Opinion ID: 3012383
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Predecessors to J.L. and Wardlow

Text: The reasoning of both J.L. and Wardlow drew on principles established in several of the Court's earlier decisions. In United States v. Hensley, for example, the Court established that whether the officers making an investigatory stop were justified in their decision depends on whether the officer doing the broadcasting (or, in the specific facts upon which Hensley was predicated, the drawing up of a wanted poster) possessed a reasonable suspicion on the basis of articulable facts. 469 U.S. 221, 232-33 (1985). The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that a reasonable suspicion may be the result of any combination of one or several factors: specialized knowledge and investigative inferences (United States v. Cortez), personal observation of suspicious behavior (Terry v. Ohio), 7 information from sources that have proven to be reliable, and information from sources that -- while unknown to the police -- prove by the accuracy and intimacy of the information provided to be reliable at least as to the details contained within that tip (Alabama v. White). In United States v. Cortez the Court expanded on the standard: 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 officers must have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity. 449 U.S. 411, 417-18 (1981). The Court stressed that, in performing the requisite calculus, the evaluation of the totality of the circumstances must give rise to a particularized suspicion, because [this] demand for specificity in the information upon which police action is predicated is the central teaching of this Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Id. at 418 (quoting Terry at 21, n.18). In Cortez, a case in which the Court upheld a police stop of a vehicle based on the officers' observations and knowledge of how aliens were being smuggled, the Court accorded great weight to the officers' knowledge of the area being observed as a crossing point for aliens, and on the pattern of operations they had discerned through their investigations. Id. at 419. The Supreme Court has just issued another opinion construing reasonable suspicion in the context of crossborder smuggling. See United States v. Arvizu , 534 U.S. ___; 122 S. Ct. 744. In Arvizu drugs, rather than aliens, were being smuggled. The Ninth Circuit found the stop to be illegal under Terry, characterizing each factor that contributed to the officer's decision to stop the van either as 8 carrying little or no weight in the reasonable-suspicion calculus or as inadequate to justify the stop. Id. at 750. Reversing, the Supreme Court emphasized that the particularized and objective basis for an officer's reasonable suspicion arises out of the totality of the circumstances. Id. at 750. The Court also counseled that officers' experience and specialized training may allow them to make inferences and deductions from information that might well elude an untrained person. Id . at 751 (quoting Cortez, 449 U.S. at 418.). In Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143 (1972), the Court addressed whether tips could form the basis of reasonable suspicion, concluding that where the tip was itself reliable, it could itself be the basis of the reasonable suspicion, but where the reliability of the tip was unknown or in doubt, reasonable suspicion had to rest on more than just the tip. Informants' tips, like all other clues and evidence coming to a policeman on the scene, may vary greatly in their value and reliability. One simple rule will not cover every situation. Some tips, completely lacking in indicia of reliability, would either warrant no police response or require further investigation before a forcible stop of a suspect would be authorized. But in some situations -- for example, when the victim of a street crime seeks immediate police aid and gives a description of his assailant, or when a credible informant warns of a specific impending crime -- the subtleties of the hearsay rule should not thwart an appropriate police response. Id. at 147. The Court also accorded importance to the fact that the stop occurred in a high crime area and during the early morning hours justified officers' fear for their safety. Id. at 147-48. Also, [t]he Fourth Amendment does not require a policeman who lacks the precise level of information necessary for probable cause to arrest to simply shrug his shoulders and allow a crime to occur or a criminal to escape. Id. at 145. The Court examined the propriety of a magistrate's reliance on an anonymous tip to establish probable cause to issue a search warrant in Illinois v. Gates , 462 U.S. 213 9 (1983). The Illinois Supreme Court had utilized a two-prong test to determine that the tip could not establish probable cause, evaluating the veracity of the informant and the basis of the knowledge provided. Id. at 230 n.4. Because the author of the tip was unknown, the first (veracity) prong could not be established. The second basis of knowledge prong could not be established because the details provided were insufficient to infer how the writer knew of the defendant's activities. Id. at 229-30. While agreeing that it was important to evaluate an informant's veracity, reliability, and basis of knowledge, the Court rejected the rigid application of separate and independent requirements, stressing instead that probable cause could be established only by examining the totality of the circumstances. Id. at 230-31. The Court found that the DEA agents' knowledge of the pattern of drug run behavior, combined with the fact that the agents' investigation corroborated the details provided in the anonymous letter were sufficient to constitute probable cause. Id . at 243-44. The Court specifically disagreed with the Illinois Supreme Court's discounting of the corroborative details asinnocent activity, stating that innocent behavior frequently will provide the basis for a showing of probable cause and that [i]n making a determination of probable cause the relevant inquiry is not whether particular conduct is `innocent' or `guilty,' but the degree of suspicion that attaches to particular types of noncriminal acts. Id. at 245 n.13. The Supreme Court revisited the reliability of anonymous tips in Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 329 (1990), concluding there that an anonymous tip that provided virtually nothing from which one might conclude that [the caller] is either honest or his information reliable and that provided no information that independently provided a basis for suspecting criminal activity, was insufficient to support a Terry stop. The Court emphasized the value that knowing an informant contributes to assessing the reliability of a tip, concluding that where there is no basis for determining the reliability of a tip from the informant, the information contained in the tip cannot by itself be sufficient to provide probable cause or even reasonable suspicion to justify a Terry stop. Instead, police must investigate further to provide independent corroboration of 10 the tip in order to justify stopping the target of the tip. Id. at 329. Such independent corroboration is measured by both the quantity and quality of the totality of the circumstances. If, for example, a tip on its own carries few indicia of reliability, much corroborating information is necessary to demonstrate reasonable suspicion. Id. at 330. Thus, where the tip contains information that later investigation contradicts, or that is of such a general nature as to be easily obtained by any observer, there is no reasonable suspicion. In White, in contrast, even though the tip was wholly anonymous, the details provided in the tip were sufficiently particularized and accurate to reflect a special familiarity with the subject of the information. Id. at 332. There, the special familiarity was demonstrated by the accurate prediction of the defendant's future behavior. Id.