Opinion ID: 874879
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The seizure of any individual requires, at a minimum, reasonable and articulable suspicion.

Text: The State cites Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 110 L.Ed.2d 301 (1990) and State v. Hankey, 134 Idaho 844, 846, 11 P.3d 40, 42 (2000) in support of its contention that law enforcement must corroborate the details of a tip before detaining someone based on the tip, that principle only applies where law enforcement is conducting an investigatory detention of a particular individual. Neither case stands for the proposition for which it is cited. In White, the United States Supreme Court determined that, under the totality of the circumstances, an anonymous tip was sufficiently corroborated because the tip predicted detailed future behavior that was independently observed by law enforcement officers. 496 U.S. at 331-32, 110 S.Ct. at 2416-17, 110 L.Ed.2d at 309-10. The decision does not hint, much less hold, that the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness requirement is relaxed merely because the individual is not alone. Similarly, in Hankey, this Court determined that an anonymous tip relayed by a dispatcher was corroborated by independent observations of the police officer. 134 Idaho at 847-48, 11 P.3d at 43-44. This Court simply did not hold that law enforcement need not corroborate the details of an anonymous tip in order to detain a group of individuals. In the absence of compelling authority to the contrary, we cannot conclude that an individual who happens to be in the company of others at the time of contact with law enforcement officers may be lawfully seized upon less than reasonable and articulable suspicion.