Nathaniel Martin was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by U.S. Forest Service Officer Joshua Radford in the Monongahela National Forest on September 6, 2021. Radford pulled the vehicle over because it was illegally parked on a single-lane bridge over the Cherry River — a straightforward traffic infraction. But before completing the ordinary tasks of a traffic stop, Radford immediately asked driver Melisa Jarvis whether there were any firearms in the vehicle. Jarvis admitted to one; Radford later retrieved it and asked again, prompting Jarvis to disclose a second firearm under the passenger seat. When a criminal history check came back showing Martin had prior felony convictions, Radford arrested him. Approximately two and a half years later, Martin was charged under 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(8) with felon in possession of a firearm.
The district court, presided over by Judge Irene C. Berger of the Southern District of West Virginia, denied Martin's motion to suppress, concluding that Radford had not extended the stop for purposes unrelated to the traffic violation. Martin entered a conditional guilty plea preserving his right to appeal, and was sentenced to 12 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.
The Fourth Circuit majority, written by Judge Benjamin and joined by Judge Thacker, reversed. The court held that Radford abandoned the mission of the stop from its very inception — the parking violation had effectively resolved itself before the stop even began, since Jarvis had already moved the car off the bridge. Rather than diligently pursuing the traffic infraction, Radford led with firearms questions and never returned to the purpose of the stop, ultimately releasing Jarvis without a citation. The majority distinguished the court's 2021 decision in United States v. Buzzard, 1 F.4th 198, where officer-safety questioning was upheld based on a nighttime stop in a high drug-crime area, a passenger with a known felony history who was behaving erratically, and the officer being unable to perform customary checks before asking the question. None of those circumstances were present here: the stop occurred in the middle of the day, neither Martin nor Jarvis exhibited threatening behavior, Radford stated he did not feel he was in danger after learning of the firearm, he allowed Jarvis to reach into and reenter the vehicle without securing the weapon, and he ultimately took Martin to a nearby family gathering, spoke to Martin's mother about the firearm, and released Martin.
The majority emphasized that officer-safety questioning is not categorically permissible at every traffic stop. Whether such questioning is lawful depends on the totality of the circumstances, and those circumstances must actually support a safety-based justification. Because they did not here, Radford's questions were not reasonably related in scope to the stop's mission, and the evidence obtained must be suppressed.
Judge King dissented, arguing that Radford — alone, outnumbered, in a remote and desolate part of the National Forest with limited outside communication — had objectively reasonable safety concerns that justified the firearms inquiry under Buzzard's totality-of-the-circumstances standard. King also noted that the Third Circuit in United States v. Ross, 151 F.4th 487 (3d Cir. 2025), the Ninth Circuit in United States v. Taylor, 60 F.4th 1233 (9th Cir. 2023), and several other circuits have recognized that questions directly tied to officer safety are always permitted during a valid traffic stop — a per se rule King indicated he would also be satisfied to adopt if Buzzard were ever revisited. King argued the majority's decision conflicts with Buzzard and that, under prior-panel rules, Buzzard must control.
The case is No. 25-4233 in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, decided April 17, 2026.