Officer Washington then retrieved the weapon and arrested the defendant. After a hearing, the trial court granted defendant's motion to quash arrest and suppress evidence. The trial court found that the defendant could have turned around for any number of innocent reasons unrelated to the metal detectors. On appeal, the State argues that there was no search because defendant did not go through the metal detector and was not patted down. The State argues that because defendant raised his shirt, the gun was in plain view, there was no search, and thus there could not have been an illegal search.
Defendant argues that the stop was illegal.
The stop led to the discovery of the gun. Thus, the discovery of the gun was fatally tainted by the unconstitutional stop. Hostility to seizures based on mere suspicion was a prime motivation for the adoption of the Fourth Amendment. A person is seized within the meaning of the fourth amendment when, by a show of authority or use of physical force, his freedom of movement is restrained. If, however, the person who police officers are talking to remains free to disregard the questions and walk away, there is no intrusion upon that person's liberty or privacy such that the constitution would require some particularized and objective justification.