Court Opinion

ID: 9524177
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:50:27.592691+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:08:59.552684
License: Public Domain

Brickley, C.J.
(dissenting).
i
I cannot agree with the majority that the search and seizure conducted in this case comported with the strict requirements of the Fourth Amendment. In my view, the majority misapplies the recent United States Supreme Court decision in Minnesota v Dickerson, 508 US 366; 113 S Ct 2130; 124 L Ed 2d 334 (1993), and ignores the clear prohibitions set forth in *119Terry v Ohio, 392 US 1; 88 S Ct 1868; 20 L Ed 2d 889 (1968), and its progeny. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
n
The majority contests that this Court “did not grant leave in this case to hear again the relative merits of the Terry doctrine.” Ante at 100. The grant in this case was, in fact, not so limited. The Court of Appeals addressed the legitimacy of the Terry stop, and the defendant in this Court, although not arguing that the police lacked the authority to stop him and conduct a limited patdown, has clearly objected to the seizure of the pill bottle and the extent of the frisk that led to it. The defendant has always maintained, as his brief before us clearly illustrates, that “the manipulation of the pill vial went beyond the scope of a valid Terry stop . . . .” Thus, to the extent the majority believes the defense has waived or conceded this element of the Terry analysis, it is flatly wrong. A substantial constitutional right of the defendant has been abridged and should be addressed.
The majority is correct, however, in noting that the issue before us is the propriety of a seizure of contraband discovered during this limited patdown. The majority relies on Dickerson to justify that seizure. Dickerson, ironically, is all about the limits of Terry. In Dickerson, the United States Supreme Court considered the propriety of a Terry stop, and then carefully explored the boundaries of a legitimate Terry stop before concluding that a plain feel seizure could not be permitted because the requisite level of cer*120tainty had not been obtained within the confines of Terry}
Still, in the course of relying on the “plain feel doctrine” taken from dicta in Dickerson,1
2 the present majority criticizes my reliance on Terry. At the same time, however, the majority fails to take note that the United States Supreme Court similarly relied on Terry when it decided Dickerson.
The majority’s criticism, in my view, is based in large part on a fundamental misunderstanding of Terry’s basic holding. Terry involved both a stop and a frisk. Just because one may be justified does not automatically lead to the conclusion that the other is also. Thus, even if defendant’s apparent concessions might preclude a dispositive review of the stop, we are not similarly prohibited from scrutinizing the frisk. Terry is indeed relevant, if not altogether determinative of the issues before us. Thus, I consider a *121careful examination of the extent of the Terry search to be on procedurally sound ground and, moreover, compelled by the sole, if dubious, precedent relied on by the majority.
As will be discussed below, if the plain feel doctrine were truly as broad as the majority describes it, it would be in irresolvable conflict with other constitutional doctrines of uncontroverted validity. In order to prevent the plain feel exception to the warrant requirement from swallowing the Fourth Amendment, its limitations must be strictly observed. One such limitation is the requirement that probable cause to make the seizure be obtained within the legitimate scope of a Terry search. By defining the “issue before us” to include the exception, but not its limitations, the majority takes a treacherous step, facilitating the danger the Dickerson Court warned of, “that officers will enlarge a specific authorization, furnished by a warrant or an exigency, into the equivalent of a general warrant to rummage and seize at will.” 508 US 378.
Indeed, the authority to conduct a so-called “stop and frisk” is not absolute. Terry, while authorizing such searches, also placed clear limits on a police officer’s authority to carry them out. In my view, the search conducted in this case exceeded these limits.3 Terry allows police to conduct a limited “patdown” *122search for weapons during the course of a valid investigatory stop if an officer has a reasonable suspicion, based on articulable facts, that the detained individual is an armed threat. A dual inquiry is called for when deciding whether a patdown search for weapons exceeded its proper scope: first, courts must decide whether the patdown search was “justified at its inception” and, second, whether “it was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.” 392 US 20.
Because defendant failed to argue the point, this Court must assume that the first part of this inquiry has been satisfied. As for the second part of the inquiry, Officer Todd’s removal and examination of the pill bottle was not “reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.” Id. The circumstances that confronted Officer Todd and supposedly justified his patdown of defendant involved his fear that defendant was armed. However, all parties concede that, when Officer Todd “patted” the pill bottle, he knew he was not feeling a weapon. In fact, the linchpin of the people’s argument is that Officer Todd immediately recognized that he was feeling a pill bottle. Thus, unless we assume that a pill bottle can be used as a weapon, its removal from defendant’s person was unnecessary to assure the safety of Officer Todd and, therefore, unrelated to the circumstances that justified the patdown.
