Court Opinion

ID: 9485979
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:35:02.460316+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:28.465413
License: Public Domain

KEARSE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. It seems to me that in this case the authorities had less verifiable information than in any other case in which the Supreme Court or this Court has held there was sufficient information to give the authorities the reasonable suspicion needed to make a Te'rry stop.
In the present case, the authorities simply received an anonymous telephone call stating that "a male black adult, approximately five-eight to five-nine ... huge and fat ... [with] short close-cropped hair, [and] clean shaven," would soon arrive on a train to New York and would be carrying weapons. Since the call was anonymous, the informant was not known to be reliable; the only corroboration for the tip, prior to the eventual discovery of the weapons, was the authorities' observation of a man meeting the telephoned description disembarking from the train. In my view this was insufficient. The tip contained virtually no predictive information from which the authorities could reasonably determine that this informant had any "inside information [or] a special familiarity with [the accused's] affairs," Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 332, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 2417, 110 L.Ed.2d 301 (1990). Any mischievous member of the public could observe a distinctive-looking or distinctively-dressed person purchase a train ticket or board a train and could telephone a description and an accusation ahead to authorities at the train's destination. I believe that some indicium of reliability other than merely an accurate description of an individual's physique and whereabouts, which any observant stranger could provide, should be required before the individual may be stopped and detained.
The end result in this case, i.e., the authorities' eventual discovery of the contraband, cannot contribute to the reasonable suspicion needed to permit the initial stop and inquiry. I would conclude that reasonable suspicion was lacking.