Court Opinion

ID: 9575278
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:12:43.15705+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:43.001747
License: Public Domain

HEFFERNAN, CHIEF JUSTICE
(dissenting). The majority adopts a "reasonable suspicion” test that is both incorrect and unconstitutional. It would allow a stop where an otherwise insufficient quantum of facts observed by a police officer can be supplemented with various subjective circumstances — such as a belief that the offender will otherwise go unpunished or that an opportunity to possibly obtain additional information will otherwise be foregone — that the officer decides are present. The majority believes that a stop is constitutional if it is "reasonable under the circumstances." (Majority opinion at 679.) The " ultimate question," it held, is whether society's interest in solving the crime and bringing the offenders to justice reasonably justifies the stop.
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), and the cases that have followed it, have set forth a reasonable suspicion test that focuses on the amount of factual information available to the officer before the stop is made. Terry provides that reasonable suspicion is present "where a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him to reasonably conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot.” 392 U.S. at 30. Other cases have defined reasonable suspicion as "founded suspicion,” "a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity,” and "adequate suspicious circumstances to justify a temporary detention for the purpose of inquiry.” See, 1 LaFave & Israel, Criminal Procedure at 302-03. These tests all depend on the presence of a certain quantum of factual information; they leave no room for subjective beliefs that a stop is *684"necessary” either because there is no alternate means of investigation available, or to take advantage of an opportunity that may otherwise be lost. None of these tests authorizes a stop in order to attempt to obtain more information which may, when coupled with facts already available to the officer, only then rise to the level of reasonable suspicion.
The majority thus adopts a reasonable suspicion test that does not square with Terry and its progeny. Its test improperly ignores the emphasis of those cases on the presence and degree of factual information available to the officer who makes the stop. In allowing a police officer’s subjective determination to be taken into account, the majority elevates society’s interest in apprehending offenders above the constitutional right to be free from unreasonable stops.
Here, only two "facts” were available to the police officers. The vehicle’s occupants had shoulder-length hair and the vehicle was observed at a proximity from the scene of the crime that was consistent with the time that had elapsed since the robbery took place. I find that these two facts did not rise to the level of creating a reasonable suspicion. The stop was therefore unconstitutional, and the presence of special "circumstances” relied upon by the majority cannot make it any less so. The majority today adopts a reasonable suspicion test that affords defendants a lesser degree of constitutional protection under the Wisconsin constitution than the United States Supreme Court has held must be afforded under the Fourth Amendment. This it cannot do. States may only choose to afford individuals identical rights or more rights under their own constitutions than would be available under the United States Constitution. U. S. Const., Art. VI, cl. 2.
*685I am authorized to state that JUSTICE ABRA-HAMSON joins in this dissent.