Opinion ID: 2212427
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: MINNESOTA v. DICKERSON

Text: In Dickerson, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a conflict among the State and Federal courts over whether contraband detected through the sense of touch during a patdown search is proper and admissible evidence. The Court noted that under certain circumstances, police officers may seize contraband detected during the lawful execution of a Terry search. In its analysis, the Court placed particular reliance on its decision in Michigan v. Long (1983), 463 U.S. 1032, 103 S.Ct. 3469, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201, which sanctioned plain view seizures of items other than weapons in the context of a Terry search of automobiles. Specifically, the Court stated, `If while conducting a legitimate Terry search of the interior of the automobile, the officer should, as here, discover contraband other than weapons, he clearly cannot be required to ignore the contraband, and the Fourth Amendment does not require its suppression in such circumstances.' Dickerson, 508 U.S. at ___, 113 S.Ct. at 2136, 124 L.Ed.2d at 345, quoting Long, 463 U.S. at 1050, 103 S.Ct. at 3481, 77 L.Ed.2d at 1220. Expounding on the plain view doctrine, the Court stated that, if police officers are lawfully in a position from which they view an object, if its incriminating character is immediately apparent, and if the officers have a lawful right of access to the object, they may seize it without a warrant. If, however, the police lack probable cause to believe that an object in plain view is contraband without conducting some further search of the object i.e., if `its incriminating character [is not] immediately apparent` [citation]the plain-view doctrine cannot justify its seizure. Dickerson, 508 U.S. at ___, 113 S.Ct. at 2137, 124 L.Ed.2d at 345. The Court noted that the plain view doctrine has obvious application by analogy to cases in which an officer discovers contraband through the sense of touch during an otherwise lawful search. If a police officer lawfully pats down a suspect's outer clothing and feels an object whose contour or mass makes its identity immediately apparent, there has been no invasion of the suspect's privacy beyond that already authorized by the officer's search for weapons; if the object is contraband, its warrantless seizure would be justified by the same practical considerations that inhere in the plain view context. Dickerson, 508 U.S. at ___, 113 S.Ct. at 2137, 124 L.Ed.2d at 345-46. Applying these principles to the facts before it, the Court held that the officer's seizure of the crack cocaine exceeded the bounds of Terry. The Court held that although the officer was lawfully in a position to feel the lump in the defendant's pocket, the court below determined that the incriminating character of the object was not immediately apparent to him. Rather, the officer determined that the item was contraband only after conducting a further search squeezing, sliding and otherwise manipulating the contents of the defendant's pocket. Because the further search of the defendant's pocket was constitutionally invalid, the seizure of the cocaine that followed was unconstitutional. Dickerson, 508 U.S. at ___, 113 S.Ct. at 2138-39, 124 L.Ed.2d at 347-48.