Court Opinion

ID: 9427656
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:31.289417+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:08.858839
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mr. Justice Marshall and Mr. Justice Stevens join, dissenting.
I disagree with the Court’s conclusion that the Detroit police had constitutional authority to arrest and search respondent because respondent refused to identify himself in violation of the Detroit ordinance. In my view, the police conduct, whether or not authorized by state law, exceeded the bounds set by the Constitution and violated respondent’s Fourth Amendment rights.
At the time of respondent’s arrest, Detroit City Code § 39-1-52.3 (1976) read as follows:
“When a police officer has reasonable cause to believe that the behavior of an individual warrants further investigation for criminal activity, the officer may stop and question such person. It shall be unlawful for any person stopped pursuant to this section to refuse to identify himself, and to produce verifiable documents or other evidence of such identification. In the event that such person is unable to provide reasonable evidence of his true identity, the police officer may transport him to the nearest precinct in order to ascertain his identity.”
*42Detroit police, acting purely on suspicion, stopped respondent Gary DeFillippo on the authority of this ordinance and demanded that he identify himself and furnish proof of his identity. When respondent rebuffed their inquiries the police arrested him for violation of the ordinance. Thereafter, police searched respondent and discovered drugs.
Respondent challenges the constitutionality of the ordinance and his arrest and search pursuant to it. The Court assumes the unconstitutionality of the ordinance but upholds respondent's arrest nonetheless. The Court reasons that the police had probable cause to believe that respondent’s actions violated the ordinance, that the police could not have been expected to know that the ordinance was unconstitutional, and that the police actions were therefore reasonable.
The Court errs, in my view, in focusing on the good faith of the arresting officers and on whether they were entitled to rely upon the validity of the Detroit ordinance. For the dispute in this case is not between the arresting officers and respondent. Cf. Pierson v. Ray, 386 U. S. 547 (1967).1 The dispute is between respondent and the State of Michigan. *43The ultimate issue is whether the State gathered evidence against respondent through unconstitutional means. Since the State is responsible for the actions of its legislative bodies as well as for the actions of its police, the State can hardly defend against this charge of unconstitutional conduct by arguing that the constitutional defect was the product of legislative action and that the police were merely executing the laws in good faith. See Torres v. Puerto Rico, 442 U. S. 465 (1979); Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U. S. 266 (1973); Berger v. New York, 388 U. S. 41 (1967). States “may not . . . authorize police conduct which trenches upon Fourth Amendment rights, regardless of the labels which it attaches to such conduct. The question in this Court upon review of a state-approved search or seizure ‘is not whether the search [or seizure] was authorized by state law. The question is rather whether the search [or seizure] was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.’ ” Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 61 (1968), quoting in part from Cooper v. California, 386 U. S. 58, 61 (1967).
If the Courtis inquiry were so directed and had not asked whether the arresting officers faithfully applied state law, invalidation of respondent’s arrest and search would have been inescapable. For the Courtis assumption that the Detroit ordinance is unconstitutional is well founded; the ordinance is indeed unconstitutional and patently so. And if the reasons for that constitutional infirmity had only been explored, rather than simply assumed, it would have been obvious that the application of the ordinance to respondent by Detroit police in this case trenched upon respondent’s Fourth Amendment rights and resulted in an unreasonable search and seizure.
The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy interests and prohibition against unreasonable police searches and seizures is the requirement that such police intrusions be based upon probable cause — “ ‘the best compromise that has been found for accommodating [the] often *44opposing interests’ in ‘safeguarding] citizens from rash and unreasonable interferences with privacy’ and in ‘seek[ing] to give fair leeway for enforcing the law in the community’s protection.’ ” Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 208 (1979), quoting from Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 176 (1949).
Because of this requirement and the constitutional policies underlying it, the authority of police to accost citizens on the basis of suspicion is “narrowly drawn,” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 27 (1968), and carefully circumscribed. See Dunaway v. New York, supra. Police may not conduct searches when acting on less than probable cause. Even weapons frisks in these circumstances are permissible only if the police have reason to believe that they are dealing with an armed and dangerous individual. See Terry v. Ohio, supra, at 24. Furthermore, while a person may be briefly detained against his will on the basis of reasonable suspicion “while pertinent questions are directed to him . . . the person stopped is not obliged to answer, answers may not be compelled, and refusal to answer furnishes no basis for an arrest. ...” Terry v. Ohio, supra, at 34 (White, J., concurring). In the context of criminal' investigation, the privacy interest in remaining silent simply cannot be overcome at the whim of any suspicious police officer.2 “[W]hile the police have the right to request citizens to answer voluntarily questions concerning unsolved crimes they have no right to compel them to an*45swer.” Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U. S. 721, 727 n. 6 (1969).
In sum then, individuals accosted by police on the basis merely of reasonable suspicion have a right not to be searched, a right to remain silent, and, as a corollary, a right not to be searched if they choose to remain silent.
It is plain that the Detroit ordinance and the police conduct that it purports to authorize abridge these rights and their concomitant limitations upon police authority. The ordinance authorizes police, acting on the basis of suspicion, to demand answers from suspects and authorizes arrest, search, and conviction for those who refuse to comply. The ordinance therefore commands that which the Constitution denies the State power to command and makes “a crime out of what under the Constitution cannot be a crime.” Coates v. Cincinnati, 402 U. S. 611, 616 (1971). Furthermore, the ordinance, by means of a transparent expedient — making the constitutionally protected refusal to answer itself substantive offense — sanctions circumvention by the police of the Court’s holding that refusal to answer police inquiries during a Terry stop furnishes no basis for a full-scale search and seizure. Clearly, this is a sheer piece of legislative legerdemain not to be countenanced. See Davis v. Mississippi, supra, at 726-727; Sibron v. New York, supra.
The Court does not dispute this analysis. Rather, it assumes that respondent had a constitutional right to refuse to cooperate with the police inquiries, that the ordinance is unconstitutional, and that henceforward the ordinance shall be regarded as null and void. Yet, the Court holds that arrests and searches pursuant to the ordinance prior to its invalidation by the Michigan Court of Appeals are constitutionally valid. Given the Court’s assumptions concerning the invalidity of the ordinance, its conclusion must rest on the tacit assumption that the defects requiring invalidation of the ordinance and of convictions entered pursuant to it do not also require the invalidation of arrests pursuant to the ordinance. But only a brief reflection upon the pervasiveness of the ordi*46nance’s constitutional infirmities demonstrates the fallacy of that assumption.
A major constitutional defect of the ordinance is that it forces individuals accosted by police solely on the basis of suspicion to choose between forgoing their right to remain silent and forgoing their right not to be searched if they choose to remain silent. Clearly, a constitutional prohibition merely against prosecutions under the ordinance and not against arrests under the ordinance as well would not solve this dilemma. For the fact would remain that individuals who chose to remain silent would be forced to relinquish their right not to be searched (and indeed would risk conviction on the basis of any evidence seized from them), while those who chose not to be searched would be forced to forgo their constitutional right to remain silent. This Hobson’s choice can be avoided only by invalidating such police intrusions whether or not authorized by ordinance and holding fast to the rule of Terry and its progeny: that police acting on less than probable cause may not search, compel answers, or search those who refuse to answer their questions.3
The conduct of Detroit police in this case plainly violated Fourth Amendment limitations. The police commanded respondent to relinquish his constitutional right to remain silent and then arrested and searched him when he refused to do so. The Detroit ordinance does not validate that constitutionally impermissible conduct. Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment of the Michigan Court of Appeals invalidating respondent’s arrest and suppressing its fruits.

