Opinion ID: 656594
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Was the Seizure Unlawful?

Text: 48 The fact that the plaintiffs may have been seized of course does not necessarily mean that the plaintiffs' subsequent consent was invalid. Only if the seizure was unlawful would it work to taint the subsequent consent and, separately and independently, support the plaintiffs' claim that they were illegally seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. For an investigatory stop to be a lawful seizure, the government must have specific and articulable facts sufficient to raise a reasonable suspicion that an individual committed or is committing a crime. Terry, 392 U.S. at 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1879; Teslim, 869 F.2d at 322. If the seizure is deemed a checkpoint or roadblock stop, on the other hand, the government is not required to have an individualized suspicion with respect to each person searched, so long as the need for the stop was great, the intrusion--measured by the duration of the search and the intensity of the investigation--was minimal and the discretion of the official was relatively circumscribed. Sitz, 496 U.S. at 451-54, 110 S.Ct. at 2485-87; Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 50-51, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 2640-41, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979); Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 556-59, 96 S.Ct. at 3082-83; see generally 3 LaFave, supra at § 9.5. 49 As we indicated earlier, however, Metra has disavowed any reliance on the objective reasonableness of its conduct absent consent. 8 Relying entirely on the plaintiffs' alleged consent and upon the argument that the police encounter was limited to asking for consent to search, Metra has failed to articulate the purpose of its actions. Consequently, because there is a genuine issue of fact whether the plaintiffs were unlawfully seized, Metra has not shown as a matter of law that the plaintiffs, by cooperating with the searching officers, consented to the search. Summary judgment on the plaintiffs' illegal search and seizure claims was therefore inappropriate.