Opinion ID: 2549040
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: origin and limits of terry frisks

Text: ¶ 13 In Terry v. Ohio, the United States Supreme Court held that an officer may perform a protective frisk pursuant to a lawful stop when the officer reasonably believes a person is armed and presently dangerous to the officer or others. 392 U.S. 1, 24, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). [2] The Court further cautioned that a search is a serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person and should not be taken lightly. Id. at 17. The officer must first have a valid reason for stopping the person, and the officer's subsequent actions must be reasonably related in scope to the circumstances justifying the stop. Id. at 19-20; State v. Kohl, 2000 UT 35, ¶ 10, 999 P.2d 7. The sole purpose for allowing the frisk is to protect the officer and other prospective victims by neutralizing potential weapons. Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1049 n. 14, 103 S.Ct. 3469, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201 (1983); Terry, 392 U.S. at 24, 88 S.Ct. 1868. If a protective search goes beyond what is necessary to determine if the suspect is armed, it is no longer valid under Terry and its fruits will be suppressed. Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366, 373, 113 S.Ct. 2130, 124 L.Ed.2d 334 (1993) (citing Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 65-66, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968)). ¶ 14 The reasonableness of both the stop and the frisk are evaluated objectively according to the totality of the circumstances. Terry, 392 U.S. at 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868. To determine reasonableness, a court should question whether the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search `warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief' that the action taken was appropriate. Id. at 21-22, 88 S.Ct. 1868 (citations omitted). The Terry court proclaimed that the officer must be able to point to specific facts which, considered with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant the intrusion. Id. at 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868. In determining reasonableness, due weight must be given, not to [an officer's] inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or `hunch,' but to specific reasonable inferences which [an officer] is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience. Id. at 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868. The Court later explained that this process allows officers to draw upon their own experience and training to make determinations based on the cumulative facts before them that may elude an untrained person. United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273, 122 S.Ct. 744, 151 L.Ed.2d 740 (2002). Courts must view the articulable facts in their totality and avoid the temptation to divide the facts and evaluate them in isolation from each other. Id. at 274, 122 S.Ct. 744 (holding that Terry precludes a divide and conquer analysis).