This argument is even stronger with respect to Officer Todd’s inspection of the pill bottle’s contents. In other words, even if one were to assume that Officer Todd was justified in removing the pill bottle from defendant in order to insure his safety, clearly, *123once the bottle had been removed from defendant, there was no such exigency requiring him to open the bottle and look inside.
However, the conclusion that Terry did not provide police with authority to remove the pill bottle does not go far enough. A fair reading of Terry reveals that the United States Supreme Court did not just fail to provide authority for the search conducted by Officer Todd; that Court altogether prohibited this sort of search in the clearest possible terms:
A search for weapons in the absence of probable cause to arrest, however, must, like any other search, be strictly circumscribed by the exigencies which justify its initiation. Thus, it must be limited to that which is necessary for the discovery of weapons which might be used to harm the officer or others nearby .... [392 US 25-26 (citations omitted).]
Sibron v New York, 392 US 40; 88 S Ct 1889; 20 L Ed 2d 917 (1968), which the Supreme Court decided on the same day as Terry, applied Terry’s prohibitive language. In Sibron, an officer seized heroin from a detainee’s pockets during an investigatory stop. The Supreme Court suppressed the evidence because the officer conducted the search at a time when he knew the detainee had no weapon. The Court explained that Terry prohibited the search because it
was not reasonably limited in scope to the accomplishment of the only goal which might conceivably have justified its inception — the protection of the officer .... [392 US 65.]
The Supreme Court again affirmed this principle in Adams v Williams, 407 US 143, 146; 92 S Ct 1921; 32 L Ed 2d 612 (1972). The Court reasoned:
*124The purpose of this limited [Terry] search is not to discover evidence of crime, but to allow the officer to pursue his investigation without fear of violence ....
This language and the language cited from Sibron must be understood in the context of the dilemma that the Supreme Court faced when it decided these cases. The Court worried that unrestricted powers to patdown without probable cause would lead to police abuses. At the same time, the Court wanted to provide additional self-protection to law enforcement officers in their fight against street violence. Thus, it struck a balance between according citizens their right to be free from governmental intrusion on the one hand, and police officers’ understandable concerns for self-preservation on the other.
Terry, in fact, reflected the Court’s deep concern that such a balance would not be struck if the police possessed broad powers to stop and frisk. Terry makes specific mention of a presidential report partially blaming police harassment of minority groups for the civil disturbances of the late 1960’s. This report fervently criticizes “the wholesale harassment” of minority groups accomplished through unjustified investigatory stops, condemning such behavior as a major factor in police-community tensions. See 392 US 14-15, n 11. The last thing the Court wanted was to provide officers with an incentive to conduct pretextual patdown searches and later claim that they were justified by officers’ legitimate fear for their safety.
In response to the concern that unbridled power to stop and frisk would lead to police excesses, the United States Supreme Court has vigilantly expressed its concern about expanding a police officer’s power *125to seize more than just weapons during the course of a patdown search. Fifteen years after Terry, in Texas v Brown, 460 US 730, 748; 103 S Ct 1535; 75 L Ed 2d 502 (1983) (Stevens, J., concurring), Justice ‘Stevens noted the Court’s continuing sensitivity to the danger that “officers will enlarge a specific authorization, furnished by a warrant or an exigency, into the equivalent of a general warrant to rummage and seize at will.” See also Minnesota v Dickerson, supra at 378.
However, these more contemporary practical concerns are not the only ones that militate against what would be an enhancement of police officers’ ability to seize items detected during an investigative patdown search. As Justice Scaiia pointed out in his concurring opinion in Dickerson, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the framers of the Fourth Amendment would have approved of the type of search and seizure conducted in this case. To the contrary, I agree with Justice Scaiia that there is serious doubt “whether the fiercely proud men who adopted our Fourth Amendment would have allowed themselves to be subjected, on mere suspicion of being armed and dangerous,” to the “indignity” of the intrusive patdown search. 508 US 381 (Scaiia, J., concurring; emphasis in original).
Even recognizing that Justice Scaiia did not command a majority in Dickerson, nevertheless, I remain unconvinced that the present majority has properly applied the rule that Dickerson announced. Dickerson, like the Terry progeny cited above, continued to express an aversion to widening police powers to search during routine street encounters. In fact, the Supreme Court ultimately excluded evidence pro*126cured during a stop and frisk that was much less intrusive than the one this Court currently examines.
In Dickerson, a police officer felt a small lump in defendant’s front pocket during a patdown for weapons. Unlike Officer Todd, who retrieved a pill bottle from defendant’s groin area and then opened it, the officer in Dickerson merely examined the lump with his fingers while the lump was still in defendant’s pocket. After it slid inside its cellophane “baggie,” the officer removed it and saw that it contained crack cocaine.
