Opinion ID: 779105
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Terry Weapons Searches

Text: 13 It is well established that warrantless searches and seizures are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment unless they fall within one of several recognized exceptions. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). One important exception is a search incident to a lawful arrest. See United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 224, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973). The government does not assert, however, that Storer had probable cause to arrest Casado when Storer reached into Casado's pocket. And the government cannot, of course, assert that the officer's search of the defendant's pocket was justified by what it in fact produced. See Smith v. Ohio, 494 U.S. 541, 543, 110 S.Ct. 1288, 108 L.Ed.2d 464 (1990) (per curiam) (confirming the axiom that a search cannot be justified as incident to an arrest it preceded). The government argues instead that the reach into the pocket constituted a weapons search for the purpose of ensuring the safety of Storer and his fellow officers, and thus was justified under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). 14 In Terry, a plainclothes policeman, Martin McFadden, noticed two men repeatedly walking past and peering into a storefront on a street in Cleveland, Ohio. Id. at 5-6, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Fearing that the two men were casing the store in preparation for an armed robbery, McFadden approached them, identified himself as a police officer, and asked for their names. Id. at 6-7, 88 S.Ct. 1868. When the men merely mumbled in response, McFadden grabbed one and patted down the outside of his clothing. Id. at 7, 88 S.Ct. 1868. This frisk revealed a pistol in the left breast pocket of the man's coat, prompting McFadden to remove the coat and retrieve the weapon. Id. McFadden then frisked the second man and found another gun. Id. A patdown of a third man, who was present but who had not joined his companions in their passes by the storefront, revealed no weapon. Id. at 6-7, 88 S.Ct. 1868. The two armed men were then arrested and charged with carrying concealed weapons. Id. at 7, 88 S.Ct. 1868. 15 Affirming a denial of a motion to suppress, the Supreme Court rejected the defendants' argument that the frisk of their clothing and subsequent removal of their guns were justified only if probable cause existed. Id. at 24, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Instead, the Court concluded: 16 [T]here must be a narrowly drawn authority to permit a reasonable search for weapons for the protection of the police officer, where he has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual, regardless of whether he has probable cause to arrest the individual for a crime. 17 Id. at 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868. The Court then held that a search must meet two requirements to fall within this narrowly drawn authority. First, it cannot be motivated solely by a hunch that an individual is armed and dangerous. Id. There must instead be a suspicion supported by specific reasonable inferences which [the officer] is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience. Id. Second, the weapons search must be confined in scope to an intrusion reasonably designed to discover guns, knives, clubs, or other hidden instruments for the assault of the police officer. Id. at 29, 88 S.Ct. 1868. 18 The Supreme Court then concluded that Officer McFadden's search met these requirements. McFadden's suspicion was reasonable in light of the information available to him suggesting that the men he subsequently searched were contemplating an armed robbery. Id. at 28, 88 S.Ct. 1868. And the scope of the search was appropriately limited because 19 Officer McFadden patted down the outer clothing of [the suspects]. He did not place his hands in their pockets or under the outer surface of their garments until he had felt weapons, and then he merely reached for and removed the guns. He never did invade [the third man's] person beyond the outer surfaces of his clothes, since he discovered nothing in his pat-down which might have been a weapon. Officer McFadden confined his search strictly to what was minimally necessary to learn whether the men were armed and to disarm them once he discovered the weapons. 20 Id. at 29-30, 88 S.Ct. 1868. 21 Although the Court emphasized the difference between a patdown and a search inside a pocket in the course of assessing the reasonableness of McFadden's conduct, it cautioned against drawing broad conclusions based on its analysis of the particular facts of the case. Because [n]o judicial opinion can comprehend the protean variety of the street encounter, the Court could only judge the facts of the case before [it]. Id. at 15, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Each case of this sort will, of course, have to be decided on its own facts. Id. at 30, 88 S.Ct. 1868. 