Jackson v. State

MOYLAN, J. The relationship between a traffic stop and a Terry-stop for drugs is a fascinating one, particularly because of its frequently shifting nature. When the relationship is sequential and the traffic stop winds down before the Terry stop has attained viability, it will be a choppy crossing for the prosecution if critical evidence has only been recovered in the course of the late-starting Terry stop. Ferris v. State, 355 Md. 356 , 735 A.2d 491 (1999); Whitehead v. State, 116 Md.App. 497 , 698 A.2d 1115 (1997). If, on the other hand, the Terry stop bursts into bloom before the traffic stop has faded, so that their life cycles overlap even briefly, fortune’s wheel will have turned against the defense.

State v. Ofori, 170 Md.App. 211 , 906 A.2d 1089 (2006). Sequence and timing are everything. Procedural History The appellant, LeShone Jackson, was convicted by Judge Dexter M. Thompson, Jr., on an agreed statement of facts, in the Circuit Court for Cecil County, of the possession of heroin with the intent to distribute. The appellant had reserved his right to appeal from the denial of his pretrial motion to suppress the physical evidence by Judge Raymond E. Beck.

Although the appellant unnecessarily fragments his arguments, what is before us is the single question of whether Judge Beck was in error in ruling that the search of the appellant’s automobile did not offend the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure. The evidence, all seized from the automobile the appellant had been driving, consisted of a large black plastic bag containing a number of smaller packages containing heroin. There were 1550 individual wax packages, containing a total of 600.5 grams of heroin. The stop and subsequent search of the automobile the appellant was driving began at 12:56 P.M. on October 24, 2007.

The pretrial hearing, conducted by Judge Beck on August 29, ⁵⁰² 2008, denied the motion to suppress. The appellant did not testify. The hearing consisted almost exclusively of the testimony of Maryland State Police Trooper David McCarthy, who made the initial traffic stop and then presided over the ensuing investigation. A Traffic Stop For Speeding The chronology that matters is simple.

We will walk through the pertinent elements, step by step, pointing out along the way, however, how other issues interjected by the appellant are immaterial. At 12:56 P.M. Trooper McCarthy was traveling in a southbound direction on Interstate 95 in Cecil County when he observed a gray Grand Prix Pontiac with South Carolina license tags traveling faster than other traffic in the same southbound direction. He paced the Pontiac for half a mile and noted that it was traveling at a speed of 75 miles per hour in a posted 65 miles per hour zone. Accordingly, he pulled the Pontiac over to the right shoulder of the highway.

It was being driven by the appellant. There were no other passengers in the car. Trooper McCarthy approached the Pontiac for the purpose of issuing the appellant a traffic citation for speeding. As a unanimous Supreme Court pointed out in Arizona v. Johnson, 555 U.S.-, 129 S.Ct. 781 , 172 L.Ed.2d 694, 700 (2009): [I]n a traffic-stop setting, the first Terry condition—a lawful investigatory stop—is met whenever it is lawful for police to detain an automobile and its occupants pending inquiry into a vehicular violation.

That stop of the Pontiac was the first material event in our analysis. Judge Beck ruled that it was a lawful traffic stop. The stop was based on speed, and nothing else. Whether it was 10 miles over the speed limit, 20 miles over the speed limit, or 2 miles over the speed limit, the stop was a lawful stop.

(Emphasis supplied). We hold that Judge Beck was absolutely on target with that ruling. The appellant, indeed, makes no challenge. The stop was good and Step One is solid. ⁵⁰³ The First Immateriality: There Is Nothing Wrong With Investigative Opportunism The first of the immaterialities advanced by the appellant consists of casting aspersions on the bona fides of Trooper McCarthy in making the traffic stop.

He contends that Trooper McCarthy, by summoning immediate backup and by calling for a drug-sniffing canine, betrayed his true purpose of being on the trail of a narcotics violation and that he merely exploited the traffic infraction as a subterfuge. He dismissively belittles the traffic stop as “nothing but a ploy.” It is fair comment, but it is also of no avail. Even should the appellant’s suspicion be true, it would not make the slightest difference. As this Court observed in Charity v. State, 132 Md.App. 598, 601 , 753 A.2d 556 (2000): Tn Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 , 116 S.Ct. 1769 , 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996), the Supreme Court extended law enforcement officers a sweeping prerogative, permitting them to exploit the investigative opportunities presented to them by observing traffic infractions even when their primary subjective intention is to look for narcotics.

