http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/06/justice/new-mexico-search-lawsuit/
According to a police affidavit accompanying the lawsuit, a detective asked a different officer to pull over Eckert's 1998 brown Dodge pickup truck for not properly stopping at a stop
Detectives don't roam around looking for traffic violations. Probably they were following this guy after a suspected drug buy. The traffic stop was just an excuse for a search.
And, as we all know, a drug user would never exaggerate a police encounter.
"Hildalgo County K-9 officer did inform me that he had dealt with Mr. Eckert on a previous case and stated that Mr. Eckert was known to insert drugs into his anal cavity and had been caught in Hidalgo County with drugs in his anal cavity," the affidavit said.
Should be an interesting trial.
There's no question that we've seen some outrageous examples of prosecurtorial overreach in different jurisdictions -- the Zimmerman case and the Duke Lacrosse cases leap immediately to mind. Not sure if that's the case here or not.
As to the initial traffic stop, it's almost a given that it was a "pretext stop" resulting from some sort of narco investigation/enforcment action. The thing is, SCOTUS looked at that very issue in 1996, and ruled (unanimously -- how often does that happen?) in Whren v. US that using a traffic violation as a pretext does not violate the 4th amendment.