as a result of a search prohibited by subsection (a) or (b) shall be inadmissible in any judicial proceeding, while preserving searches otherwise based on legally sufficient cause. That is a statutory exclusionary rule sitting alongside the constitutional one, so a Rhode Island suppression argument can be made on the text of the Motor Vehicles title without reaching Article 1, Section 6 of the state constitution at all.

Three companion limits in the same section shape the stop itself. Subsection (a) says that unless reasonable suspicion or probable cause of criminal activity exists, a vehicle stopped for a traffic violation may not be detained beyond the time needed to address the violation, and it expressly ties waiting for a canine unit to that same suspicion threshold. Subsection (d) says that, with the exception of drivers subject to federal motor carrier regulations, an operator stopped solely for a traffic violation may not be asked for any documentation or identification other than a driver's license, motor vehicle registration and proof of insurance, unless suspicion or probable cause exists or the operator has failed to produce a valid license. Subsection (h) requires an officer to advise any motorist who is stopped of the reason for the stop.

Rhode Island also builds a paper record of every search. Under § 31-21.2-5(c), a search that produces no criminal charge must be logged in a computer-aided dispatch entry or other police-generated report, and a search that does produce charges must be documented in a police report. Either record must carry the date, time and location of the stop or search, the reasonable suspicion or probable cause that led to the search, and the race, age and gender of each person searched together with the results. Stripped of information identifying the officer, that document is a public record subject to the law enforcement exemptions in § 38-2-2(4)(D). Subsection (e) adds that where a traffic violation is used to stop a vehicle for non-related investigatory reasons, the officer must document the investigatory basis in writing or electronically, and each department must assess every six months whether the suspicion was justified and publish the data.

The chapter is genuinely codified law rather than an uncodified act. Chapter 31-21.2 began as the Racial Profiling Prevention Act of 2004 (P.L. 2004, ch. 331 and ch. 356) and was substantially rewritten by P.L. 2015, ch. 214 and ch. 235, the Comprehensive Community-Police Relationship Act of 2015, which is where subsections (a) through (j) of § 31-21.2-5 in their current form come from. Section 31-21.2-3 separately bans racial profiling by any state or municipal officer or agency.

One source of these protections that Rhode Island does not use is cannabis legalisation. The Rhode Island Cannabis Act, § 21-28.11-22(a), shields an adult from arrest, prosecution, penalty, seizure and forfeiture for possessing an ounce or less, and for keeping up to ten ounces and three mature plants at home, but it contains no clause saying that lawful cannabis conduct is not grounds for a search or inspection. In Rhode Island the search protection comes from the traffic-stop statute, not from the legalisation statute.

Enforcement runs through two routes. The first is suppression: § 31-21.2-5(f) makes evidence from a search that violated the detention limit in subsection (a) or the consent-request bar in subsection (b) inadmissible in any judicial proceeding, so the argument is available in District Court, Superior Court and the Traffic Tribunal alike.

The second is a private lawsuit. Section 31-21.2-4 provides that any individual who alleges a violation of chapter 31-21.2, other than the continued-data-collection duty in § 31-21.2-6, may file a civil action for damages and any appropriate and equitable relief in Superior Court, and the court may allow a prevailing plaintiff reasonable attorneys' fees as part of the costs. That reaches a request for consent made without suspicion, an over-long detention, a demand for documents beyond license, registration and insurance, and a failure to state the reason for the stop.

Complaints against the officer go to the department. Section 31-21.2-8 requires every state and municipal law enforcement agency to maintain a written misconduct complaint procedure, make the forms available in at least one governmental location other than the police station and on the agency website, accept complaints in person, by mail or by facsimile, and publish annual counts of complaints received, broken down by type and by disposition.