On these facts, the Court held that
the officer’s continued exploration of respondent’s pocket after having concluded that it contained no weapon was unrelated to “[t]he sole justification of the search [under Terry-.] . . . the protection of the police officer and others nearby.” 392 US 29 .... It therefore amounted to the sort of evidentiary search that Terry refused to authorize, see id. at 26 . . . and that we have condemned in subsequent . cases. See Michigan v Long, 463 US [1032, 1049, n 14; 103 S Ct 3469; 77 L Ed 2d 1201 (1983)]; Sibron, 392 US 65-66 ... . [508 US 378.]
The majority in this case seeks to distinguish Dickerson from the case at bar on the ground that the officer in Dickerson had to examine the object he felt with his fingers and slide it around, while Officer Todd did not have to conduct such an examination to conclude that he was feeling a pill bottle. The majority is wrong to draw such a distinction.
To begin with, I am confident that the amount of frisking that took place between the time Officer Todd detected that the lump in defendant’s groin area was not a weapon and the time he determined it was the type of pill bottle used to carry drugs far *127exceeded the impermissible frisking that narrowed the identity of the small lump in Dickerson’s nylon jacket pocket to a rock of crack cocaine. Common sense demands the conclusion that Officer Todd persisted in his probing until he knew, through two layers of clothing, one of which was a baggy sweat suit, that the object he detected was a pill bottle of the sort used to carry drugs and not a weapon.
It is essential to the majority’s final and essential conclusion that Officer Todd had probable cause to arrest defendant that Officer Todd could recognize this type of bottle as a customary vessel for narcotics. However, that degree of certainty cannot be reconciled with the conclusion here that Officer Todd stopped his Terry frisk immediately upon determining that the lump was not a weapon, as the constitution requires. Even the most thorough review of the trial record on this critical point of the investigation provides no details of the search. In eveiy narration of the frisk, Officer Todd simply and immediately leapt from the intention to search for a weapon to the discovery of the pill bottle. Yet, despite the absence of recorded information about this search, the second reviewing Court is confident no constitutional errors have been committed even though the counsel of common sense directs otherwise. At the very least, this case should be remanded for further findings on this point.
It should also be pointed out that Dickerson allows an object felt during the course of a lawful Terry search to be admitted into evidence only where that particular object’s mass and contour make its incriminating character “immediately apparent.” The Supreme Court could not have been more clear:
*128If a police officer lawfully pats down a suspect’s outer clothing and feels an object whose contour or mass makes its identity immediately apparent, there has been no invasion of the suspect’s privacy beyond that already authorized by the officer’s search for weapons; if the object is contraband, its warrantless seizure would be justified by the same practical considerations that inhere in the plain view context. [508 US 375-376 (emphasis added).]
Even assuming a plain feel, the item felt in this case, was a pill bottle. There is nothing illegal about possessing one. Accordingly, a pill bottle is not and cannot be contraband. Thus, a fortiori, there is no way that Officer Todd could believe that it was. Indeed, the majority seems to confuse the item felt with the contents of the item felt.4
This distinction is not as insignificant as the majority suggests. As the above excerpt indicates, Dickerson authorizes the seizure of contraband discovered by a plain feel if it can be justified by the same rationale that justifies plain view seizures. As the Supreme Court explained in Arizona v Hicks, 480 US 321; 107 S Ct 1149; 94 L Ed 2d 347 (1987), the rationale underlying the plain view doctrine is that where an item is seized in plain view there has been no invasion of an individual’s legitimate expectations of privacy and, thus, no Fourth Amendment intrusion. The same cannot be said of an item concealed in an individual’s *129underpants. In fact, I cannot think of an area where an individual has a greater expectation of privacy. Even if an officer’s initial touching was justified by legitimate fears for safety or by some other exigency, the seizure and examination of an item felt will almost always entail a further Fourth Amendment intrusion and, therefore, run astray of the Hicks rationale.
Indeed, it should be stressed that the plain view doctrine would not permit a seizure if executing the seizure required puncturing a previously unruptured expectation of privacy. A police officer who observes contraband through the uncurtained window of a house cannot enter without a warrant in the name of making a plain view seizure.
Likewise, the plain feel doctrine is only consistent with the broader Fourth Amendment jurisprudence if seizures under it are limited to those cases in which the seizure itself will not invade a legitimate expectation of privacy. This restriction reveals a tension inherent in the proposed new doctrine. In the plain view cases, where the absence of any object obstructing the view of the officer generally means that nothing stands between the officer and the object to be seized, it will generally be true that “]t]he seizure of an item whose identity is already known occasions no further invasion of privacy.” 508 US 377. It may also be true when an officer removes a single rock of cocaine from an exterior pocket of a jacket, as in the case before the Court in Dickerson; but, as the example of the curious officer given above indicates, it is by no means true in every instance. In this case, the application of a doctrine that purports to make no additional incursions into the privacy of citi*130zens allows a police officer either to pull down or reach into the pants of an individual in the middle of the street in broad daylight.
