Opinion ID: 765614
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Underhill/Sanzi Stop

Text: 16 Jones contends that Underhill and Sanzi's decision to stop the Lexus was not justified. He points out that the troopers did not have any information to support the convenience store clerk's allegation that the bill he received was counterfeit. Furthermore, Jones argues that the clerk's description was vague, that the make of his car was different from the vehicle the clerk described, that the clerk did not know the direction in which the suspects' car was traveling, and that Underhill and Sanzi did not have an opportunity to observe the Lexus and its occupants sufficiently to link them to the counterfeiting incident. 17 The Fourth Amendment protects all persons against unreasonable searches and seizures. U.S. Const. amend. IV. Although police detention of a person constitutes a seizure, 7 the Supreme Court long has recognized that some such detentions are permissible under the Fourth Amendment, even when the officer making the stop has neither a warrant nor probable cause for arrest. See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889 (1968) (approving police officer's stopping of persons when officer could point to specific and articulable facts that reasonably warranted the intrusion, despite absence of arrest warrant or probable cause for arrest). In more recent cases, the Court has extended this basic principle of Terry -- originally espoused in the context of an officer stopping persons on foot who appeared to be preparing to commit a crime -- to stops of persons in automobiles, see Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 439-40, 104 S. Ct. 3138, 3150, 82 L. Ed. 2d 317 (1984), and to investigations of completed, rather than ongoing, criminal activity, see United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 227-29, 105 S. Ct. 675, 679-80, 83 L. Ed. 2d 604 (1985). 18 In this case, at the time Underhill and Sanzi made the decision to stop Jones's vehicle, they knew that, given the time that had elapsed since the alleged passing of the counterfeit bill and the distance from their location to the convenience store, had the suspects headed north on interstate 95, they probably would have been in the vicinity about the time Underhill and Sanzi spotted the Lexus. Underhill and Sanzi also had received a general description of the vehicle and the suspects: a white or light-colored late-model car, possibly a Buick or Oldsmobile, occupied by two black males, one wearing a blackleather jacket. Under these circumstances, when a white Lexus containing two black males, one wearing a black leather jacket, passed the cruiser, and when they learned that the troopers who made the initial stop had not known of the counterfeiting incident, we are satisfied that Underhill and Sanzi's decision to stop the car and investigate further was justified. Cf. United States v. McCarthy, 77 F.3d 522, 530 n.8 (1st Cir. 1996) (where witnesses reported previously seeing certain car at site where police found vehicle used to flee scene of bank robbery, close proximity in both distance and time to the . . . robbery combined with the fact that [the car police spotted] identically matched the description of the vehicle the suspects were reported to be driving [were] articulable and specific facts that clearly gave rise to the reasonable suspicion needed to justify the initial stop, even though officers had no description of the suspects themselves). 19 We reject Jones's arguments that certain holes in the body of information linking the counterfeiting incident to this vehicle rendered the troopers' decision to stop the car unreasonable. Underhill and Sanzi did not need specific facts supporting the store clerk's ability to discern a fake twenty dollar bill from a real one. Store clerks' jobs center upon the exchange of money, and for investigatory purposes, the troopers reasonably relied upon Flemming's radio broadcast concerning the alleged counterfeiting incident to look for persons fitting the clerk's description. Furthermore, the fact that the vehicle left in an unknown direction does not negate the troopers' knowledge that the convenience store was located just off of the interstate and their reasonable inference that the car likely entered this highway when it left the store. That the make of Jones's car did not match the clerk's description also is not determinative considering that Flemming's broadcast indicated that the clerk was not sure about the make. 20 In short, the specific facts that the troopers knew and the reasonable inferences that they drew from those facts -- the proximity of the convenience store to their location, the approximate time the crime occurred, the likelihood that the car would be traveling on the interstate, the color of the car, the description and number of occupants, and one suspect's clothing -- together with their observations of the Lexus and its occupants as they passed the troopers' cruiser, created a reasonable suspicion that the car's occupants had been involved in the counterfeiting incident. Because this information was sufficient to justify the stop, the absence of additional facts that may have created even stronger suspicion of Jones's criminal activity does not factor into our analysis.