Court Opinion

ID: 9427003
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:26.476661+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:04.450231
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
dissenting.
I join my Brother Stevens’ dissenting opinion, but I write separately to emphasize the extent to which the Court today departs from the teachings of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968).
In Terry the policeman who detained and “frisked” the petitioner had for 30 years been patrolling the area in downtown Cleveland where the incident occurred. His experience led him to watch petitioner and a companion carefully, for a long period of time, as they individually and repeatedly looked into a store window and then conferred together. Suspecting that the two men might be “casing" the store for a “stickup” and that they might have guns, the officer followed them as they walked away and joined a third man with whom they had earlier conferred. At this point the officer approached the men and asked for their names. When they “mumbled something” in response, the officer grabbed petitioner, spun *113him around to face the other two, and “patted down” his clothing. This frisk led to discovery of a pistol and to petitioner’s subsequent weapons conviction. Id., at 5-7.
The “stop and frisk” in Terry was thus justified by the probability, not only that a crime was about to be committed, but also that the crime “would be likely to involve the use of weapons.” Id., at 28. The Court confined its holding to situations in which the officer believes that “the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dangerous” and “fear[s] for his own or others’ safety.” Id., at 30. Such a situation was held to be present in Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143 (1972), which involved a person who “was reported to be carrying ... a concealed weapon.” Id., at 147; see id., at 146, 148.
In the instant case, the officer did not have even the slightest hint, prior to ordering respondent out of the car, that respondent might have a gun. As the Court notes, ante, at 109, “the officer had no reason to suspect foul play.” The car was stopped for the most routine of police procedures, the issuance of a summons for an expired license plate. Yet the Court’ holds that, once the officer had made this routine stop, he was justified in imposing the additional intrusion of ordering respondent out of the car, regardless of whether there was any individualized reason to fear respondent.
Such a result cannot be explained by Terry, which limited the nature of the intrusion by reference to the reason for the stop. The Court held that “the officer’s action [must be] reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.” 392 U. S., at 20.1 In Terry there was an obvious connection, emphasized by the Court, id., at 28-30, between the officer’s suspicion that an-armed robbery was being planned and his frisk for weapons. *114In the instant case “the circumstance . . . which justified the interference in the first place” was an expired license plate. There is simply no relation at all between that circumstance and the order to step out of the car.
The institutional aspects of the Court’s decision trouble me as much as does the Court’s substantive result. The Court extends Terry’s expressly narrow holding, see id., at 30, solely on the basis of certiorari papers, and in the process summarily reverses the considered judgment of Pennsylvania’s highest court. Such a disposition cannot engender respect for the work of this Court.2 That we are deciding such an important issue by “reach [ing] out” in a case that “barely escapes mootness,” as noted by Mr. Justice Stevens, post, at 117, 116 n. 4, and that may well be resolved against the State on remand in any event,3 simply reinforces my view that the Court does *115institutional as well as doctrinal damage by the course it pursues today. I dissent.

 See also 392 U. S., at 19 (“[t]he scope of the search must be ‘strictly tied to and justified by’ the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible”); id., at 29-30.

 Professor Ernest Brown wrote nearly 20 years ago:
“[S]ummary reversal on certiorari papers appears in many cases to raise serious question whether there has not been decision without that hearing usually thought due from judicial tribunals. . . . [T] here [is] the question whether the Court does not pay a disproportionate price in public regard when it defeats counsel’s reasonable expectation of a hearing, based upon the Court’s own rules. If the Court exercises its certiorari jurisdiction to deal with problems of national legal significance, it hardly needs demonstration that such matters warrant hearing on the merits.” The Supreme Court 1957 Term — Foreword: Process of Law, 72 Harv. L. Rev. 77, 80, 82 (1958).
See also R. Stern & E. Gressman, Supreme Court Practice § 5.12 (4th ed. 1969). Mr. Justice Brennan has singled out cases from the state courts as ones where we should be particularly reluctant to reverse summarily. State Court Decisions and the Supreme Court, 31 Pa. Bar Assn. Q. 393, 403 (1960).

 On remand the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will have open to it the option of reaching the same result that it originally reached, but doing so under its state counterpart of the Fourth Amendment, Pa. Const., Art. 1, § 8, rather than under the Federal Constitution. A disposition on such an independent and adequate state ground is not, and could not be, in any way foreclosed by this Court's decision today, nor could this Court review a decision of this nature. See generally Brennan, State Constitutions and *115the Protection of Individual Rights, 90 Harv. L. Rev. 489 (1977); Project Report: Toward an Activist Role for State Bills of Rights, 8 Harv. Civ. Rights-Civ. Lib. L. Rev. 271 (1973).
In addition, respondent’s conviction may be reversed on a ground entirely unrelated to the search at issue here. At trial the prosecutor questioned a defense witness about respondent’s religious affiliation, a matter not raised on direct examination of the witness. Two concurring justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court contended that this questioning provided an independent reason for reversing respondent’s conviction under Pennsylvania law. 471 Pa. 546, 556-557, 370 A. 2d 1157, 1162-1163 (1977) (Nix, J., joined by O’Brien, J., concurring).