(Emphasis supplied). Even if a ploy, it is a ploy that the Fourth Amendment forthrightly condones. In assessing a so-called “Whren-stop,” the only pertinent concern is that of whether the officer had facts before him that would, objectively, justify the traffic stop. That the officer, subjectively, may have had some other or some additional purpose in mind is beside the point.

The Charity case itself is a classic illustration of the broad latitude extended to the police by Whren . The initial stop of the appellant’s automobile for a traffic infraction -was completely legitimate .... The hearing judge found as a fact that the appellant was “following too closely” and that the stop for the traffic infraction was fully justified. We accept that as historic fact.

To be sure, Sergeant Lewis was not a highway patrolman with any apparent interest in enforcing the traffic regulations per se. He was a 15-year veteran of the Maryland ⁵⁰⁴ State Police assigned to the special task of drug interdiction. He had made between 400 and 600 arrests on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in cases “involving controlled dangerous substances being transported into or through the State of Maryland.” He recounted at length his extensive training in drug interdiction at special schools and courses in Florida, Canada, Illinois, Nevada, Detroit, New Jersey, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. There is every reason to believe that when he saw the appellant’s car traveling as one of what appeared to be three cars “in convoy” southbound on a major drug corridor from New York to Norfolk and points south, he suspected the appellant to be a drug courier.

The fortuitous traffic infraction simply gave him the opportunity to pursue his primary investigative mission. All of that is beside the point, however, because Whren v. United States permits a narcotics officer to seize the opportunity presented by a traffic infraction to make a stop that would not otherwise be permitted. The narcotics officer need not apologize for this. The ‘Whren stop” is part of the arsenal. 132 Md.App. at 609-10 , 753 A.2d 556 (emphasis supplied).

Opportunism, far from being a constitutional sin, is an investigative virtue. The Proper Conceptualization of a Dog Sniff Taking off, then, from the launching pad of a constitutionally unassailable traffic stop, what is the next pertinent plateau? While the traffic stop was still in progress (we will deal with the time factor in a moment), a trained drug-sniffing dog made a positive alert on the vehicle, thereby signaling the likely presence of narcotic drugs somewhere inside the vehicle. Once such a positive alert takes place, there is, ipso facto, probable cause for a Carroll-Doctrine 1 search of the automo ⁵⁰⁵ bile.

Such a search was made in this case and the drugs were duly recovered. Judge Beck ruled: At that point in time, the traffic stop was continuing. K-9 dog already on the scene with its handler. Leco, with Corporal Armiger, alerted on the car for the basis to search the car, the car ivas searched and the heroin was subsequently found.

(Emphasis supplied). We affirm that ruling. The sniffing by the dog of the exterior of the appellant’s vehicle was not itself a search within the contemplation of the Fourth Amendment and required, therefore, no justification of any sort. The Supreme Court made this point emphatically in Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 410 , 125 S.Ct. 834 , 160 L.Ed.2d 842 (2005): A dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment.

(Emphasis supplied). In Wilkes v. State, 364 Md. 554, 581 , 774 A.2d 420 (2001), the Court of Appeals was equally clear that a dog sniff is “neither a search nor a seizure” and that the Fourth Amendment, therefore, does not apply and requires no comment. Because a K-9 scan, under the circumstances such as those present here, is neither a search nor a seizure, Fourth Amendment issues, in respect to such a K-9 scan, do not mise. Thus, Trooper Prince did not need reasonable articulable suspicion of drug-related criminal activity prior to subjecting petitioner’s Escort to the K-9 scan.

Id. (emphasis supplied). This Court had earlier announced the same principle in Gadson v. State, 102 Md.App. at 557, 650 A.2d 1354 . Whether the Fourth Amendment was even involved, so as to require satisfaction, at that particular stage of the total investigative episode depends upon whether a sniff or smell ⁵⁰⁶ by a drug detection dog constitutes a “search” within the contemplation of the Fourth Amendment.

