Opinion ID: 390190
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: analysis of this case under existing case law

Text: 131 An examination of the facts before us indicates that the police action fell somewhere between the arrest in Dunaway and the classic Terry stop approved in cases like Terry and Adams. After spotting the Oldsmobile, and without noticing any suspicious circumstances, the officers partially blocked the appellants' car, making it difficult for them to leave. Getting out of their car, the officers approached each side of the Oldsmobile with guns drawn, ordering the appellants to keep their hands in sight and to get out of the car. Before that moment the officers had asked the appellants no questions about their identity or their activity. The officers had not inspected the car, and they had seen no evidence of unlawful activity. After White left the car, Detective Hill holstered his gun, grabbed White from behind, and took him to the front of the car. Detective Sanchez-Serrano, meanwhile, had placed (Anderson) on the hood of the vehicle. 132 Viewed in its totality, I submit that this scenario is closer to an arrest than a less intrusive stop. This conclusion derives from the limited nature of Terry stops, which are narrow exceptions to the usual Fourth Amendment standards. See Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 1923, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972) (brief stop may be reasonable to determine individual's identity or to maintain the status quo momentarily); Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 212, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 2256, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979) (Terry stops fall far short of the kind of intrusion associated with an arrest); Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 93, 100 S.Ct. 338, 343, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979) (Terry created an exception to the requirement of probable cause, an exception whose 'narrow scope' this Court 'has been careful to maintain' ). In order to avoid the stricter probable cause standards, such seizures must be considerably less intrusive than a traditional arrest. 133 In the present case, by contrast, it is difficult to imagine what the police would have done differently in arresting the appellants. The appellants were taken from their car at gunpoint, 20 and forcibly led to the front of the car. They were asked no questions. Rather than maintaining the status quo, the officers escalated the confrontation until enough evidence had been produced to justify an arrest. 134 While the circuits are by no means unanimous, several appellate courts have held that under circumstances similar to those posed here, the use of drawn guns may escalate a seizure to an arrest, thus requiring probable cause in United States v. Lampkin, 464 F.2d 1093, 1095 (3d Cir. 1972), the court said that 135 it seems evident that, under the circumstances before us, the arrest was effectuated at the instant the agents, with guns drawn, halted appellant and informed him of who they were. At that instant he was under the control of the officers who had demonstrated an intention to take him into custody under their authority as government agents. There was absolute restraint of appellant which was abundantly clear to him. 136 Other courts have rendered similar holdings. See United States v. Troutman, 458 F.2d 217 (10th Cir. 1972) (the arrest was effective when the officers pulled over the burglary suspects and approached the car with drawn weapons); United States v. Larkin, 510 F.2d 13, 14 n.1 (9th Cir. 1974) (a confrontation with a vehicular blockade and drawn weapons cannot be equated with an investigative detention); United States v. Strickler, 490 F.2d 378, 380 (9th Cir. 1974) (we simply cannot equate an armed approach to a surrounded vehicle whose occupants have been commanded to raise their hands with the 'brief stop of a suspicious individual in order to determine his identity or to maintain the status quo momentarily while obtaining more information' which was authorized in Williams). 137 The majority fails in its attempt to justify the excessive police force used in this case by arguing that police must be prepared for any eventuality. Although the detectives testified that they feared the appellants might be armed, they could point to no facts to support their hunch in this case. 21 Even the majority concedes that statistics show that the vast majority of drug suspects arrested are not armed at the time of arrest. Ante at 35 n.29. In this case, the anonymous tipster, who gave detailed information about the appellants, made no mention of guns or weapons. In addition, there was nothing to indicate that the appellants had a record of violent crimes. Moreover, the police behavior in this case belies their purported concern about their safety. The record reveals that after White got out of the car, but before Hill had frisked him for weapons, Hill holstered his gun in order to pick up the tinfoil. 