dissenting.
[¶ 20] I respectfully dissent. This case presents a fact pattern that suggests an involuntary, compelled “consent” search of an individual who had been seized for a traffic stop and from whom a verbal consent to search may have been extracted as the price of her freedom to leave. As such, the circumstances surrounding the individual’s seizure and subsequent verbal consent must be subject to careful Fourth and Fifth Amendment analysis and concurrent analysis under Article 1, sections 58 and 69 of the Maine Constitution. The trial court did not make factual findings critical to proper analysis of the issues incident to application of each of these important constitutional rights.
[¶ 21] This case involves no casual roadside encounter over a minor traffic stop followed by a relaxed consent to search with the unanticipated discovery of marijuana secreted in the vehicle. Instead, the record suggests what has come to be recognized as a widespread practice of using apparently legitimate traffic stops to extract “consent” to vehicle searches from individuals who fit profiles of persons whom police believe might possess drugs, but who engage in no conduct to give any legal basis to search the individual or the vehicle. This practice has been subject to widespread scholarly comment and criticism. See Angela J. Davis, Race, Cops, and Traffic Stops, 51 U. Miami L. Rev. 425 (1997); Chris K. Visser, Without A Warrant, Probable Cause or Reasonable Suspicion: Is There Any Meaning to the Fourth Amendment While Driving a Car?, 35 Hous. L. Rev. 1683 (1999); Comment, Pretextual Traffic Stops: Protecting Our Streets or Racist Police Tactics? 23 U. Dayton L. Rev. 313 (1998); David Ru-dovsky, The Impact of the War on Drugs on Procedural Fairness and Racial Equality, 1994 U. Chi. Legal F. 237.
[¶ 22] In the principal United States Supreme Court case addressing a consent extracted after a traffic stop, the searching officer had requested consent to search in 786 traffic stops in just the year of the defendant’s arrest. See Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. 33, 40, 117 S.Ct. 417, 136 L.Ed.2d 347 (1996) (Ginsburg, J., concurring). The concurring opinion noted that Ohio courts “observed that traffic stops in the State were regularly giving way to contraband searches, characterized as consensual, even when officers had no reason to suspect illegal activity.” Id. Similarly, one of the nation’s primary authorities on search and seizure has observed that “[i]n an incredible number of drug cases, the encounter with the police commenced with a seemingly innocuous traffic violation.” See Wayne R. LaFave, The Present and Fit-*971ture Fourth Amendment, 1995 U. III. L. Rev. Ill, 118.
[¶ 28] While this law enforcement practice has been most frequently analyzed in connection with racially motivated traffic stops and compelled consents to search,10 the legal principles apply equally here where a young woman was on her way to a concert where widespread drug use was anticipated. The facts of this case and the proper approach for the Court in reviewing the motion to suppress must be analyzed from this perspective, as reflective of a common tactic to force and then justify a search without reasonable articulable suspicion, exigent circumstances, or safety concerns that are the usual bases for a warrantless seizure and search.
I. THE FACTS OF THE STOP
[¶ 24] Barbara Kremen was stopped for speeding shortly after noon on August 15, 1997. The stop was only for speeding. The officer saw no erratic operation or other suspicious activity in the vehicle. The record indicates no issue that would have given the officer any reason to require the vehicle’s oceupants to leave the vehicle due to concerns regarding the officer’s safety or the occupants’ safety. However, the officer did not engage in the common practice of leaving the driver in the vehicle while he returned to his vehicle to check license status and write a ticket. Instead, he ordered Ms. Kremen to exit her vehicle and accompany him back to the front seat of his vehicle. The officer then finished all of the paperwork incident to the traffic stop and issued the speeding ticket to Ms. Kremen. The transaction regarding the traffic stop was completed. However, the officer did not release Ms. Kremen from his vehicle and tell her she was free to go. Instead, he began questioning her as to whether there might be anything illegal in her vehicle. At this point, the testimony presented by Ms. Kremen and the officer diverge. Ms. Kremen testified that the officer threatened to jail her if she did not give consent to search. The officer testified that Ms. Kremen’s consent to search was entirely voluntary. Ms. Kremen also testified that she specifically objected to a search of the front compartment of her vehicle, although the officer testified that the search of the front compartment was consented to. To challenge the officer’s credibility, the defense presented evidence that the officer had plead guilty to four counts of crimes involving dishonesty — illegally tagging deer — in 1992. The search of the front compartment of the vehicle yielded, the marijuana and marijuana pipe which led to the possession of marijuana charge.