It does not. (Emphasis supplied). See also Cruz v. State, 168 Md.App. 149, 161 , 895 A.2d 1076 (2006) (“[A] drug dog’s sniff of the exterior of an automobile that had been lawfully stopped for speeding did not implicate legitimate privacy interests.’ ”); State v. Funkhouser, 140 Md.App. 696, 711 , 782 A.2d 387 (2001) (“The smelling or sniffing of the exterior surface of an otherwise protected repository (automobile, suitcase, locker, etc.) is not a ‘search’ within the contemplation of the Fourth Amendment.”). In stating that the dog sniff was beyond constitutional challenge, we deliberately have refrained from using the term of art “reasonable.” That verbal restraint on our part is because “reasonableness” is a Fourth Amendment criterion and Fourth Amendment criteria are of no significance in appraising the use of a drug-smelling dog.

The unchallengeability of a dog sniff has nothing to do with Fourth Amendment reasonableness. Our tolerance of the dog sniff is, rather, an instance of Fourth Amendment inapplicability and not one of Fourth Amendment satisfaction. A dog sniff can be neither “reasonable” nor “unreasonable” in a Fourth Amendment sense, because the Fourth Amendment can be neither satisfied nor violated where it does not apply. So long as the police agent, human or canine, is in a place where that agent has a constitutionally unassailable right to be, it is free to employ its olfactory senses in any way it wishes.

The dog is as free to smell cocaine or marijuana as the officer is free to smell the roses or the garbage or “the breath of new mown hay.” Neither dog nor man needs a judicial permission slip to sniff the air. The “Alert” Established Probable Cause The substantive capacity of a canine “alert” to establish probable cause is also beyond challenge. Judge Cathell placed the imprimatur of the Court of Appeals on the probable-cause-generating potency of a canine “alert” on an automobile in Wilkes v. State, 364 Md. at 586, 774 A.2d 420 : ⁵⁰⁷ The troopers were able to conduct a lawful search of petitioner’s vehicle because after the K-9 scan alerted to the presence of narcotics they had probable cause to do so. We have noted that once a drug dog has alerted a trooper “to the presence of illegal drugs in a vehicle, sufficient probable cause existís] lo support a warrantless search of [a, vehicle].” (Emphasis supplied).

Gadson v. State, 341 Md. 1, 8 , 668 A.2d 22 (1995), had foreshadowed the Wilkes holding by six years. Nor does Gadson dispute that once Sandy the dog alerted Trooper Prince to the presence of illegal drugs in the vehicle, sufficient probable cause existed to support a, warrantless search of the truck. See United States v. Dovali-Avila, 895 F.2d 206, 207 (5th Cir.1990) (a “dog alert” is sufficient to create probable cause to conduct a rvarrantless vehicle search). (Emphasis supplied).

In Fitzgerald v. State, 153 Md.App. 601, 619 , 837 A.2d 989 (2003), aff'd, 384 Md. 484 , 864 A.2d 1006 (2004), our holding was similarly unequivocal. As we affirm the adequacy of the warrant application, we hold that Alex’s “alert ” to Apartment A ivas ipso facto enough to establish probable cause. Both the Court of Appeals and this Court have regularly affirmed the dispositive sufficiency of a canine “alert.” (Emphasis supplied). Carter v. State, 143 Md.App. 670, 674 , 795 A.2d 790 (2002), was equally emphatic.

A trained dog scanned a vehicle and “alerted” to the presence of drugs. From that point on, there is no question about the Fourth Amendment proprieties. The dog “alert” supplied the probable cause for a warrantless search of the van. (Emphasis supplied).

We spoke to the same effect in State v. Funkhouser, 140 Md.App. 696, 711 , 782 A.2d 387 (2001): ⁵⁰⁸ When a qualified dog signals to its handler that narcotics are in a vehicle, ... that is ipso facto probable cause to justify a wan-antless Carroll Doctrine search of the vehicle. (Emphasis supplied). See also State v. Wallace, 372 Md. 137, 146 , 812 A.2d 291 (2002) (“[T]he law is settled that when a properly trained canine alerts to a vehicle indicating the likelihood of contraband, sufficient probable cause exists to conduct a warrantless ‘Carroll’ search of the vehicle.”); Stokeling v. State, 189 Md.App. 653 , 985 A.2d 175 (2009) (“It is well established that an alert to a vehicle by a qualified drug-sniffing dog furnishes probable cause to perform a warrantless search of the vehicle.”). On this issue we are simply reiterating what is now horn-book law.