22 Rather than a means to protect himself or maintain the status quo, the drawn weapon was a tool to place the appellants under absolute restraint. 138 In many ways the present case parallels United States v. Ramos-Zaragosa, 516 F.2d 141 (9th Cir. 1975), in which the police had received a detailed tip that the defendants were transporting drugs. The police stopped the defendants at gunpoint and ordered them out of their vehicle. The court held that the defendants had been arrested: 139 The arrest was completed when the appellant and his passenger complied with the order to get out of the pickup. The encounter of the agents and the appellant and his passenger was an arrest, as opposed to an investigatory stop, because the agents at gun point, under circumstances not suggesting fears for their personal safety, ordered the appellant and his passenger to stop and put up their hands. 140 Id. at 144. 141 Under certain circumstances, force may be necessary to effect a stop. As stated in United States v. Thompson, 558 F.2d 522, 524 (9th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 914, 98 S.Ct. 1466, 55 L.Ed.2d 504 (1978): 142 A police officer attempting to make an investigatory detention may properly display some force when it becomes apparent that an individual will not otherwise comply with his request to stop. 143 In Thompson the police drew their guns only after the van began to move and then suddenly lurched forward. Id. In the present case, there was no factual basis to believe the appellants were armed, and there was no evidence that they sought to escape detention. 144 By contrast, in many of the cases cited by the majority, the suspects were reportedly armed or sought to evade detention thus making necessary some show of force. See United States v. Diggs, 522 F.2d 1310, 1314 (D.C.Cir.1975), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 852, 97 S.Ct. 144, 50 L.Ed.2d 127 (1976) (agents stopped the three appellants, at least two of whom had been armed during the bank robbery); United States v. Richards, 500 F.2d 1025 (9th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 924, 95 S.Ct. 1118, 43 L.Ed.2d 393 (1975) (the appellants had loaded a rifle on their plane; the agents drew their weapons only when the appellant would not shut off the engine of the plane as it was about to take off); United States v. Bull, 565 F.2d 869 (4th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 946, 98 S.Ct. 1531, 55 L.Ed.2d 545 (1978) (one of the parties wore a jacket on a warm summer night, alerting the officer to the possibility of a concealed weapon); United States v. Maslanka, 501 F.2d 208, 213 n.6 (5th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 912, 95 S.Ct. 1567, 43 L.Ed.2d 777 (1975) (officer drew gun only after stopping appellants following a five-mile, high-speed chase; also, the court found that probable cause existed before the stop). 145 The point is that under the circumstances in this case the drawn guns, the order to exit with hands in plain sight, a suspected crime not necessarily involving violence, and the complete absence of any evidence of weapons the police activity far exceeded any reasonable definition of an investigative stop. Since current Fourth Amendment doctrine recognizes only two types of seizures stops and arrests I conclude that the police arrested the appellants before they saw the drugs. 146 In Dunaway the petitioner was taken involuntarily to a police station, but this surely is not a condition essential to a finding of an arrest. Nor is it necessary for a police officer to expressly declare an intention to arrest in order for full Fourth Amendment protections to apply. Indeed, in Dunaway, the Court cited Brignoni-Ponce for the proposition that: 147 The officer may question the driver and passengers about their citizenship and immigration status, and he may ask them to explain suspicious circumstances, but any further detention or search must be based on consent or probable cause. 148 442 U.S. at 212, 99 S.Ct. at 2256 (emphasis in original). At another point in the opinion, the Dunaway Court noted that 149 detention for custodial interrogation regardless of its label intrudes so severely on interests protected by the Fourth Amendment as necessarily to trigger the traditional safeguards against illegal arrest. 150 442 U.S. at 216, 99 S.Ct. at 2258. 151 In the present case, the conduct of the police looks more like the detention for custodial interrogation forbidden by Dunaway, than the significantly less obtrusive stop permitted by Terry. Because, as the Government concedes, there was no probable cause for arrest, the arrests were therefore illegal, and the appellants' motion to suppress evidence should have been granted.
