Opinion ID: 352420
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Terry v. Ohio

Text: 59 Every police detention unconsented to is subservient to that Amendment's strictures on seizure of the person. 37 An arrest a taking into custody incidental to a charge of crime calls for probable cause, 38 defined in terms of facts and circumstances 'sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the (suspect) had committed or was committing an offense.'  39 A temporary restraint for investigative inquiry requires adequate justification, though somewhat weaker and different in character. It was in Terry that the Supreme Court set the standards by which hindrances of that nature are to be measured. 60 Terry recognized that there are occasions upon which police need to inquire into ostensible criminal activity in the absence of probable cause supporting an arrest. 40 (A) police officer, the Court said, may in appropriate circumstances and in an appropriate manner approach a person for purposes of investigating possibly criminal behavior even though there is no probable cause to make an arrest. 41 At the same time, Terry preserved the individual's Fourth Amendment freedom from unreasonable governmental encroachment upon the privacy of his person, 42 and made clear its purpose to exclude evidence gained thereby in order to discourage lawless police conduct. 43 These ends are assured by two requirements laid down by the Court. One is that, in justifying the particular intrusion, the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion. 44 The other is that the stop and inquiry must be 'reasonably related in scope to the justification for their initiation.'  45 As we ourselves have put it, (s)tops as well as arrests must satisfy the Fourth Amendment's requirement of reasonable cause commensurate with the extent of the official intrusion. 46 61 Justification authorizing an investigative street-stop marks the point of accommodation for competing interests in personal privacy and crime detection, 47 no less than probable cause does for an arrest. 48 No wonder, then, that it is of a very special character: unusual conduct which leads (the officer) reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot . . . . 49 And in evaluating the occasion for the stop, it is imperative that the facts be judged against an objective standard: would the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure . . . 'warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief' that the action taken was appropriate? 50 For (a)nything less would invite intrusions upon constitutionally guaranteed rights based on nothing more substantial than inarticulate hunches, a result (the Supreme) Court has consistently refused to sanction. 51