Opinion ID: 1407728
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the fourth amendment and traffic stops

Text: The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution was created in direct response to the abuses of general writs of assistance, which gave customs officials blanket authority to search where they pleased for goods imported in violation of the British tax laws. Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. 476, 481, 85 S.Ct. 506, 13 L.Ed.2d 431 (1965). The uproar against and denunciation of these general writs, and the abuses by the petty officers to whom they had been issued, were instrumental in giving birth to the child Independence. Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 625, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Yet, the roots of the Fourth Amendment go far deeper, Stanford, 379 U.S. at 482, 85 S.Ct. 506, to include all the abuses of the British Crown that the citizens of the Empire had endured for centuries, from the time of the Tudors, through the Star Chamber, the Long Parliament, the Restoration, and beyond, id. ; see also Marcus v. Search Warrant of Prop., 367 U.S. 717, 724-29, 81 S.Ct. 1708, 6 L.Ed.2d 1127 (1961); Boyd, 116 U.S. at 624-29, 6 S.Ct. 524. It is against this backdrop that the Court must determine whether an officer may constitutionally seize an individual because of a single act or omission which is not itself a violation of any law or regulation.
In State v. Watkins , this Court said: The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures. U.S. Const. amend. IV. It is applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It applies to seizures of the person, including brief investigatory detentions such as those involved in the stopping of a vehicle. 337 N.C. 437, 441, 446 S.E.2d 67, 69-70 (1994) (alteration in original) (citations omitted). The Supreme Court of the United States has held that a law enforcement officer may initiate a brief stop and frisk of an individual if there are specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). And in determining whether the officer acted reasonably in such circumstances, due weight must be given, not to his inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or `hunch,' but to the specific reasonable inferences which he is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience. Id. at 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868 (citation omitted). Since Terry, the reasonable, articulable suspicion standard has been applied to brief investigatory traffic stops. See United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 881-82, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975); Watkins, 337 N.C. at 441, 443, 446 S.E.2d at 70-71. The majority suggests there has been confusion following Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996), as to whether a traffic stop is constitutional if supported by reasonable, articulable suspicion. I cannot acknowledge such confusion, at least among the decisions of this Court issued after Whren was decided. However, the imprecise language employed by the majority opinion paints over the important and intuitive distinction between an investigatory traffic stop, to which the reasonable, articulable suspicion standard has been applied, and a traffic stop performed on the basis of a  perceived traffic violation, to which we recently applied the standard of probable cause in State v. Ivey. See 360 N.C. 562, 564, 633 S.E.2d 459, 461 (2006) (emphasis added).
When determining whether a law enforcement officer had the reasonable, articulable suspicion necessary to seize a defendant, [a] court must consider `the totality of the circumstances  the whole picture.' Watkins, 337 N.C. at 441, 446 S.E.2d at 70 (quoting United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981)). Moreover, an assessment of the whole picture . . . must raise a suspicion that the particular individual being stopped is engaged in wrongdoing. Cortez, 449 U.S. at 418, 101 S.Ct. 690. Consistent with the totality of the circumstances approach, a court must ascertain whether all of the circumstances taken together amount to reasonable suspicion. United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 9, 109 S.Ct. 1581, 104 L.Ed.2d 740 (1989); see also United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 274, 122 S.Ct. 744, 151 L.Ed.2d 740 (2002) (stating that Terry precludes a divide-and-conquer analysis of reasonable suspicion).
For investigatory traffic stops conducted pursuant to Terry, the totality of the circumstances approach creates the possibility that multiple factors quite consistent with innocent travel can, when viewed together, amount to reasonable suspicion. See Sokolow, 490 U.S. at 9, 109 S.Ct. 1581 (citations omitted). Indeed, Terry and its progeny accept[ ] the risk that officers may stop innocent people. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 126, 120 S.Ct. 673, 145 L.Ed.2d 570 (2000). Ultimately, then, the key determination is not the innocence of an individual's conduct, but the degree of suspicion that attaches to particular types of noncriminal acts. Sokolow, 490 U.S. at 10, 109 S.Ct. 1581 (emphasis added) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). As a consequence of the inherent risk that Terry stops will be conducted against innocent persons, appellate courts should take great care not to set the standard of reasonable, articulable suspicion so low that the Fourth Amendment is rendered meaningless. It is true that the degree of suspicion required for Terry stops is considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of the evidence and obviously less demanding than that for probable cause. Id. at 7, 88 S.Ct. 1868 (citations omitted). On the other hand, the requisite degree of suspicion must be high enough to assure that an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy is not subject to arbitrary invasions solely at the unfettered discretion of officers in the field. See Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 51, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979). Such would be the case if reasonable suspicion were to be founded upon an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or `hunch' and nothing more. See Terry, 392 U.S. at 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868.