152 Even if the initial seizure in this case did not amount to an arrest, this court must nonetheless decide whether the seizure meets the standards set forth in Terry and subsequent cases. For the reasons set out below, I conclude that the police did not have sufficient legal justification for stopping the appellants and that, consequently, the police conduct violated the Fourth Amendment. Furthermore, even if some sort of stop was justified under the circumstances, the scope of the seizure in this case plainly exceeded permissible bounds. 153 The starting point for our analysis is Terry, which requires a reviewing court to balance the public interest in the investigative seizure against the resulting interference with individual liberty. A seizure falling short of an arrest is permissible under the Fourth Amendment only if (the officers) are aware of specific articulable facts, together with rational inferences from those facts, that reasonably warrant suspicion that the appellants are engaged in illegal activity. United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. at 884, 95 S.Ct. at 2581. 154 Because the police observed no suspicious activity, the only possible basis for the seizure in the present case is the anonymous tip. However, because of the informant's anonymity, the informant was unknown to the police and, so far as the officers knew, the tipster had not previously given them reliable information. Moreover, the informant did not tell the police how he or she acquired the information about the appellants. The only indication that the tip was reliable was the corroboration of entirely innocent details of the appellants' activity. 23 155 The present case contrasts sharply with the facts and the language of Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972), in which the Supreme Court held that the police acted justifiably on an informant's tip in stopping and frisking a man seated in a car. In the opinion, the Court pointed to three factors to support its holding. First, the informant was known to (the officer) personally and had provided him with information in the past. Id. at 146, 92 S.Ct. at 1923. In the present case, the anonymous tipster was, of course, unknown to the police and had not provided them with information in the past. As the Court emphasized, Adams presented a stronger case than obtains in the case of an anonymous telephone tip. Id. Thus, the Court has expressly distinguished the present case from Adams. 156 Second, the Court emphasized that the reliability of the tip in Adams was enhanced because the tipster personally approached the officer to report a possible crime; the tipster could have been arrested if he had given the officer a false report. In the present case, the informant because he was anonymous could not have been arrested or questioned closely about his information. Third, the Court considered the police action to be reasonable in part because the officer was acting alone, at night, in a high crime area, and with a suspect who was reportedly armed. 24 Almost the opposite situation existed in the present case. There was not one officer present, but two; it was not night, but dusk, and because the dome light of the car was on, the area was well lighted; there was no evidence offered at the suppression hearing to indicate that the police were in a high crime area; and there was no evidence, even from the informant, that these appellants were armed. Thus, while the tip in Adams provided reasonable suspicion, meeting the Terry standards, the anonymous tip in this case simply is not reliable enough to permit the wholesale invasions of personal liberty that occurred. 157 Moreover, the present case is quite unlike United States v. Cortez, -- U.S. --, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981). In Cortez, the Court upheld a stop made only after the police directly observed evidence of criminal activity and had circumstantial evidence linking the petitioners to that activity. The majority opinion here refers to Cortez, see ante at 45-46 n.53, but it omits entirely any reference to the second of the two tests enunciated by the Supreme Court: i. e., that police observations and analyses of available data must raise a suspicion that the particular individual being stopped is engaged in wrongdoing '(T)his demand for specificity in the information upon which police action is predicated is the central teaching of this Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.'  Id. at --, 101 S.Ct. at 695, quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21 n.18, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1879 n.18, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) (emphasis in Cortez). Based upon (the totality of the circumstances) the detaining officers must have a particularized objective basis for suspecting the particular stopped of criminal activity. Id. The majority opinion's oblique reference to Cortez does not illuminate the central dispute in this case. Cortez involved neither an anonymous tip nor the use of excessive force the central issues in the present case. Instead, Cortez concerned the reasonableness of police conduct in response to their own observations of criminal activity. Moreover, even though Cortez is factually distinct from the present case, the broad legal holdings in Cortez are entirely consistent with our conclusion about the legality of the stop of White and Anderson. 