Once Leco “alerted” on the Pontiac, the ballgame was over. The Pontiac was fair game. The only thing that remains in issue is the eight minute gap between the initial traffic stop and Leco’s “alert.” It was necessary, of course, for the Pontiac still to have been there on the shoulder of the road legitimately when Leco arrived. The Second Set of Irrelevancies: The Pate of the Appellant Was Not Part of the Causation Chain The appellant interrupts the analysis at this point with two immaterial and essentially indistinguishable sub-contentions.

He argues first that by being removed from his automobile, he was “illegally seized.” He asserts: Clearly, the troopers did not have probable cause to seize Appellant. This seizure certainly exceeded the parameters of the traffic stop. Therefore, Appellant was illegally seized. Thus, Appellant’s right pursuant to the Fourth Amendment has been violated.

As such, the evidence illegally obtained must be suppressed. (Emphasis supplied). The appellant then makes the essentially indistinguishable sub-contention that he was unreasonably subjected to a defacto arrest without probable cause. ⁵⁰⁹ Notwithstanding the fact that Appellant was not placed in handcuffs, it has no bearing on the determination of whether he was arrested. Grier, Morton and Dixon, support this proposition.

The troopers intended to arrest Appellant because of their suspicion. Appellant was under their real authority. Appellant was seized. And, Appellant ivas de facto under arrest.

All of the troopers’ actions were conducted prior to Appellant’s credentials being called in and the dog scan being conducted. Thus, Appellant was arrested, without probable cause. Accordingly, the loiver court erred in denying Appellant’s motion to suppress. (Emphasis supplied).

It is not necessary to recite the tetralogy of Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106 , 98 S.Ct, 330 , 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977); Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408 , 117 S.Ct. 882 , 137 L.Ed.2d 41 (1997); Brendlin v. California, 551 U.S. 249 , 127 S.Ct. 2400 , 168 L.Ed.2d 132 (2007); and Arizona v. Johnson, 555 U.S.-, 129 S.Ct. 781 , 172 L.Ed.2d 694 (2009), for the proposition that in a traffic stop case the police may order the driver out of the car, because the propriety of that police action is utterly immaterial. As long as the automobile itself was being constitutionally detained as of the moment the dog-made its positive alert, whatever may have been happening to the appellant in the meantime, good or bad, is utterly immaterial. Whether the appellant was being royally wined and dined, on the one hand, or was being greeted as if exiting the Biograph Theatre in Chicago, on the other, is an extraneous consideration that had no impact on the legitimacy of the dog sniff. For other purposes, of course, it may have made a great deal of difference.

We are not suggesting otherwise. We are simply stressing the point, perhaps starkly so, that the treatment of the appellant as a person, whether exemplary or deplorable, was not a factor in the suppression syllogism. The appellant was being lawfully detained. The degree of restraint, minimal or maximal, did not influence, therefore, the fact that the car was properly still in place when the dog ⁵¹⁰ arrived.

All that matters is that the appellant was not free to drive the car away. Any restraint on him beyond that point, even if excessive, did not affect the immobility of the car. Every Fourth Amendment violation, assuming one to have occurred, does not, in and of itself, require the suppression of evidence. To justify the exclusion of evidence, it is further required that the discovery of the evidence shall have been the proximate result of the Fourth Amendment violation.

There was in this case no even arguable cause-and-effect relationship between the recovery of the evidence and the alleged Fourth Amendment grievances being urged by the appellant. Even if, arguendo, the appellant had been “illegally seized” and even if, arguendo, the appellant had been “subjected to a de facto arrest without probable cause,” that might give rise to a § 1983 constitutional tort action, but it would not adversely affect the legitimacy of the dog sniff and the consequential Carroll Doctrine search of the Pontiac in this case. Suppression requires a showing of proximate causation. In Charity v. State, 132 Md.App. at 632 , 753 A.2d 556 , we stressed the necessity of keeping one’s eye on the critical issue and not being distracted by immaterialities.

So an unconstitutional detention of the appellant occurred. So what? Why do we care? What significance, if any, does that unconstitutional detention have for the only issue before us in this case.

