Court Opinion

ID: 9488903
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:59:20.241414+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:10.840601
License: Public Domain

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree that the key question here is whether the officer was entitled in the first instance to accost DeBerry, because the degree of threat that DeBerry’s gestures posed when the officer hailed him is a question of fact that the district judge resolved against DeBerry. The anonymous tip offered little to distinguish DeBerry from any other citizen on the street, and the Court rightly recognizes the danger of bootstrapping when a prankster calls the police and describes the location and appearance of a person accurately. If the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect against anything, it was designed to protect against the “general warrant,” which freed the holder of the warrant from the limitations of the common law of trespass and barred any trespass suit by the target of an unreasonable search. See Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, — U.S. -, -, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 2397, 132 L.Ed.2d 564 (1995) (O’Connor, J., dissenting); United States v. Jones, 54 F.3d 1285, 1289-90 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 116 S.Ct. 263, 133 L.Ed.2d 186 (1995). See also Akhil Reed Amar, Fourth Amendment First Principles, 107 Harv.L.Rev. 757, 771-81 (1995); William J. Stuntz, The Substantive Origins of Criminal Procedure, 105 Yale L.J. 393 (1995).
The only fact that saves the officer’s stop of DeBerry, in my opinion, is the fact that it is unlawful in Illinois to carry a concealed weapon. The tipster informed the police that DeBerry was armed, and it appears from the facts before us that the weapon was not in plain view. I do not agree that this case would necessarily come out the same way if Illinois law, like the law of many states, authorized the carrying of concealed weapons. At that point, the entire content of the anonymous tip would be a physical description of the individual, his location, and an allegation that he was carrying something lawful (a cellular telephone? a beeper? a firearm?). This kind of nonincriminatory allegation, in my view, would not be enough to justify the kind of investigatory stop that took place here. It would mean, in states that permit carrying concealed weapons, that the police no longer need any reason to stop citizens on the street to search them. However, we do not have that situation. Because I therefore consider the Court’s comments on lawful concealed weapons to be dicta, I concur in the result reached today.