Opinion ID: 1459439
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Stops and Frisks Pursuant to Terry

Text: Plaintiffs' allegations also make clear that the searches and seizures of the individual plaintiffs were not justified by the Terry stop-and-frisk exceptions to the probable cause and warrant requirements. In Terry, the Supreme Court held that an officer who lacks probable cause but who can point to specific and articulable facts that reasonably warrant the inference that a particular person is committing a crime may briefly detain that person in order to investigate the circumstances that provoke suspicion. 392 U.S. at 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868. The Supreme Court has time and again reiterated that the stop must be brief, minimally intrusive, and `reasonably related in scope to the justification for [its] initiation.' United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 880-81, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975) (quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 29, 88 S.Ct. 1868). An accompanying frisk for weapons is warranted if the officer can articulate specific facts and reasonable inferences that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual. Terry, 392 U.S. at 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868. The search is a limited protective search for concealed weapons, not a search to discover evidence of a crime. Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972). Overall, [t]he manner in which the seizure and search were conducted is, of course, as vital a part of the inquiry as whether they were warranted at all. Terry, 392 U.S. at 29, 88 S.Ct. 1868; see also Williams v. Kaufman County, 352 F.3d 994, 1004 (5th Cir.2003) (holding unreasonable, and thus unlawful, the officers' prolonged, hand-cuffed detention of customers in a public commercial establishment). In this case, the factual pleadings contain no particularized determinations by the deputy sheriffs that any of the individual plaintiffs were presently committing crimes or armed and dangerous. Moreover, as discussed above, the manner of the searches and seizures far exceeded the limited, non-threatening intrusions that Terry permits. [29]