It is so easy at times for all hands to get excited about the rightness or wrongness of police behavior that evei'yone loses sight of the ultimate issue. There is a single contention raised by the appellant on this appeal. As he himself phrases it, “THE SEARCH OF THE APPELLANT’S VEHICLE WAS VIOLATIVE OF THE FOURTH AND FOURTEENTH AMENDMENTS.” (Emphasis supplied). An analysis of materiality at times calls for an almost surgical separation of concerns.

Selecting what to ignore, however, is not cavalier; it is an indispensable diagnostic skill, for some investigative events have juridical significance while ⁵¹¹ others do not. Whereas a search incident or a frisk (or even, perhaps, a confession or an on-site identification) may depend for its admissibility on the constitutional propriety of what the police have been doing to the detainee, a Carroll Doctrine search of an automobile, by contrast, may in the meantime have diverged onto a self-contained doctrinal path of its own. This is such a case. So long as the search of the Pontiac itself did not violate the Fourth Amendment, it simply does not matter, on this particular issue, whether the seizure and/or arrest of the appellant did so or not.

The Shelf Life of a Traffic Stop The third and final critical issue in this case is whether the appellant’s vehicle, which had been legitimately stopped initially, was still being legitimately detained as of the moment the dog sniff occurred. The vehicle was stopped at 12:56 P.M. Corporal Chris Armiger, with the K-9 Leco in tow, arrived at the scene at 1:00 P.M., four minutes later. The terminal time lor Fourth Amendment appraisal, however, is not when the K-9 unit arrived on the scene, but the time when the actual K-9 “alert” was made. Leco made a positive alert for controlled dangerous substances at 1:04 P.M., eight minutes after the initial stop.

At that point, as we measure the length of the detention that must be subjected to Fourth Amendment reasonableness analysis, the clock stopped running. Under the subhead “The Clock Stops,” this Court discussed the terminal significance of the K-9 “alert” in State v. Ofori, 170 Md.App. 211, 221 , 906 A.2d 1089 (2006). At the other end of the time continuum, once the K-9 “alerted ” to the probable presence of contraband drugs in the Cadillac, all Fourth Amendment uncertainty came to an end. Officer Shaffer and Officer Brooks had, by virtue of the K-9 “alert,” unquestionable probable cause for a warrantless Carrot-Doctrine search of the Cadillac, which they then proceeded to execute.

(Emphasis supplied). We are dealing in this case with a detention time of eight minutes. Even by the fast-moving stopwatch of a traffic stop, ⁵¹² eight minutes does not come close to the outer permissible limits. Trooper McCarthy had phoned in to police headquarters the appellant’s driver’s license data and the car rental agreement for the Pontiac.

He had not yet received any reply when the dog sniff took place. Trooper McCarthy testified that at the time the K-9 alert was made, the traffic stop was still in progress. He had not yet heard from his dispatcher about warrant checks on the appellant or a stolen car report on the automobile. TPR.

MCCARTHY: I still have not received responses back through MVA or any warrant checks, at this point. TPR. MCCARTHY: The traffic stop is still going on. We are going to do a K-9 scan during the course of the traffic stop.

On redirect examination, Trooper McCarthy reaffirmed that the traffic stop was still very much in progress when the K-9 alert took place. [I] sn’t it true, at that point in time, you still had not completed either the traffic citation or traffic warning that you were going to be giving Mr. Jackson for the speeding violation? TPR. MCCARTHY: That’s correct. I wasn’t finished ivith the traffic stop, no, sir.

(Emphasis supplied). See Byndloss v. State, 391 Md. 462 , 893 A.2d 1119 (2006), for an extensive survey of the length of detention permitted in the case of a traffic stop. In almost all of the cases, the critical breaking point between permissible and unreasonably prolonged traffic detentions occurs at somewhere near the 20 to 25 minute marker. As we took pains to point out in Charity v. State, 132 Md.App. at 617 , 753 A.2d 556 , however, the reasonableness of any particular traffic stop detention must be assessed on a case-by-case basis and not by doing a “swatch comparison” with other traffic stop cases.

