Opinion ID: 2189647
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Fourth Amendment provides:

Text: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.... [US Const, Am IV.][ [4] ] The Fourth Amendment is not a guarantee against all searches and seizures, but only against those that are unreasonable. United States v Sharpe, 470 US 675; 105 S Ct 1568; 84 L Ed 2d 605 (1985). The Fourth Amendment applies to all seizures of a person, including seizures that involve only a brief detention, short of traditional arrest. United States v Brignoni-Ponce, 422 US 873, 878; 95 S Ct 2574; 45 L Ed 2d 607 (1975); Davis v Mississippi, 394 US 721; 89 S Ct 1394; 22 L Ed 2d 676 (1969). Prior to Terry v Ohio, supra , any restraint on the person amounting to a seizure for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment was invalid unless justified by probable cause. Dunaway v New York, 442 US 200, 207-209; 99 S Ct 2248; 60 L Ed 2d 824 (1979). Terry created a limited exception to the probable cause requirement. Given the parties' agreement that the lawfulness of the seizure of the revolver in question is governed by the `stop and frisk' doctrine enunciated ... in Terry, we begin our analysis with a review of that case. In Terry, a police officer observed the defendant, along with two other men, engaging in furtive behavior that the Supreme Court described as an elaborately casual and oft-repeated reconnaissance of [a] store window in downtown Cleveland which the arresting officer later characterized at trial as casing a job, a stickup. The officer, a plain-clothes detective of thirty-five-years experience, concluded that the three men were about to commit a robbery. The officer approached the three men, identified himself as a police officer, and asked for their names. After receiving a mumbled reply, the officer conducted a pat-down search of the three men, obtaining two pistols, one from defendant Terry. Terry's motion to suppress the evidence was denied, and the denial was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court found that the police conduct constituted a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. It must be recognized that whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has `seized' that person. 392 US 16. The Court stated: We therefore reject the notions that the Fourth Amendment does not come into play at all as a limitation upon police conduct if the officers stop short of something called a technical arrest or a full-blown search. [392 US 19.] The constitutional inquiry under Terry is whether the seizure and subsequent search are reasonable. We must decide whether at that point it was reasonable for [the police officer] to have interfered with petitioner's personal security as he did. And in determining whether the seizure and search were unreasonable our inquiry is a dual one  whether the police officer's action was justified at its inception, and whether it was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified interference in the first place. [392 US 19-20.] The Court concluded that there was narrowly drawn authority to permit a search for weapons where the officer has reason to believe he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual. The primary thrust of this exception is the basic government interest in protecting its police officers. The specific holding of Terry is narrow: We merely hold today that where a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dangerous, where in the course of investigating this behavior he identifies himself as a policeman and makes reasonable inquiries, and where nothing in the initial stages of the encounter serves to dispel his reasonable fear for his own or others' safety, he is entitled to the protection of himself and others in the area to conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such persons in an attempt to discover weapons which might be used to assault him. Such a search is a reasonable search under the Fourth Amendment, and any weapons seized may be properly introduced in evidence against the person from whom they were taken. [392 US 30-31.] The Court, in Terry, specifically declined to deal with the question of an investigative seizure upon less than probable cause for purposes of `detention' and/or interrogation, 392 US 19, n 16, but, in subsequent cases, the Court has developed standards applicable to investigatory stops by police. This development is reviewed and summarized in United States v Cortez, 449 US 411, 417-418; 101 S Ct 690; 66 L Ed 2d 621 (1981): An investigatory stop must be justified by some objective manifestation that the person stopped is, or is about to be, engaged in criminal activity. Brown v Texas, 443 US 47, 51 [99 S Ct 2637; 61 L Ed 2d 357] (1979); Delaware v Prouse, 440 US 648, 661 [99 S Ct 1391; 59 L Ed 2d 660] (1979); United States v Brignoni-Ponce, [422 US 873, 884; 95 S Ct 2574; 45 L Ed 2d 607 (1975)]; Adams v Williams, 407 US 143, 146-149 [92 S Ct 1921; 32 L Ed 2d 612] (1972); Terry v Ohio, supra, at 16-19. Courts have used a variety of terms to capture the elusive concept of what cause is sufficient to authorize police to stop a person. Terms like articulable reasons and founded suspicion are not self-defining; they fall short of providing clear guidance dispositive of the myriad factual situations that arise. But the essence of all that has been written is that the totality of the circumstances  the whole picture  must be taken into account. Based upon that whole picture, the detaining officer must have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity. See, e.g., Brown v Texas, supra, at 51; United States v Brignoni-Ponce, supra, at 884. The idea that an assessment of the whole picture must yield a particularized suspicion contains two elements, each of which must be present before a stop is permissible. First, the assessment must be based upon all of the circumstances. The analysis proceeds with various objective observations, information from police reports, if such are available, and consideration of the modes or patterns of operation of certain kinds of lawbreakers. From these data, a trained officer draws inferences and makes deductions  inferences and deductions that might well elude an untrained person. The process does not deal with hard certainties, but with probabilities. Long before the law of probabilities was articulated as such, practical people formulated certain common-sense conclusions about human behavior; jurors as factfinders are permitted to do the same  and so are law enforcement officers. Finally, the evidence thus collected must be seen and weighed not in terms of library analysis by scholars, but as understood by those versed in the field of law enforcement. The second element contained in the idea that an assessment of the whole picture must yield a particularized suspicion is the concept that the process just described must raise a suspicion that the particular individual being stopped is engaged in wrongdoing. Chief Justice Warren, speaking for the Court in Terry v Ohio, supra , said that [t]his demand for specificity in the information upon which police action is predicated is the central teaching of the Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Id., at 21, n 18. (Emphasis added.) See also Brown v Texas, supra, at 51; Delaware v Prouse, supra, at 661-663; United States v Brignoni-Ponce, supra, at 884.