Page:Jackson v. State, 2013 Ark. 201, 427 S.W.3d 607.pdf/6

 mistake has been made. E.g., Lee v. State, 2009 Ark. 255, 308 S.W.3d 596. We defer to the superiority of the circuit court to evaluate the credibility of witnesses who testify at a suppression hearing. E.g., Cockrell v. State, 2010 Ark. 258, 370 S.W.3d 197. We reverse only if the circuit court's ruling is clearly against the preponderance of the evidence. Ritter v. State, 2011 Ark. 427, 385 S.W.3d 740.

This court has held that a law-enforcement officer, as part of a valid traffic stop, may detain a traffic offender while completing certain routine tasks, such as computerized checks of the vehicle's registration and the driver's license and criminal history, and the writing up of a citation or warning. Sims v. State, 356 Ark. 507, 157 S.W.3d 530 (2004). During this process, the officer may ask the motorist routine questions such as his destination, the purpose of the trip, or whether the officer may search the vehicle, and he may act on whatever information is volunteered. Id. After these routine checks are completed, continued detention of the driver can become unreasonable, unless the officer has a reasonably articulable suspicion for believing that criminal activity is afoot. Id.

We are called upon in this case to review the circuit court's finding that the traffic stop at issue here had not been completed at the time Corporal Behnke deployed K-9 Major. Jackson acknowledges that there is case law suggesting that a stop is not completed until the driver's license and any accompanying paperwork is returned, which is precisely what we recently stated in Menne, 2012 Ark. 37, 386 S.W.3d 451. But, according to Jackson, we have not established a bright-line rule that a traffic stop cannot be completed before that time.

While we may not have a bright-line rule for when a stop is legitimately completed,