Court Opinion

ID: 9545382
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:10:56.075948+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:14:38.157864
License: Public Domain

CHAPEL, Presiding Judge,
dissenting:
¶ 1 I dissent from the majority’s conclusion that the officer in this case had the right to search Abraham. The facts of this case reveal that Officer Darren Collins was working at the Tulsa State Fair in September of 1996. Around midnight, an unknown male advised the officer that a man had driven up and asked him if he wanted to buy drugs. The man showed the officer the car and then pointed out Abraham as the man. The officer approached Abraham and ordered him to turn off the car and get out. He then had Abraham place his hands on the trunk and frisk searched him. He felt a bulge in Abraham’s sock which he believed to be narcotics, so he pulled down Abraham’s sock and discovered a single rock of cocaine in a plastic baggie.
¶2 Under these circumstances, Officer Collins clearly had the right, and perhaps the duty, to stop Abraham and question him. But the issue is whether the search was proper. I cannot join my colleagues in holding that the weapons search, which led to the discovery of cocaine in Abraham’s sock, was reasonable.1 In determining whether an officer has acted reasonably, due weight must be given, not to his inchoate and unparticular-ized suspicion or ‘hunch,’ but to the specific reasonable inferences which he is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience.2 No reasonably prudent man under the circumstances of this case would be warranted in the belief that Abraham was armed or would pose a threat to the officer while he was being questioned.3 The majority’s rationale, that the officer had adequate basis for the search since Abraham “might be armed” due to the type of offense reported, is nothing more than an unparticularized suspicion or hunch — the very sort that Terry specifically forbids. Accordingly, while Officer Collins may have had cause to briefly detain Abraham in order to ask him questions, he did not have reasonable suspicion to conduct a weapons search. “The sole justification of [a Terry search] is the protection of the police officer and others nearby.”4

. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 24, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1881, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) (if an officer is justified in believing that the individual whose suspicious behavior he is investigating at close range is armed and presently dangerous to the officer or to others, officer may take necessary measures to determine whether the person is in fact carrying a weapon and to neutralize the threat of physical harm).

. Terry, 392 U.S. at 28, 88 S.Ct. at 1883.

. Id.

. Terry, 392 U.S. at 29, 88 S.Ct. at 1884.