The majority tries to avoid this problem by justifying the examination of the pill bottle without a warrant as a search incident to a lawful arrest. See ante at 117, n 17. While I agree with the majority’s assertion that such a search would have been warranted under New York v Belton, 453 US 454; 101 S Ct 2860; 69 L Ed 2d 768 (1981), had Officer Todd possessed probable cause to arrest on feeling the pill bottle, I do not think that probable cause, in fact, existed.
The majority found that five facts combined to give Officer Todd the probable cause necessary to arrest Mr. Champion.5 At least one of the majority’s factual findings in this regard — perhaps the most important one — however, has no credible basis in the record. According to the trial judge, the only credible evidence presented on the record was that the officers never saw defendant step out of his vehicle. Indeed, Officer Vem Chontos, Officer Todd’s partner, testified that when he first saw defendant, defendant was *131already on the sidewalk beside his car.6 Officer *132Chontos also made it clear that he never saw a passenger flee from defendant’s car at the sight of police. The majority’s view of the facts to the contrary appears to depend on the testimony of the arresting officer, Officer John Todd, even though the trial judge ultimately found his testimony to be “inconsistent with the evidence.” In fact, when the trial judge ruled upon defendant’s suppression motion, he opined:
The Court finds that its findings of fact set forth in its opinion dated June 18, 1990 has to be changed because the Court finds that the testimony of Officer Todd is inconsistent with the evidence in this case and the Court does not accept Mr. — Officer Todd’s version of what occurred. The Court believes that the most credible testimony on this issue was presented by Officer Chontos . . . J71
This Court must accord a significant measure of deference to the trial judge’s credibility judgment because he was in the best position to decide the officers’ respective believability. See Kirilloff v Glin-isty, 375 Mich 586; 134 NW2d 707 (1965); People v Eggleston, 149 Mich App 665; 386 NW2d 637 (1986).
The majority’s failure to do so has allowed it to conclude that probable cause to arrest existed when, *133in fact, it did not. Once it has been determined that the officers did not see defendant leave his vehicle upon their approach, the finding of probable cause, in my view, is significantly undermined. In effect, we are left with a man standing on the sidewalk somewhat close to the location where a police chase began. He had his hands in his pants. The arresting officer knew defendant and his criminal background. The officer was also aware he was in a drug area. The obvious question is, how do these facts give rise to an inference that defendant was involved in criminal activity? People with past legal troubles travel the streets of high crime areas every day in this country, some may even prefer to walk with their hands in their pants. This behavior should not give rise to a finding of probable cause merely because someone half a block away fled at the sight of a police car.
Yet, even assuming the occurrence of all five factors that the majority cites, they cannot amount to probable cause.
The defendant’s presence in a high crime area should not contribute to a finding of probable cause because it “does nothing to distinguish him from any number of other pedestrians in the area.” People v Shabaz, 424 Mich 42, 60; 378 NW2d 451 (1985). A high crime area ordinarily possesses “both innocent victims and criminal perpetration . . . .” Id. at 61. The fact that defendant stood on the sidewalk with his hands in his sweatpants did nothing to distinguish him as a criminal. Indeed, while placing his hands in his pants may rightly be considered in bad taste, I am aware of no law that punishes individuals for such an exercise of poor manners.
*134Likewise, the defendant’s proximity to a police chase should not contribute to a finding of probable cause. The prosecution never credibly linked defendant to the man who fled upon seeing the officers approach the corner of North Fourth and Kirk.8 In fact, defendant was half a block away from this corner when the police began their pursuit. Under the majority’s approach, anyone in the relative vicinity of a police chase would be subject to a Terry stop. This result violates the well-established principle that the police must have a suspicion that “the particular individual being stopped is engaged in wrongdoing.” United States v Cortez, 449 US 411, 418; 101 S Ct 690; 66 L Ed 2d 621 (1981); People v Faucett, 442 Mich 153; 499 NW2d 764 (1993).