[¶ 25] In its order denying the motion to suppress, the District Court indicated that it believed the officer’s testimony over Ms. Kremen’s testimony on the question of whether the officer had threatened to jail Ms. Kremen in order to extract her consent to search. The court did not proceed to examine the other circumstances of the stop and detention of Ms. Kremen to determine if, in the totality of those circumstances, her continued detention was justified and her consent to search was voluntary. Likewise, it does not appear that the trial court analyzed whether the statement authorizing the search of the vehicle should have been subject to Miranda11 warnings. The court’s findings on the consent issue consisted of: (1) a finding that the officer asked if he could search the “front compartment area”; (2) *972a conclusion that “the Defendant consented to this”; (3) a footnote rejecting Ms. Kremen’s contention that her consent was not voluntary because she was threatened with jail if she did not consent; and (4) a discussion of the appropriate scope of the search.
II. DISCUSSION
[¶ 26] Three issues important to determination of the validity of the search of Ms. Kremen’s vehicle require that her conviction be vacated and that the evidence be suppressed, or the matter be remanded for further factfinding. Those issues are:
1. Whether Ms. Kremen was subject to an illegal seizure at the time of her consent;
2. Whether Ms. Kremen’s statement should have been subject to Miranda warnings; and
3. Whether Ms. Kremen’s consent was voluntary.
A. Seizure
[¶ 27] When a police officer stops a car, a seizure occurs for purposes of Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment analysis. See Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979). Once the traffic stop is accomplished, the seizure of the individual continues until such time as the individual is told she is free to leave. As the United States Supreme Court has noted, “certainly few motorists would feel free to disobey a directive to pull over or to leave the scene of a traffic stop without being told they might do so.” Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 436, 104 S.Ct. 3138, 82 L.Ed.2d 317 (1984). Although the United States Supreme Court has held that an officer attempting to extract a consent to search after a traffic stop need not affirmatively advise an individual that they are free to leave and need not consent to a search, see Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. at 39-40, 117 S.Ct. 417,12 its opinion did not analyze the affects of a continuing seizure of the individual on other constitutional limitations on seizures and statements made in the course of a seizure.13
[¶ 28] Key facts in Robinette are close to the facts here. In both, the effort to obtain consent for a vehicle search began after the entire transaction relevant to the traffic stop had been completed. The Ohio Supreme Court had ruled that continued detention, unrelated to the original purpose of the stop, and without separate reasonable articulable suspicion, constituted an illegal seizure. See State v. Robinette, 73 Ohio St.3d 650, 653 N.E.2d 695, 697-98 (1995). The United States Supreme Court did not directly address this issue. Instead, it shifted the analysis to a *973discussion of the irrelevance of the subjective intent of the officer. See Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. at 88, 117 S.Ct. 417. This may have occurred because the Ohio ruling addressed “the motivation behind a police officer’s continued detention.” State v. Robinette, 658 N.E.2d at 697.14 There is also an important distinction in Robinette that the defendant was outside of the vehicles when the consent questions were asked, while here Ms. Kremen was subject to continued detention in the police car when the consent questions were asked of her.
[¶ 29] Robinette does not-stand for the proposition that a valid traffic stop serves as a general warrant to detain and question on issues unrelated to the stop after the transaction based on the stop has been completed. Article 1, sections 5 and 6 of the Maine Constitution do not permit a valid traffic stop to become authority for continued detention and questioning on other issues, once the transaction based on the stop has been completed.15 Under the Maine Constitution a lawful detention pursuant to a traffic stop ends when the transaction based on the traffic stop is completed, unless further issues relating to personal safety or reasonable articula-ble suspicion of other illegal activity are generated during the course of the traffic stop transaction.
