Cortes v. State

Justia.com Opinion Summary: During a routine traffic stop, police officers developed what the district court found was a reasonable suspicion that the car's passenger, appellant Arturo Cortes, was armed and dangerous. The police ordered Cortes out of the car and subjected him to a patdown search, which produced the evidence underlying the conviction for possession of a controlled substance. Arturo appealed the conviction, urging the Supreme Court to reject the district court's finding of reasonable suspicion or to interpret the Nevada constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures more strictly than the Supreme Court interpreted the Fourth Amendment in Arizona v. Johnson. The Court saw no basis for departing from Johnson's application of Terry v. Ohio to traffic-stop frisks and affirmed the judgment of the district court.

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