Moreover, even if defendant had been fleeing, flight does not necessarily contribute to a finding of probable cause. In Shabaz, the Court found that the defendant’s flight did not, by itself, constitute wrongdoing. The flight did not, in other words, convert the “naked and generalized suspicion of the police officers into articulable grounds to conclude that criminal activity was afoot.” Id. at 62. See also Wong Sun v United States, 371 US 471, 483, n 10; 83 S Ct 407; 9 L Ed 2d 441 (1963):
“[I]t is a matter of common knowledge that men who axe entirely innocent do sometimes ñy from the scene of a crime through fear of being apprehended as the guilty par*135ties, or from an unwillingness to appear as witnesses. Nor is it true as an accepted axiom of criminal law that ‘the wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.’ ”
In this case, the majority necessarily relies on the flight of individuals other than the defendant to establish the defendant’s guilt. Thus, the majority first presumes that those fleeing must have been guilty, contrary to the United States Supreme Court’s warning. This fault would no doubt be overlooked by defendant, however, who demonstrated his innocence by remaining while the others fled. But in using the flight of others to make its probable cause determination, the majority necessarily rejects that premise only as it applies to defendant, who not only was not running away from the police, but was walking toward them as they approached from the comer of North Fourth and Kirk. The only point at which he' arguably could have been considered to be walking away from them was when the officers passed him by. Clearly, this cannot be considered furtive behavior.9 Defendant never changed his direction. He did not run. He merely kept walking on his way, as he had been doing when Officer Chontos first saw him. Thus, the majority necessarily implies not that the wicked flee while the innocent remain, but that the *136wicked flee, and the wicked remain if they are near those who flee.
The conclusion that no proper course of conduct remains for the innocent compels the established rule that neither flight from the scene of a crime nor presence in a high crime area can, standing alone, support a finding of reasonable suspicion. I, therefore, would further hold that this combination of factors, which implies the defendant’s guilt merely by proximity or association, does not amount to a reasonable suspicion or, by implication, probable cause because it is not joined by some suspicious action or behavior personal to the defendant. See Cortez, supra. These personal factors draw some line, albeit dangerously thin, between the guilty and the innocent. Without such a limitation, nothing would prevent the police from warrantless and unwarranted sweeps, shaking down innocent people on suspect streets.
In this case, most of the factors on which the majority conditions its finding of probable cause would have applied equally to any hapless but innocent traveler in the vicinity, from a priest to a Supreme Court justice. Alone, those factors would not justify any intrusion on defendant’s liberty. Rather, they properly serve only to heighten an intuition of suspicion bom of factors personal to him.
This analysis reveals that the factors that make defendant distinctly and individually suspicious are limited. The majority should have exercised the utmost caution and scrutiny with respect to those traces of guilt, for by that thin thread hung defendant’s liberty.
My review of those individual traces of guilt does not lead me to the conclusion that the police acted *137properly in this case. Specifically, I do not agree that the position of defendant’s hands or his refusal to comply with the officers’ demands that he remove them should contribute to a finding of probable cause. It is a principle of our constitutional order and an enumerated component of our Bill of Rights that the people shall be free from unreasonable seizures, including seizures of their person. US Const, Am IV. It is an obvious and necessary corollary of that premise that the refusal to obey an unreasonable request to surrender one’s liberty can never be considered suspicious.
Although I agree that cooperation with the police is certainly to be encouraged even when not required, our constitution firmly lodges that decision with the individual, not the police or the courts. The police cannot, therefore, transform an otherwise innocent citizen into a suspicious one with repeated unreasonable requests to needlessly surrender constitutional rights. As a matter of pure logic and constitutional law, Officer Todd’s seizure of defendant and request that he remove his hands from his pants must have been supported by reasonable and articulable facts amounting to reasonable suspicion before he first ordered defendant to stop and remove his hands from his pants.10 Defendant’s refusal cannot, in other *139words, contribute to a reasonable suspicion calculation, or, by implication, to a finding of probable cause. To find otherwise would deprive citizens of their right to “go on their way” not because of the addition of any articulable or particularized suspicion of imminent criminal activity, but because they exercised their right to the freedom of movement that the Fourth Amendment guarantees. See Shabaz, supra at 62.11
Moreover, without going into detail, a number of innocent reasons could have explained the position of defendant’s hands. Yet, even if defendant placed his hands in his pants to conceal something, that action still would not provide grounds for a finding of probable cause. United States v Green, 216 US App DC 329, 333; 670 F2d 1148 (1981), cited by the majority in Shabaz, found that
the sole fact that individuals may seek to conceal the object of their business from potentially prying eyes, even on the public sidewalk, does not grant the police the power to arrest them. While it is true that persons engaged in illegal transactions will desire to conceal those transactions, the desire for privacy in one’s affairs is common among law-abiding persons as well. Thus, the police cannot conclude that merely because an object or a transaction is not openly displayed, it is necessarily illegal. [See also 424 Mich 61.]