[¶ 30] If consent to search is given during the course of an unlawful seizure of an individual, the results of the search must be suppressed as “tainted fruit.” See Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 218-19, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979); see also Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 433-34, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 115 L.Ed.2d 389 (1991); Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 501, 507-08, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983) (plurality opinion). In determining if a seizure has occurred, “the crucial test is whether, taking into account all of the circumstances surrounding the encounter, the police conduct would have communicated to a reasonable person that [she] was not at liberty to ignore the police presence and go about [her] business.” Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. at 437, 111 S.Ct. 2382 (quoting Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, 569, 108 S.Ct. 1975, 100 L.Ed.2d 565 (1988)).
[¶ 31] The District Court made no finding as to whether Ms. Kremen was subject to an illegal detention at the time of her “consent.” However, the facts surrounding Ms. Kremen’s continued detention do not appear to be disputed in the record. She had been removed from her vehicle *974and ordered to sit in the police cruiser. She had not been told she was free to leave at the time the “consent” was extracted from her. Thus, as a matter of law, her seizure or detention continued,16 although any justification for her seizure had ended. Accordingly, at the time her “consent” was extracted, Ms. Kremen was subject to an unlawful seizure, requiring that the results of the search be suppressed.
B. Miranda
[¶ 32] In this case, the facts suggest that when Ms. Kremen made whatever statement she made indicating that the officer could search her vehicle, she was still in custody because a reasonable person in her situation would not believe that she was free to leave. See State v. Martin, 580 A.2d 678, 681 (Me.1990).17 Let us remember, Ms. Kremen was in ,the front seat of the police car where she had been told to sit by the officer. Also, she was under interrogation. “A custodial interrogation occurs whenever a defendant has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of [her] freedom by the authorities in any significant way and is subject to questioning.” State v. McLain, 367 A.2d 213, 220 (Me.1976).
[¶ 33] Unless we are, at this point, to develop an “automobile exception” to traditional Miranda requirements, Ms. Kre-men, being both in custody and under interrogation, would have had the right, under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article 1, section 6 of the Maine Constitution, to be advised that she had the right to remain silent, that any statement she might make could be used against her, and that she had a. right to consult with counsel prior to making any statements. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. at 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602; State v. Preston, 411 A.2d 402, 405-06 (Me.1980). No such cautions were given here. It is undisputed that the only basis for search of the vehicle was whatever statement Ms. Kremen made regarding giving of consent. Absent that statement there was no reasonable articulable suspicion, safety concern, observation of anything in plain view, or any other basis for a warrantless search. If the search was the result of an uncautioned statement while Ms. Kremen was in custody and under interrogation, the results of the search must be suppressed. See Miranda, 384 U.S. at 476, 86 S.Ct. 1602; Preston, 411 A.2d at 405.18
C. Voluntariness
[¶ 34] Separately, the suppression court did not sufficiently analyze the issue of the voluntariness of Ms. Kremen’s statement of consent. The court stated that it did not believe Ms. Kremen’s statement that the officer had threatened to jail her if she did not consent to the search. But with that finding made, the court did not go on to further analyze, based on the totality of the circumstances, the issue of whether her statements to the officer were voluntary. Voluntariness of a “consent” to search must be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment and Article 1, section 5, “by examining the totality of the circumstances.” Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. at 39, 117 S.Ct. 417; State v. Sherburne, 571 A.2d 1181, 1185 (Me.1990). Relevant but not dispositive' factors in determining if consent to a search is voluntary include “[kjnowledge of the right to refuse consent; presence of coercive surroundings, including the location of the request; and the number of police officers present .... ” Visser, Without a Warrant, 35 Hous. L. Rev. at 1696.
*975[¶ 35] While voluntariness is not examined with the Fifth Amendment, beyond a reasonable doubt burden of proof, see State v. Koucoules, 343 A.2d at 872-76, the State must prove voluntariness of a consent by a preponderance of the evidence. See id. at 866, 872-73; see also State v. Fredette, 411 A.2d 65, 68 (Me.1979). Accordingly, when voluntariness of a consent is challenged, the totality of the circumstances must be examined. The State must prove and the court must find that the consent was “free and voluntary and not the product of coercion, whether express or implied.” Fredette, 411 A.2d at 68 (citing Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 248-49, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973)).