 The Court’s reliance upon Pierson v. Bay, 386 U. S., at 555, exposes the fallacy of its constitutional analysis. The Court assumes that respondent had a constitutional right to refuse to answer the questions put to him by the police, see ante, at 37, but nonetheless, relying upon Pierson v. Bay, upholds respondent’s arrest and search for exercising this constitutional right. But Pierson involved an action for damages against individual police officers and held only that it would be unfair to penalize those officers for actions undertaken in a good-faith, though mistaken, interpretation of the Constitution. Since the officer who arrested respondent in this case is not being mulcted for damages or penalized in any way for his actions, Pierson does not support the Court’s position. Rather, since respondent is the one who is being penalized for the exercise of what he reasonably believed to be his constitutional rights, Pierson counsels for invalidation of respondent’s arrest and not for its validation. Eor if it is unfair to penalize a police officer for actions undertaken pursuant to a good-faith, though mistaken, interpretation of the Constitution, then surely it is unfair to penalize respondent for actions undertaken pursuant to a good-faith and correct interpretation of the Constitution.

 In addition to the Fourth Amendment, see Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), the right to remain silent when detained by police on the basis of suspicion may find its source in the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination, see Haynes v. United States, 390 U. S. 85 (1968) ; Grosso v. United States, 390 U. S. 62 (1968); Albertson v. SACB, 382 U. S. 70 (1965), or, more generally, in “the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.” Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). See also Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479, 494 (1965) (Goldberg, J., concurring).

 There is also the risk that if stop-and-identify ordinances cannot be challenged in collateral proceedings they may never be presented 'for judicial review. Jurisdictions so minded may avoid prosecuting under them and use them merely as investigative tools to gather evidence of other crimes through pretextual arrests and searches. The possibility of such evasion is yet another reason that demonstrates the constitutional error of the Court’s approval of respondent’s arrest.