Court Opinion

ID: 9516677
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 23:48:46.068525+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:36.114764
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
(dissenting). I dissent from the majority’s holding that the stop and frisk in this case was constitutionally valid. I would affirm the decision of the court of appeals and hold that the stop and frisk violated the defendant’s rights guaranteed by the federal and state constitutions.
Both the Wisconsin Constitution and the United States Constitution are “designed to maximize individual free*405doms within a framework of ordered liberty.” Kolender v. Lawson, - U.S. -, 51 L.W. 4532-4533 (May 2, 1983). Part of the constitutional compromise between freedom and order is found in the prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures. U.S. Const, amend IV; Wis. Const, art I, sec. 11. These constitutional prohibitions establish a delicate balance between citizens’ ability to walk in our neighborhoods, free from the fear that our everyday actions will subject us to police stops and searches, and the necessity for the state, through its police force, to keep our streets and neighborhoods safe so that we can walk and live freely and safely.
The framers of the constitutions, recognizing the dangers of criminal conduct and attempting to stop it, could have allowed stops and searches of all citizens looking or acting in a manner other than the manner in which the state believed we should act. Our constitutions do not allow such state action, however. Rather, the constitutions recognize that all persons and property need protection against the power of the state, even when such protection may result in less efficient law enforcement.
The rights of the accused are not just his or hers; they belong to each of us. The interest in being free from unreasonable governmental intrusion is a collective interest, not just an interest belonging to those we suspect of being criminals. Hoyer v. State, 180 Wis. 407, 417, 193 N.W. 89 (1923) ; Jokosh v. State, 181 Wis. 160, 163, 193 N.W. 976 (1923). The purpose underlying the constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures is not, as it is often perceived, to protect criminals but to minimize governmental intrusion into the everyday lives of ordinary citizens. To the extent that this court allows encroachment of the constitutional rights of the accused, it allows encroachment on the rights of all. We need to strengthen law enforcement *406tools to combat crime, but we cannot justify police practices that would otherwise fail to meet constitutional standards.
By this case, the majority permits a significant intrusion upon our ability to walk freely in our own neighborhoods. The fourth amendment allows stops and searches if there is probable cause to believe the conduct violates the criminal law or if the stop and search fits with the exception to the requirement of probable cause established by the United States Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). The Terry exception is “narrow,” and the Supreme Court has been careful to maintain its limited boundaries despite encouragements to broaden it. Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 93-94 (1979). See Florida v. Royer,-U.S.-, 51 L.W. 4293, 4295 (March 23, 1983).
The majority concludes that this stop and frisk falls within Terry’s narrow exception because the officer was “able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant” the intrusion and that the state proved that the officer’s stop and frisk of the citizen was reasonable, judged by an objective standard. Terry v. Ohio, supra, 392 U.S. at 21.
The police were in the neighborhood giving a traffic ticket, not investigating a reported crime. Indeed, no crime or suspected crime had been reported. Two men were out walking at 2 a.m. in a residential neighborhood where, as it turned out, the defendant resided. The police officer justifies stopping the defendant because the defendant “stared at” and “monitored” for about twenty seconds a parked police car whose red light was flashing. The defendant’s companion admitted to having been convicted of the crime of carrying a gun and to being then “wanted,” and when the officer got out of the police car, the defendant turned and started walking away.
*407It cannot be deemed “reasonable” to consider the exercise of constitutional rights of walking on the street at 2 a.m., watching a police car, walking away from a police car, or being in the company of a convict or even a wanted person sufficiently “suspicious” to justify a stop and frisk.
Reliance on the defendant’s actions in walking away as grounds for the stop is especially ironic in the context of this case. The police stopped both the defendant and his companion: the defendant for walking away, the companion for not walking away. If a person may decline to listen to police questions and has the right to “go on his [or her] way,” Florida v. Royer,-U.S.-, 51 L.W. 4293, 4295 (March 23, 1983), I fail to see how exercising that right constitutes reasonable suspicion to stop. As I read this record of justification, there is no way that either the defendant or his companion could have avoided being stopped by the police. If the stop in this case is deemed reasonable then the state, as this case illustrates, literally gets the citizen coming and going.