[¶ 36] Here, once the court rejected the credibility of Ms. Kremen’s statement that she was threatened with arrest if she did not consent, it appears to have assumed the voluntariness of the consent and proceeded to the issue of the scope of the consent, which it also resolved against Ms. Kremen.
[¶ 37] The totality and the circumstances in this case — for search and seizure and self-incrimination analysis — includes the reality that there is a common and widespread law enforcement practice of using traffic stops to attempt to extract consent searches of vehicles where, but for the consent, no other legal basis for the search exists. This practice relies on compulsion and the compromise of freedom resulting from the traffic stop and the implicit, sometimes explicit, threat of further impediment or delay to obtain a consent to search.19 The circumstances here also include interrogation in the arguably coercive surroundings of the police car in which Ms. Kremen had been ordered to sit. See Preston, 411 A.2d at 405 (observing that police “increased the coercive nature of the interrogation by conducting it in the police car”); see also State v. Thibodeau, 496 A.2d 635, 639-40 (Me.1985).
[¶ 38] A person acts voluntarily to provide testimonial self-condemnation of a crime or, here, a consent to search, only if that person chooses “freely and knowingly, to provide criminal self-condemnation by utterances from [her] own lips.” State v. Collins, 297 A.2d 620, 626 (Me.1972). Notably, Koucoules, while refusing to apply Collins’s beyond a reasonable doubt burden of proof to the voluntariness of consent analysis, did appear to accept a similar definitional analysis of voluntariness, using terms requiring consent to be “knowledgeable” and “intelligent” and not a product of “duress” or “coercion,” “express or implied.” Koucoules, 343 A.2d at 872-76.20
*976[¶ 39] The consent here was- obtained by using the common tactic of holding an individual after a traffic stop to utilize the pressures resulting from that continued holding to compromise an individual’s freedom and their free will in order to obtain a consent. Without trial court findings on the point, it is difficult to-conclude that Ms. Kremen’s consent, given in the totality of those circumstances, was, by a preponderance of the evidence, a statement made as the result of the exercise of her own free will and not the product of duress or coercion, express or implied.
III. CONCLUSION
[¶ 40] I would vacate the conviction and order the evidence resulting from the search suppressed because “consent” was extracted during an improper detention of Ms. Kremen. Alternatively, I would vacate the conviction and remand -for fact-finding on the voluntariness issue.
. Article 1, section 5 states:
5. Unreasonable searches prohibited
Section 5. The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions from all unreasonable searches and seizures; and no warrant to search any place, or seize any person or thing, shall issue without a special designation of the place to be searched, and the person or thing to be seized, nor without probable cause — supported by oath or affirmation.
Me. Const, art. 1, § 5.
.Article 1, section 6 states, in pertinent part: "The accused shall not be compelled to furnish or give .evidence against himself or herself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, property or privileges, but by judgment of that person's peers or the law of the land."
Me. Const, art. 1, § 6.
. In addition to the cited law review articles and notes, see Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. -, 120 S.Ct. 673, 682 n. 10, 145 L.Ed.2d 570 (2000) (Stevens, J., dissenting).
. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). In a footnote, the trial court declined to apply the Fifth Amendment and Article 1, section 6 analysis to Ms. Kremen's statement consenting to the search. The defense raised the voluntariness of Ms. Kremen’s statement as an issue and had apparently urged that the court apply the Fifth Amendment, beyond a reasonable doubt standard for voluntariness determinations.
. We have ruled similarly that a subject need not be advised (or aware) of their right to object to a consent search in order for the consent to be voluntary. See State v. Fredette, 411 A.2d 65, 69 (Me.1979); State v. Fitzherbert, 361 A.2d 916, 920 (Me.1976). The defendants in these cases were not viewed as being subject to a custodial interrogation when their consents to search were given. Thus, no independent duty to advise them of their rights arose from a custodial interrogation.