158 In Cortez the police were able to point to specific factual observations indicating both that criminal activity had taken place and that the petitioners were implicated. In the present case, by contrast, the police observed no suspicious activity and relied solely on an anonymous tip. It is precisely because the officers had no particularized basis for suspecting White and Anderson of criminal activity that I differ with the majority. Quite unlike the Border officers in Cortez, the police in this case had observed nothing to believe that criminal activity was afoot, let alone that the appellants were involved. Instead, they acted solely on an anonymous tip which was vague as to critical details concerning the crime itself. There was simply no particularized, objective basis to suspect the appellants were violating the law. 159 Several circuit courts that have had to decide whether a tip can meet the Terry standards for a stop have attached great weight to the difference in reliability presented by an anonymous tip versus one given face-to-face to police. In United States v. Sierra-Hernandez, 581 F.2d 760 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 936, 99 S.Ct. 333, 58 L.Ed.2d 333 (1978), an unknown, untested tipster told police of a truck carrying drugs at a specific place. The police stopped the truck and after a consent search found the drugs. The court upheld the appellant's conviction, finding the tip to be reliable enough to justify a stop: the place identified by the tipster was in the past a known point for smuggling drugs, the tip was detailed and the tipster could have been made available for further questioning if the officer had judged it necessary. 160 The court in Sierra-Hernandez noted that: Unlike a person who makes an anonymous telephone call, this informant confronted the agent directly The informant was in a position to be held accountable for his intervention. Id. at 763. See United States v. Gorin, 564 F.2d 159, 160 (4th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1080, 98 S.Ct. 1276, 55 L.Ed.2d 788 (1978) (although the original tip was anonymous, the police later spoke face-to-face with the tipster before stopping the appellant. The detectives could have identified the informant for further questioning or testimony at trial); United States v. Unverzagt, 424 F.2d 396 (8th Cir. 1970) (upheld a stop based on a tip given by known informants); United States v. Perez-Esparza, 609 F.2d 1284 (9th Cir. 1979) (upheld stop based on known, reliable informant); United States v. Jones, 599 F.2d 1058 (9th Cir. 1979) (stop upheld because appellants had been convicted of a similar theft, and police received a tip from an identified citizen informant, as well as from an anonymous source); United States v. Andrews, 600 F.2d 563 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 878, 100 S.Ct. 166, 62 L.Ed.2d 108 (1979) (although the stop was based on an anonymous tip, it involved some indicia of criminal activity verifiable by the police: the informant stated that the drugs were to be delivered to an individual the police recognized as a known drug dealer). 161 In a case that strongly parallels our own, United States v. McLeroy, 584 F.2d 746 (5th Cir. 1978), police stopped and later arrested the appellant based on an anonymous tip that he might have a stolen car and a sawed-off shotgun. The informant gave the appellant's name, the license tags of the car, and the address where it was parked. The court found the stop unreasonable since the record contains nothing about the informant's identity or reliability. Nor does it shed any light on the informant's basis for asserting that the information contained in the tip was accurate. Id. at 748. The court found the corroboration to be so slight that it created no justification for believing that the informant was 'relying on something more substantial than a casual rumor.' Reasonable suspicion requires more than this minimal corroboration of innocent details. Id. (citation omitted). 162 The point, of course, is not that all courts have adopted a per se rule prohibiting police from acting on anonymous tips. Rather, the concern here is that under the majority's holding the police are now free to detain forcibly at gunpoint individuals on the basis of an anonymous tip and without observing any suspicious activity, for crimes that do not involve an immediate danger to the public-at-large or police officers. 163 As Professor Wayne LaFave has aptly stated: 164 (T)he anonymous information ordinarily raises a possibility, but not a substantial possibility, of criminal conduct. But, in this context the word substantial takes on special importance; whether the possibility is great enough to justify stopping the suspect who appeared as predicted may well depend upon the nature of the crime Action on the basis of anonymous information, then, should be allowed only in cases involving the risk of serious personal injury or grave irreparable property damage 165 LaFave, Street Encounters and the Constitution: Terry, Sibron, Peters, and Beyond, 67 Mich.L.Rev. 39, 78 (1968). As LaFave noted, the police need not ignore the information they should begin surveillance. But there is no basis for a seizure. 166 It is also necessary to step back from the majority's detailed case analysis which the majority virtually admits is inconclusive to gain some perspective on the consequences of its holding. Even if a stop were justified under these circumstances, the majority's opinion has drained all meaning from the command in Terry that an investigative seizure be reasonably related in scope to the justification for (its) initiation. 392 U.S. at 29, 88 S.Ct. at 1884. For now, absent any suspicious circumstances observed by the police, and based entirely on an anonymous tip, the police can at gunpoint drag someone from his car and forcibly place him on the hood of the car all of this to ascertain his identity and maintain the status quo momentarily. Recall that in the present case the appellants did not attempt to flee, nor did they attempt to resist the officers or refuse to answer any questions. 25 Moreover, the defendants were not suspected of committing a violent crime. I respectfully submit that to allow this result is to indulge a strained and perverse reading of Terry. 167 Rather than making a limited intrusion, the police officers in this case immediately and forcibly detained the appellants, distorting the concept of a Terry stop beyond recognition. If a stop was justified, the police could have approached the car, and asked for identification and for other details. Had the appellants attempted to leave, force may have been justified. Under the circumstances, however, the seizure was not reasonably related in scope to its justification. The wholesale invasion of the appellants' personal security exceeded the permissible bounds of a stop based on these facts.