Riley, J.
Appellant-Defendant, Clayton Doctor (Doctor), appeals the trial court’s Order denying Doctor’s motion to suppress the evidence seized during a traffic stop.
We affirm and remand for further proceedings.
Doctor presents one issue on interlocutory appeal, which we restate as follows: Whether the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress the evidence seized during the course of a traffic stop.
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In February of 2014, Detective Cliff Simpson (Detective Simpson), a police officer with the Evansville Police Department’s narcotics unit and “a federally deputized” officer with the Drug Enforcement Administration task force, received incriminating information about Doctor from an individual in federal custody. … As part of his investigation into Doctor, Detective Simpson … applied to the United States District Court in the Southern District of Indiana to place a GPS tracking device on the vehicle. …
On June 24, 2014, the GPS device indicated that the Acura had been driven to Atlanta. For five days, the vehicle remained in Atlanta. On June 29, 2014, it appeared from the GPS unit that the Acura was leaving Atlanta and heading north. … Once the Acura crossed the state line into Evansville, Officer Fair initiated a traffic stop based on a window tint violation.
Officer Fair approached the vehicle and gathered information from the driver, who was identified as Doctor. … Approximately “[a] minute” after Officer Fair initiated the stop, Motor Patrol Officer Lenny Reed (Officer Reed) and his K-9 partner, Willy (K-9 Willy), arrived on the scene. Officer Reed first observed the vehicle’s window tint, noting that “[t]he occupants in the vehicle were not easily identifiable.” …
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As Officer Reed returned K-9 Willy to his patrol vehicle, he stopped by Officer Fair’s vehicle to inform Officer Fair that K-9 Willy had indicated the presence of narcotics. Officer Fair advised that he was writing out a warning citation for Doctor’s window tint violation. K-9 Willy’s indications were relayed to Detective Simpson, who applied for and obtained a warrant to search Doctor’s vehicle. … The search revealed a hydraulic trap (i.e., a “hidden compartment”) “in the front passenger’s side airbag.” After breaching the trap, the officers discovered “two heat sealed bags containing a white powdery substance,” both of which “field tested positive for cocaine.” …
On July 1, 2014, the State filed an Information, charging Doctor with Count 1, dealing in cocaine, a Class A felony …); and Count II, conspiracy to commit dealing in cocaine, a Class A felony … On November 12, 2014, Doctor filed a motion to suppress “any evidence obtained as a result of the search of [his] vehicle.” …
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Doctor claims that the evidence seized from his vehicle should have been suppressed because it was obtained pursuant to an illegal traffic stop. … Regarding the determination of reasonable suspicion to merit a warrantless search, our review is de novo. Sanders v. State, 989 N.E.2d 332, 334 (Ind. 2013).
Doctor contends that the traffic stop violated the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 11 of the Indiana Constitution. In particular, he argues that the basis for the traffic stop—i.e., a window tint violation—was pretextual. … Doctor posits that law enforcement “simply orchestrated a plan in which they could obtain the information necessary to secure a search warrant,” and a “window tint violation was the only excuse they could come up with to justify the stop.” ….
… In Sanders, it was the defendant who presented evidence of an expert witness to contradict the testimony of the police officers, while, here, Doctor offered no evidence to indicate that his window tint actually complied with the statute. See Sanders, 989 N.E.2d at 335. Furthermore, evidence that Doctor’s window tint complied with the Window Tint Statute would serve to absolve him of the window tint violation, but it would not negate the officers’ reasonable suspicion based on their observations. …
Nonetheless, even where a traffic stop is valid at its inception, it may violate the protections of the Fourth Amendment “if its manner of execution unreasonably infringes interests protected by the Constitution. … Doctor now alleges that Officer Fair “intentionally withheld completion of the traffic stop in order to allow Officer Reed to further the investigation.”
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Officer Reed testified that the duration of a traffic stop is contingent upon multiple factors, such as “the time of the day or the city, . . . business, traffic on the radio, getting on the radio, things of that nature.” … Here, no evidence was presented to establish that the eight-to-twelve-minute period was an unreasonable amount of time for a traffic stop.
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Affirmed and remanded for further proceedings.
Kirsch, J. and Pyle, J. concur