. Analyzing the Robinette opinion, one law review article commented, "Oddly, the Court did not address the question of whether Mr. Robinette was 'seized' when the deputy asked for consent to search. If the Court had ruled on this point, it appears that, based on early Court decisions, the consent should have been ruled invalid as a product of an illegal seizure.” Visser, Without a Warrant, 35 Hous. L. Rev. at 1719 (citing a plurality opinion in Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 507-08, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983) holding that a "consent” to search luggage by a person illegally detained was "tainted by the illegality and was ineffective to justify the search”). In its most recent Fourth Amendment case where the facts indicated consent, the Court held that an officer’s physical manipulation of a bus passenger's carry-on luggage violated the Fourth Amendment's proscription against unreasonable searches. See Bond v. United States, - U.S. -, -, 120 S.Ct. 1462, 1465, 146 L.Ed.2d 365 (2000). In Bond the officer obtained the suspect’s consent to open the luggage after manipulating it, but the government did not assert consent as a basis for admitting the evidence. See id. 120 S.Ct. at 1463 n. 1.
. The Ohio Supreme Court opinion stated:
When the motivation behind a police officer’s continued detention of a person stopped for a traffic violation is not related to the purpose of the original, constitutional stop, and when that continued detention is not based on any articulable facts giving rise to a suspicion of some separate illegal activity justifying an extension of the detention, the continued detention constitutes an illegal seizure.
Because Robinette’s consent was obtained during an illegal detention, his consent is invalid unless the State proves that the consent was not the product of the illegal detention but the result of an independent act of free will. Florida v. Royer (1983), 460 U.S. 491, 501, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 1326, 75 L.Ed.2d 229, 238. The burden is on the state to prove that the consent to search was voluntarily given. Id. at 497, 103 S.Ct. at 1324, 75 L.Ed.2d at 236. The factors used in consideration of whether the consent is sufficiently removed from the taint of the illegal seizure include the length of time between the illegal seizure and the subsequent search, the presence of intervening circumstances, and the purpose and flagrancy of the circumstances. United States v. Richardson (C.A.6, 1991), 949 F.2d 851, 858.
State v. Robinette, 653 N.E.2d at 697-98.
. See e.g., State v. May, 608 A.2d 772, 774 (Me.1992) (holding that police had no author- • ity to search a defendant’s wallet, found in a police cruiser, after the defendant had been validly arrested and released, such that the arrest transaction had ended); see also State v. Garland, 482 A.2d 139, 144 (Me.1984) (indicating that an officer cannot continue to press an investigation and detention of a person when the reason for the investigation and detention has evaporated).
. See the discussion at ¶ 27 of this dissent.
. See also Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. at 436, 104 S.Ct. 3138.
. See also State v. Koucoules, 343 A.2d 860, 868 (Me.1974) (indicating, as dictum, that a search which exceeds the bounds of a valid consent "becomes an invidious invasion of privacy rendering the search unreasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and the fruits thereof must be suppressed”).
. Finding "consent” to search voluntary in drug seizure cases requires an interesting circuity of reasoning. To convict a person of possession of the drugs found, the court must find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she knew or was aware of her possession of the drugs. See 17-A M.R.S.A. § 103-B(3) (Supp.1999); see also State v. Friel, 508 A.2d 123, 128 (Me.1986), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 843, 107 S.Ct. 156, 93 L.Ed.2d 96; State v. Deering, 1998 ME 23, ¶ 12, 706 A.2d 582, 585; Alexander, Maine Jury Instruction Manual, § 6-43 (Supp.2000). To find consent voluntary, the court must find that the defendant, aware of the drugs in her vehicle, consented to have it searched in the exercise of her free will and rational intellect. Thus, consent must be found despite evidence of an arguably coercive environment and a result indicating that the choice to allow the search may have been less than free or less than rational. But see Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. at 437-38, 111 S.Ct. 2382 (stating that the reasonableness or rationality analysis "presupposes an innocent person”).
. Koucoules would not appear to permit a condition not caused by influence from the authorities to compromise voluntariness of a consent for Fourth Amendment and Article 1, section 5 analysis. Compare State v. Rees, 2000 ME 55, 748 A.2d 976; State v. Caouette, 446 A.2d 1120 (Me.1982) (holding that independently arising conditions may impair vol-untariness under Article 1, section 6 analysis).
Issues of the burden of proof for voluntary consent and whether voluntariness of a consent may be impaired by an independent condition have not been thoroughly examined by us since State v. Koucoules. Those issues need not be addressed here.