Opinion ID: 2544571
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Even a brief restraint by a police officer is a seizure under the Fourth Amendment which must be justified with an objective, articulable suspicion of wrongdoing.

Text: In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), the United States Supreme Court established that even a brief detention of a person for questioning by a police officer, known as a stop and frisk, constitutes a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and therefore may properly be undertaken only if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion based upon objective, articulable facts that the subject of the inquiry may be involved in some criminal activity. [W]henever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has `seized' that person. Id. at 16, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Our predecessor court, in Phillips v. Commonwealth, 473 S.W.2d 135 (Ky. 1971), concluded that Terry 's requirement for objective, articulable suspicion applied to automobile stops: [T]he search of an individual regardless of whether he is in his home, in an automobile, or walking on the street is governed by the Fourth Amendment. The Unites States Supreme Court reached the same conclusion in United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 881-82, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975): We hold that when an officer's observations lead him reasonably to suspect that a particular vehicle may contain aliens who are illegally in the country, he may stop the car briefly and investigate the circumstances that provoke suspicion. As in Terry, the stop and inquiry must be reasonably related in scope to the justification for their initiation. It is now well established that stopping an automobile and detaining its occupants is a `seizure' within the meaning of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, even when the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief. Prouse, 440 U.S. at 653, 99 S.Ct. 1391; see also Buchanon, 122 S.W.3d at 568.