This language reflects a common theme in the United States Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment *140jurisprudence. Justice Harlan’s concurring opinion12 in the landmark Katz v United States, 389 US 347, 351; 88 S Ct 507; 19 L Ed 2d 576 (1967), decision, noted that the Fourth Amendment protects individuals from unreasonable governmental intrusion wherever they have a reasonable “expectation of privacy.” Terry interpreted this language so that the Fourth Amendment’s “inestimable right of personal security [would] belong[ ] as much to the citizen on the streets of our cities as to the homeowner closeted in his study to dispose of his secret affairs.” 392 US 8-9. The majority in this case impedes this “inestimable right of personal security.” Indeed, one must ask, if individuals do not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in their groin, where do they have such an expectation?
A mere eleven years ago in Shabaz, a majority of this Court provided the citizens of this state with a suitable framework by which probable cause could be determined. The majority abandons this approach, which requires some explanation. On the other hand, if it wishes to preserve an approach that has worked well, then there is really no good reason for its finding that the previously stated five factors combined to justify the defendant’s arrest or the search conducted incident thereto.
In fact, after careful review of the record, it appears that defendant was merely caught with his hands down in his pants, walking in a neighborhood where crimes are often committed, and, possibly, close to those prone to commit them. It should be *141clear that if these circumstances are sufficient to allow the police to seize a person and subject him to the type of search defendant was subjected to, very little restrains the police from general sweeps through bad neighborhoods to shake down guilty and innocent alike on the hunch that they will, as here, end up with contraband.
As stated above, this Court was not without enlightening precedent on this point before its decision today. In Shabaz, the Court considered a similar defendant, accosted under remarkably similar circumstances:
—The defendant was observed on the street at night in a high-crime neighborhood;
—He was seen leaving an apartment building wherein the observing officers had previously made a number of arrests for concealed-weapons violations and narcotics offenses;
—After looking in the direction of the unmarked police vehicle, the defendant was observed “stuffing a [small] paper bag like under his vest” or “in his pants”; and
—When the officers slowed their vehicle to a stop defendant “took off running.” [Shabaz at 60.]
A point by point comparison reveals that defendant was in every regard less suspicious than the insufficiently suspicious Shabaz. Although also in a high crime area, defendant was there during the day and he was not leaving a known drug house; defendant did not stuff anything in his pants upon seeing police, he was seen with his hands in his pants when officers arrived; defendant did not see the police and run away, he continued walking toward them. Given the validity of Shabaz, it is impossible to conclude that *142the officers in this case had reasonable suspicion to seize defendant and, by implication, probable cause to arrest him.
It is unclear, given that defendant has a police record and lives in a poor neighborhood, what the constitution permits him to do, if the simple act of putting his hands down his pants jettisons his constitutional rights.
m
There is much to worry about in a rule that allows a police officer’s plain feel to form the basis of a full blown search and seizure. As countless courts have repeatedly noted, expanding the power to stop and frisk inevitably will lead to abuses. No doubt those who will be most hurt by the Court’s ruling are those who cannot afford to leave neighborhoods overrun with drugs and the crimes associated with them. These people will be subject to pretextual searches. While we might take comfort in the knowledge that the police may more easily arrest those they suspect of involvement in the drug trade, we should also be mindful that there will be many more searches that turn up nothing more than tootsie rolls and lifesavers. In these cases, law-abiding citizens will have precious few alternatives save, perhaps, putting up with the very abuses against which the framers of the Fourth Amendment tried to protect. I am reminded of Justice Thurgood Marshall’s admonition:
Because the strongest advocates of Fourth Amendment rights are frequently criminals, it is easy to forget that our interpretations of such rights apply to the innocent and the guilty alike. [United States v Sokolow, 490 US 1, 11; 109 S Ct 1581; 104 L Ed 2d 1 (1989) (Marshall, J., dissenting).]
*143The majority justifies its expansive reading of Dickerson by pointing out that it limited its holding to the facts presently before the Court. See ante at 112-113. Yet, it would be naive to conclude that this state’s lower courts will not read the majority opinion in a way that will allow evidence of drug activity to become evidence against those whose Fourth Amendment rights have been violated, indeed, opening Pandora’s box.
In conclusion, I would hold that Terry specifically forbids the type of seizure conducted in this case and thereby eliminate the incentive to expand patdowns into general searches for contraband. To the extent that Dickerson departs from Terry’s strict prohibitions, it allows admission of nonweapons evidence found during a patdown if, but only if, the officers conducting the patdown have probable cause to believe that the item they feel is contraband. The item felt in this case, the pill bottle, while containing contraband, was not, in and of itself, contraband. Accordingly, it was impossible for Officer Todd to have probable cause to believe otherwise. His seizure of it, therefore, was illegal. Finally, because the record is completely devoid of credible evidence that would provide an alternate basis for Officer Todd’s actions, I would affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals and exclude the evidence that defendant’s numerous motions sought to suppress.
Levin and Cavanagh, JJ., concurred with Brickley, C.J.

