Opinion ID: 785535
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Terry Doctrine

Text: 58 The majority's emergency/exigency/ Terry approach removes the Terry doctrine from its constitutional moorings and extends the doctrine to the seizure of a person from his private residence. First, the majority suggests that the Terry doctrine applies to the police officers' order to Beaudoin because Beaudoin stopped voluntarily when he opened the curtain to his motel room and answered the knock at his door. Thus, the majority claims that the circumstances that culminated in the order to Beaudoin to exit his motel room were like a situation in which a person voluntarily stops, and then the police take reasonable steps, during that temporary stop to protect themselves during the questioning. 59 Although the majority is correct that once a Terry stop has occurred, an officer may search a person for weapons based on reasonable suspicion that a person is armed and dangerous, the voluntary actions that the majority describes do not constitute the involuntary, investigative Terry stop (the seizure) that is the premise of the Terry analysis. Indeed, the so-called voluntary stop of Beaudoin within the motel room seems to be offered as a substitute for the involuntary Terry seizure, which would require reasonable suspicion that Beaudoin had committed, was committing, or was about to commit a crime. 60 More importantly, the majority's analysis overlooks the critical fact that Beaudoin was inside his motel room when he looked out the window and responded to the officers' knock by opening the door to his motel room just far enough to reveal his face. This situation differs in constitutionally significant ways from a situation in which police officers conduct a voluntary stop of an individual in a public setting. In order to place Beaudoin in a situation where Terry's reasonable suspicion standard might apply, the officers had to order him to exit his room. Terry did not justify that command because Terry does not apply to seizures of individuals from their private residences. Although the majority observes that [w]hen the officer suspects a crime of violence, the same information that will support an investigatory stop will without more support a protective search, it is the stop, not the protective search, that is at issue in this case. 61 The majority's blend of Fourth Amendment doctrines overlooks the importance of place in determining whether a minimally intrusive seizure can be justified under Terry's reasonable suspicion standard. The majority cautions that this case does not present any abstract issue ... about the application of Terry to persons in doorways absent the emergency and exigent circumstances present here. 9 Yet Terry's applicability to the order to Beaudoin does not turn on the presence or absence of exigent circumstances but on the physical location of Beaudoin and the police officers at the time of the seizure. Terry itself distinguished police conduct predicated upon the on-the-spot observations of an officer on the beat — which historically has not been and as a practical matter could not be, subject to the warrant procedure from conduct subject to the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment. Terry, 392 U.S. at 20, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Terry dealt with the former category of conduct and did not require exigent circumstances or probable cause to justify the warrantless seizure — because a warrant was not required in the first place. By contrast, if the situation in Terry involved conduct subject to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement, the Court would have [had] to ascertain whether `probable cause' existed to justify the search and seizure which took place. Id. 62 Thus, the majority's incorporation of Terry into an exigency/emergency analysis overlooks the constitutional difference between police conduct in the home and police conduct outside it. 10 This approach represents a significant departure from well-established Fourth Amendment doctrine, under which residential seizures must be supported by a warrant or exigent circumstances and probable cause, whereas seizures short of arrest that are conducted outside of the home do not require a warrant and may be justified under Terry's reasonable suspicion standard. The command to Beaudoin to exit his motel room constituted a seizure of Beaudoin from his private residence. It was an intrusion of significant import that required a search warrant or exigent circumstances plus probable cause. Therefore, Payton, not Terry, applies in this case. 63