Driving a Little Slow Insufficient Grounds for Stop

U.S. v. Valadez-Valadez, -- F.3d --, 2008 WL 2009867 (10th Cir. 5/12/08) - An actual reversal of the district court's denial of motion to suppress because there was no rs for the stop of Mr. Valadez-Valadez's pickup outside Tierra Amarilla, NM. The pickup was stopped for traveling ten miles per hour under the speed limit. Inside the camper shell were 21 passengers, some of them unlawfully in the country. The state law provided that a motor vehicle should not be driven "at such a slow speed as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic . . . " The opinion concludes that driving at a speed moderately below the limit does not, without more, obstruct or impede traffic. The officer who stopped the vehicle in this case could have passed it.