22 On the same day it decided Terry, the Court also issued its opinion in Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968). There, a uniformed New York City police officer had, over an extended period of time, observed an individual named Sibron engaging in repeated conversations in public places with individuals whom the officer knew to be drug addicts. Id. at 45, 88 S.Ct. 1889. The officer did not, however, see any items pass between Sibron and the addicts. Id. While Sibron was sitting in a restaurant, the officer approached him and asked him to step outside. Id. Sibron complied, at which point the officer said, You know what I am after. Id. Both men then simultaneously reached into Sibron's pocket, where the officer seized several glassine envelopes containing heroin. Id. 23 Reversing a decision of the New York Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court held that the heroin was inadmissable as evidence against Sibron. Id. at 62, 88 S.Ct. 1889. The Court first ruled that the search of Sibron's pocket could not be justified as incident to a lawful arrest because [n]othing resembling probable cause [for his arrest] existed until after the search had turned up the envelopes of heroin. Id. at 62-63, 88 S.Ct. 1889. The Court then considered whether the reach into Sibron's pocket constituted a permissible protective weapons search, but rejected this attempted justification as failing to meet either of the requirements identified in Terry. In the case of [a] self-protective search for weapons, [an officer] must be able to point to particular facts from which he reasonably inferred that the individual was armed and dangerous. Id. at 64, 88 S.Ct. 1889. Such facts, the Court held, plainly were not present. Id. More important for our purposes, the Court observed that even if such facts had been present, the search of Sibron's pocket would have been unreasonable in light of its scope: 24 Even assuming arguendo that there were adequate grounds to search Sibron for weapons, the nature and scope of the search conducted by [the officer] were so clearly unrelated to that justification as to render the heroin inadmissible. The search for weapons approved in Terry consisted solely of a limited patting of the outer clothing of the suspect for concealed objects which might be used as instruments of assault. Only when he discovered such objects did the officer in Terry place his hands in the pockets of the men he searched. In this case, with no attempt at an initial limited exploration for arms, [the officer] thrust his hand into Sibron's pocket and took from him envelopes of heroin.... The search was not reasonably limited in scope to the accomplishment of the only goal which might conceivably have justified its inception — the protection of the officer by disarming a potentially dangerous man. 25 Id. at 65, 88 S.Ct. 1889. 26 Since Sibron, neither the Supreme Court nor we have addressed a case in which an officer, in the course of a weapons search, reached into a suspect's pocket without first conducting a patdown of the outer clothing, Terry, 392 U.S. at 29, 88 S.Ct. 1868. 3 In Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366, 113 S.Ct. 2130, 124 L.Ed.2d 334 (1993), however, the Supreme Court again addressed the use of a patdown search in detecting weapons during a Terry stop. There, police saw a man leaving an apartment building considered a notorious `crackhouse.' Id. at 368, 113 S.Ct. 2130. Upon making eye contact with an officer, the man reversed his direction and walked away, prompting the police to stop him and conduct a frisk. Id. at 369, 113 S.Ct. 2130. Upon patting down the man's pocket, an officer ascertained that there was no weapon, but did feel a small lump. Id. As he continued to examine the lump with his fingers, the officer developed a suspicion that it was crack cocaine. Id. He then reached into the suspect's pocket, confirming his suspicion. Id. 27 The Supreme Court ruled that the cocaine thus seized was inadmissible against the suspect because the search exceeded its sole possible justification: detecting weapons. Id. at 378, 113 S.Ct. 2130. During the frisk of the pocket, a point came at which the officer knew the pocket contained no weapons, but did not yet have probable cause to believe that the suspect possessed drugs. Id. at 378-79, 113 S.Ct. 2130. The Court held that continuing the patdown of the pocket beyond that point was unreasonable. Id. at 379, 113 S.Ct. 2130. The Court noted, however, that had the officer developed, through his sense of touch or otherwise, probable cause for an arrest before that point, it would have been permissible for the officer to have then seized the contraband. Id. at 375-76, 113 S.Ct. 2130. This was true, the Court held, partly because 28 Terry itself demonstrates that the sense of touch is capable of revealing the nature of an object with sufficient reliability to support a seizure. The very premise of Terry, after all, is that officers will be able to detect the presence of weapons through the sense of touch and Terry upheld precisely such a seizure. 29 Id. at 376, 113 S.Ct. 2130.