Even a very lengthy detention may be completely reasonable under certain circumstances. Conversely, even a very ⁵¹³ brief detention may be unreasonable under other circumstances. There is no set formula for measuring in the abstract what should be the reasonable duration of a traffic stop. We must assess the reasonableness of each detention on a case-by-case basis and not by the running of the clock. ...

Reasonableness may depend on whether the purpose of the traffic stop is actually being pursued with some modicum of diligence. We repeat that in processing a traffic infraction the police are not to be monitored with a stop-watch. (Emphasis supplied). Charity also made it clear that the courts are not holding a time gun on the traffic stop and are not absolutely prohibiting alert attentiveness to a possibly simultaneous secondary investigation.

We are not suggesting for a moment that when the police effectuate a traffic stop, they are operating under a “time gun” or may 'not pursue two purposes essentially simultaneously, with each pursuit necessarily sloiving down the other to some modest extent. 182 Md.App. at 614, 753 A.2d 556 (emphasis supplied). A fleeting eight minutes does not come close to the limit and does not itself call for more finely calibrated analysis. The continuing legitimacy of the traffic-based detention, moreover, had, long before reaching that eight-minute marker, already become redundant. This was not a case where the legitimate detention attendant on the traffic stop had come to an end before a fresh detention based on a Terry-stop for drugs had begun.

See Ferris v. State, 355 Md. 356, 372 , 735 A.2d 491 (1999) (“Once the purpose of that [traffic] stop has been fulfilled, the continued detention of the car and the occupants amounts to a second detention.”); Whitehead v. State, 116 Md.App. 497, 506 , 698 A.2d 1115 (1997); Snow v. State, 84 Md.App. 243, 264-65 , 578 A.2d 816 (1990) (“That purpose [to issue a ticket for speeding] was fully fulfilled, but the detention was continued.”). In this case, there was no break between two distinct detentions but only a single unbroken ⁵¹⁴ detention that for a time enjoyed dual and overlapping purposes. The Early Ripening of a Second Rationale Even if, purely arguendo, we were to assume that the length of the detention for processing the speeding violation had been excessive as of the time of the K-9 alert, such a conclusion would still not be fatal to the State’s cause. The initial detention was, to be sure, exclusively for a traffic infraction.

Almost immediately, however, the status of that detention took on a dual character as it was ratchetted upward by events into a Terry-stop for a narcotics violation in addition to a traffic stop. Indeed, justification for a Terry stop for drugs did not trail behind the traffic stop by more than the blink of an eye. We will discuss the accumulation of suspicious factors in a moment, but two of them—the observation of the out-of-state tags and the vehicle’s presence on the 1-95 “corridor”— actually preceded the traffic stop. Three other factors—the observation of 1) the air fresheners, 2) the appellant’s extreme nervousness, and 3) the cell phones—occurred simultaneously with Trooper McCarthy’s first approach of the appellant as he sat behind the steering wheel.

Yet another factor—the production of the North Carolina rental agreement in the name of a female—followed within the minute. As the sole predicate for the detention, the traffic stop lost that exclusive status within a fraction of a minute. From that moment forward, we will be measuring the permissible length of detention not solely of a traffic stop but also of a Terry stop for drugs. The appellant, however, wants to stay within the box of a traffic stop.

In yet another detour into immateriality, he contends that once a detention begins as a traffic stop, it is somehow constitutionally unfair to allow it to transmute into a Terry investigation of suspected crime. The identity of the police rationale, he maintains, once fixed, should not evolve into something else. He offers, however, neither law nor logic in support of such doctrinal immutability. Our response to the appellant is that the justifying rationale for a detention ⁵¹⁵ need not be one or the other; it may happily be both.

The appellant’s argument, moreover, would, in effect, overrule Whren v. United States, which placed the Supreme Court’s imprimatur on the existence of a dual purpose. Even a brief encounter on the shoulder of a road may be dynamic and need not remain doctrinally static. There is no logically sound reason why at any point in the course of a traffic stop, articulable suspicion might not achieve critical mass for a Teiry criminal investigation. If such articulable suspicion may develop in the total absence of a traffic stop, it may as readily develop in the course of one.

From that point on, the processing of 1) the traffic infraction and 2) the Terry investigation for narcotics involvement may proceed simultaneously on parallel tracks. The time limit for processing the traffic infraction, to be sure, might run its course before the Terry drug investigation time limit runs out; but the