Guilt by association also fails to provide a sufficient objective standard to allow a stop and frisk. The defendant’s companion freely admitted having been convicted of the crime of carrying a gun and that he was “wanted.” There is nothing in the record to show that the companion was then carrying a gun. The defendant’s “mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not, without more, give rise to probable cause to search” him, Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 91 (1979), nor does it give rise to even a reasonable suspicion sufficient to stop or frisk him. Id. at 94; Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 62 (1968).
In my opinion, not one of the factors set forth by the majority is sufficient in itself to justify the stop. Neither is the totality of the circumstances. The police officer, in summarizing the totality of the circumstances, *408stated that he stopped the defendant because the defendant was in the company of someone who was wanted for carrying a weapon; that the defendant’s actions, in turning and walking away from the police, showed that the defendant might have a weapon; that it was dark and he was too far away to see the defendant’s hands. Although the police officer subjectively may have believed that the defendant was armed and dangerous and should be stopped, his subjective viewpoint does not withstand objective scrutiny (which, as the majority acknowledges, is required in this case). From an objective point of view the defendant’s actions were no more or less than the actions of an ordinary citizen who, walking on a street late at night, became curious about the police presence and then exercised the constitutional right to walk away from the scene. The actions are “so universal in character that one can only speculate as to [their] motivating source.” People v. Thomas, -Colo.-, 660 P.2d 1272, 1275 (1983).
The Colorado Supreme Court recently considered a situation with, according to the majority’s logic, even more “indicia of suspicion” and concluded that a person’s actions in making eye contact with the police and then leaving the scene were insufficient to justify the temporary detention of the person. As the Colorado court stated, from the officer’s viewpoint, “an innocent move may often be mistaken for a guilty reaction. From the perspective of the person observed, the ‘furtive gesture’ might be impelled by a variety of motives, from an unsettling feeling of being watched to an avoidance of what might be perceived as a form of harassment. See People v. Superior Court of Yolo County, 3 Cal.3d 807, 478 P.2d 449, 91 Cal. Rptr. 729 (1970). Then again, a person’s movement may not be a reaction to the police *409at all.” People v. Thomas, - Colo. -, 660 P.2d 1272 (1983).
See also United States v. Best, 568 F. Supp. 1075, 33 Cr. L. 2216 (USDC DC, April 21, 1983), holding unconstitutional as a violation of the Terry standards for a stop, a routine police sweep of a parking lot located in an area with a high incidence of drug traffic. The court held that a “mere investigative stop of the type discussed in Terry cannot be justified simply because a person is found in an area with a high incidence of drug traffic, looks unfamiliar and suspicious to the police officer, but has done nothing to create suspicion of ‘any specific misconduct,’ Brown v. Texas. The police must have, in Judge Leventhal’s words, a ‘founded suspicion of wrongdoing,’ U.S. v. Montgomery, 561 F.2d 875, 880 (D.C. Cir. 1977).” Id. at 1080, 33 Cr. L. at 2217. The action of the police, taking “legal shortcuts in dealing with drug trafficking,” was not constitutionally permissible. Id.
One might try to justify the officer’s actions in this case in hindsight, since the officer’s stop and frisk actually produced a gun and the defendant was charged with carrying a concealed weapon. But hindsight is not and can not be the test. If hindsight is the test, the ordinary citizen engaging in ordinary activity is not protected from stops and searches.
I recognize that the police officers in this case may have felt they were just trying to do their job. Police are trained to be suspicious of all persons: Any citizen can be a potential threat to a police officer. But the constitutions protect us against the state’s detaining everyone the police officers think may be threatening. In our society a police officer is not “entitled to seize and search every person whom he sees on the street or of whom he makes inquiries.” Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 64 (1968). Police officers may not in our so*410ciety stop a person because officers generally fear for their personal safety and are on guard against all citizens. Police officers may not stop a citizen as a precautionary measure unless reasonable grounds exist to suspect criminal activity.
Like the majority, I am not insensitive to the needs of law enforcement officers. I am aware that the weighty social objective of crime prevention and police protection might well be served by allowing officers to stop, question, and search any person the officers mistrust. As weighty as the concern is to combat the problem of crime in this state and nation, and as concerned as we all are that we each be safe on our streets, this concern can not justify state action that will undermine our constitutional guarantees of freedom. We have not reached the point in our society where citizens walking in their neighborhoods at night should expect to be stopped and frisked by the police.
It is well to remember Benjamin Franklin’s words: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
I dissent. I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Bruce Beilfuss and Justice Nathan S. Heffernan join in this dissent.