 It should be noted that the defendant in Dickerson did not challenge the propriety of the Terry stop and frisk. His failure to do so did not, however, prevent the United States Supreme Court from examining the propriety of the officer’s actions with Terry as the baseline:
Respondent has not challenged the finding made by the trial court and affirmed by both the Court of Appeals and the State Supreme Court that the police were justified under Terry in stopping him and frisking him for weapons. Thus, the dispositive question before this Court is whether the officer who conducted the search was acting within the lawful bounds marked by Terry at the time he gained probable cause to believe that the lump in respondent’s jacket was contraband. [508 US 377.]

 Because Terry invalidated the search at issue in Dickerson, the discussion of the plain feel doctrine was unnecessary to the Dickerson Court’s conclusion that the evidence should be suppressed. Therefore, that discussion “cannot be considered binding authority.” Kastigar v United States, 406 US 441, 455; 92 S Ct 1653; 32 L Ed 2d 212 (1972). The allegiance of numerous federal courts to the plain feel doctrine does not change the analysis.

 Without analysis, the majority announced that the investigative stop was supported by a “reasonable particularized suspicion.” Ante at 99, n 4. It should be noted, however, that the existence of such a suspicion was an issue never squarely before this Court. In fact, for some reason, defendant has conceded the issue throughout these proceedings. Any corresponding discussion in the majority opinion is, therefore, merely dicta and should not be read as modifying this Court’s prior stop and frisk jurisprudence. See People v Shabaz, 424 Mich 42; 378 NW2d 451 (1985).

 Footnote 8 of the majority opinion explicitly refuses to draw a distinction between the feeling of an object that is contraband and the feeling of an object that contains contraband. The majority, in fact, rejected the approach to the contrary adopted by the Louisiana Court of Appeals in State v Parker, 622 So. 2d 791 (La App, 1993), saying that such an approach would only encourage “better packaging of illicit drugs.’’ Ante at 106, n 8. I disagree with this premise and point out that the majority’s approach encourages a contrary evil — unauthorized and pretextual Fourth Amendment intrusions.

 The five facts that the majority cites are as follows:
(1) the defendant got out of his car and walked away upon seeing the patrol car and uniformed officers, (2) Officer Todd recognized defendant and knew of his previous drug and weapons convictions, (3) the officers were in a high drug crime area, (4) the defendant had his hands tucked inside the front of his sweatpants while walking away from the officers and refused to take his hands out of his sweatpants after being repeatedly asked to do so, and (5) Officer Todd, having had twenty years experience as a police officer, was aware that contraband, and in particular controlled substances, were often carried in the type of pill bottle that he felt on defendant’s person. [Ante at 111-112.]

 The majority states in footnote 12 of its opinion that Officer Chontos’ observation “is consistent with a finding that defendant had just gotten out of the car upon seeing the officers.” Ante at 111, n 12. I would have agreed with this conclusion had it not been for other relevant testimony. However, the majority seems to forget that these events all occurred within a relatively short time frame lasting perhaps no more than a few seconds. All parties agree that the 1977 Buick of defendant’s sister from which he supposedly fled was parked a mere half block from the comer the officers rounded in hot pursuit. I am at a loss to explain how defendant could have magically extricated himself from the car and appeared on the sidewalk in front of it in such a short period of time or how defendant could have gotten there without Officer Chontos noticing. The only credible explanation for Officer Chontos’ failure to see defendant leave the car is that defendant did not leave the car, but that he was already on the sidewalk when the police car came down the street. Again, the importance of this fact is that it tends to undermine any claims that defendant acted furtively.
The msyority suggests that Officer Chontos did not see defendant’s supposed flight from the car because the officer was not looking in defendant’s direction, his sight being fixed on the fleeing man he never bothered to chase. Yet, even if I were inclined to accept this testimony, I still could not conclude that Officer Chontos would not have been able to see at least part of defendant’s supposed exit. No one is spry enough to see a police car one half a block away round a comer at a rate of speed that Officer Chontos conceded was “rather quick[ ],” decide to exit, execute the exit, and then end up on the sidewalk walking away from the vehicle at a pace that Officer Todd’s police report described as “walking,” all without being detected by individuals who the majority freely admits were trained to observe such things. Far from being the “rookie” that the majority describes, before joining the Saginaw Police Department, Officer Chontos had been a police officer in another department for about ten years.
