Court Opinion

ID: 9577987
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:40:17.663046+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:22:14.892314
License: Public Domain

JACKSON, Judge
concurring.
I concur in both the opinion and the result reached by the maT jority, but I write separately to express my concern regarding placing handcuffs upon defendant pursuant to an “investigatory detention” based upon reasonable suspicion. Because the phrase “investigatory detention” is ambiguous in the context of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, I believe there is a danger of confusion posed by conflating the proper legal standards (i.e., probable cause and reasonable suspicion) already inherent within a trial court’s fact-specific inquiry as to whether a stop, search, or seizure passes constitutional muster.
The Supreme Court of the United States has explained that
to argue that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to the investigatory stage is fundamentally to misconceive the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. Investigatory seizures would subject unlimited numbers of innocent persons to the harassment and ignominy incident to involuntary detention. Nothing is more clear than that the Fourth Amendment was meant to prevent wholesale intrusions upon the personal security of our citizenry, whether *532these intrusions be termed “arrests” or “investigatory detentions. ” We made this explicit only last Term in Terry v. Ohio, . . . when we rejected “the notions that the Fourth Amendment does not come into play at all as a limitation upon police conduct if the officers stop short of something called a ‘technical arrest’ or a ‘full-blown search.’ ”
Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721, 726-27, 22 L. Ed. 2d 676, 680-81 (1969) (emphasis added) (footnote call number omitted). Therefore, it is clear that the Supreme Court does not draw a bright line between “arrests” and “investigatory detentions,” but instead focuses on the intrusive nature of the activity involved.
The Supreme Court of North Carolina, as well as prior opinions of this Court have stated that so-called investigatory detentions are permitted upon reasonable suspicion. See, e.g., State v. Styles, 362 N.C. 412, 414, 665 S.E.2d 438, 439 (2008) (citations omitted); State v. Sanchez, 147 N.C. App. 619, 623, 556 S.E.2d 602, 606 (2001). In these opinions, North Carolina’s appellate Courts have used “investigatory detention” as a synonym for “investigatory stop.”3
In view of our precedent, and upon the facts presented, I would construe the limited “investigatory detention” in case sub judice as an “investigatory stop” which was supported by reasonable suspicion pursuant to an informant’s tip and independent police corroboration. Having construed the “investigative detention” as an “investigative stop,” Detective Williams permissibly used handcuffs to put the two Hispanic males into a limited “investigative detention” “for officer safety” prior to obtaining probable cause to arrest defendant. See State v. Campbell, 188 N.C. App. 701, 708-12, 656 S.E.2d 721, 727-29 (affirming the use of handcuffs during an investigative stop after explaining that “when conducting investigative stops, police officers are ‘authorized to take such steps as [are] reasonably necessary to protect their personal safety and to maintain the status quo during the course of the stop.’ ”) (quoting United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 235, 83 L. Ed. 2d 604, 616 (1985)), appeal dismissed, 362 N.C. 364, 664 S.E.2d 311 (2008).
With the foregoing caveat, I join the majority.

. Although both Styles and Sanchez are factually distinct from the case sub judice insofar as they involve “traffic stops” as opposed to traditional “Terry stops,” reasonable suspicion provides the legal justification required to initiate the stop in both instances. See, e.g., Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 123, 145 L. Ed. 2d 570, 576 (2000).