Professor Robert Weisberg is quoted in this New York Times article on the arrest, and subsequent death, of Sandra Bland, and what rights she had when she was pulled over for a traffic stop. 

A dashboard camera video released by Texas officials, which contains vulgar language, confirms accounts of a physical confrontation between Sandra Bland and a state trooper. Ms. Bland, an African-American woman from the Chicago area, was arrested on July 10 during a traffic stop. She died three days later in her jail cell. Her arrest and cause of death remain in dispute.

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Ms. Bland is pulled over and accused of failing to use a turn signal. Brian T. Encinia, a state trooper, approaches her car, takes her information and returns to his vehicle to write a ticket. When Trooper Encinia returns, he asks if she is O.K. and says that Ms. Bland seems irritated.

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In a traffic stop, is it legal for an officer to order a driver to put out a cigarette and exit the car?

Ms. Bland has a right to smoke in her car, but Trooper Encinia could argue that the cigarette was interfering with legitimate police business. Since he had already processed the papers, however, “I don’t see a good reason,” said Robert Weisberg, a criminal procedure expert and law professor at Stanford University.

During a traffic stop, a police officer has the right to ask a driver to get out of the car even for a non-arrestable offense, as a way of securing his own safety. The officer has almost complete discretion and the driver is legally obligated to get out when asked. “He has control over the location of drivers,” Mr. Weisberg said. “It is equal to an officer patting you down to see if you have a gun.”

In this case, Mr. Weisberg said, there is no evidence that Trooper Encinia feared for his safety. He would have to argue that Ms. Bland’s refusal to put the cigarette out gave him the impression that she was violent. If Trooper Encinia had feared for his safety, he would not have walked away from the car for five minutes, Mr. Weisberg said.

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Is there a legal basis for arresting Ms. Bland at this point? Is it legal to pull a driver out of the car?

The only possible basis for telling Ms. Bland that she is under arrest is the crime of resisting a lawful order to get out of the car, unless Trooper Encinia had told her that he was arresting her for the traffic violation, Mr. Weisberg said.

If there is clearly a lawful order to get the driver out of the car and if the officer has no other choice, he can pull the driver out. But he must have exhausted all of the alternatives first, and Trooper Encinia seems to escalate things very quickly, Mr. Weisberg said. “The motive for yanking her out seems to be her rude behavior,” he said.

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