Moreover, my conclusion that Officer Chontos would have seen defendant’s exit if, in fact, one had been made, of course, precludes discussion of an even larger question. In order to conclude, as the majority does, that Officer Chontos’ testimony is “consistent with a finding that defendant had just gotten out of his car,” we must assume that the officers knew that defendant had some connection to the 1977 Buick from which he supposedly fled. However, the Buick did not belong to defendant; it belonged to his sister, and there is no testimony to support the contention that the officers knew of this fact before they made their stop. To the contrary, the officers did not discover who owned the car until after defendant had been searched, arrested, and a LEIN check had been conducted. The prosecution, in fact, admitted at a pretrial suppression hearing that the car “was parked in front of a field, it could have been anyone’s.” Thus, if Officer Chontos did not see defendant leave the car, all Officer Chontos *132really knew when he stopped next to defendant was that he was walking in the opposite direction from a car that he might have never even been inside.

 Footnote 12 of the majority opinion suggests that the trial judge merely found Officer Chontos “more credible” than Officer Todd. Ante at 111. The trial judge’s excerpted comment, however, goes much further than that. Quite apart from Officer Chontos being “more credible,” the trial judge found Officer Todd’s testimony to be “inconsistent with the evidence.” It only states the obvious to say that when testimony is “inconsistent with the evidence” it is more than just less credible than other evidence. To the contrary, when testimony is “inconsistent with the evidence” it completely lacks credibility. The majority’s reliance on it is, therefore, inherently suspect.

 At one point, Officer Todd testified that the fleeing man may have yelled something in defendant’s direction. This testimony was later found to be without merit. Specifically, the fleeing man was not facing Officer Todd when the supposed yelling occurred, and eventually Todd admitted that he never actually heard yelling. More importantly, the witness the court found most credible, Officer Chontos, stated that he neither saw nor heard yelling.

 The majority’s finding to the contrary necessarily depends upon the mistaken notion that police were justified in stopping defendant after he refused the officer’s requests that he stop. As explained below, defendant’s refusal to stop cannot be considered furtive. Indeed, the Fourth Amendment guaranteed defendant’s right to be free from the seizure the majority appears willing to allow. This is especially the case because, before the stop, police had absolutely no evidence, or even a reasonable suspicion, that defendant possessed narcotics. See footnote 10.

 The following testimony reveals that neither officer could articulate the requisite suspicion:
Q. [By defense counsel]: Had you seen Mr. Champion do anything illegal on that evening other than get out of his car or something wrong with that?
A. [Officer Todd]: No sir.
Q. Ah, did you see, ah, ah, did you see people around his car that, ah, that would have been purchasing drugs or like you might see in other cases?
*138A. No, sir.
Q. Now, other than the fact that you know him and that this might be a — a crime area that he was leaving his car, was there anything else that would lead you that you could point to to say to the Court, ah, I stopped Ken Champion because I had reasonable cause to believe he was committing a crime?
A. Yes, sir, the fact that the passenger, ah, ran from us — refused to stop. The fact that . . .
Q. Okay, how about Ken Champion?
A. . . . the fact that Mr. Champion had his hands down in his pants as though he was concealing something from us, and refused to move his hands from his swealpants. Ah, having to be told, ah, numerous times as it states in my police report. I believe it was at least four times.
Q. What were you — what were you stopping him for? What was the — what was the crime?
A. Suspicious situation, sir.
Officer Chontos testified similarly:
Q. [By defense counsel]: Did you see Mr. Champion do anything wrong before you stopped your patrol vehicle?
A. [Officer Chontos]: As in . . .
Q. Did you see him commit a crime before you stopped your patrol vehicle?
A. As I — per se, or . . .
Q. Yeah. Did you see him do anything?
A. It’s very abnormal for me to have a person not honor my request to take their hands out of my pocket when I’m fearing for my safety and not having knowledge of what they have their hands on.
Q. I appreciate that. The question that I have is, did you see him do anything wrong before you stopped your car?
A. Other than not stop and want to talk to us?
Q. Well, let me — remove . . .
A. Remove his hands from his pants, sir. Other than that, no.
Q. And you stopped, as I understand it, or it’s your testimony that he was stopped because you thought he might be doing something wrong?
A. Well, at least to find out.
Q. To find out?
A. Yes, sir.

 The majority of federal circuit courts to have considered the issue agree that a suspect’s refusal to consent to an unreasonable search cannot contribute to a finding of probable cause or reasonable suspicion. See Laser, Unreasonable suspicion: Relying on refusals to support Terry stops, 62 U Chi LR 1161 (1995); United States v White, 890 F2d 1413, 1417, n 4 (CA 8, 1989); United States v Wilson, 953 F2d 116 (CA 4, 1991); United States v Carter, 300 US App DC 36; 985 F2d 1095 (1993).

 The Supreme Court gradually came to adopt Justice Harlan’s “expectation of privacy” analysis in subsequent cases. The Court now considers the concurring opinion to be the correct statement of law. Rackas v Illinois, 439 US 128; 99 S Ct 421; 58 L Ed 2d 387 (1978).