Court Opinion

ID: 9584933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:54:03.035159+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:15.895796
License: Public Domain

Justice Exum
dissenting.
Try as I might, I am simply unable to concur in the majority’s attempt to distinguish Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40 (1968). The majority recognizes that Patrolman Cruzan had no subjective belief that a protective search of defendant was necessary. The majority states, however, that “[t]he officer’s subjective opinion is not material. . . . The search or seizure is valid when the objective facts known to the officer meet the standard required.” None of the cases it cites for this proposition deal with the Terry-type situation in which the officer is conducting a limited frisk to protect himself or others. These cases deal generally with situations where (1) an officer was of the opinion that no probable cause existed when, in law, there was probable cause; (2) an officer’s action was supportable on a legal theory different from that proffered by him; or (3) there was no probable cause at the time the officer determined to act, but thereafter and before the officer’s action probable cause developed. Thus these cases stand for the proposition that the court will not be bound by an officer’s erroneous legal theory when other legal theories will support his actions.
Here Officer Cruzan declared, not as a matter of law, but as a matter of fact, that he had “no reason to believe that Defendant was going for a weapon.” The Court is bound by this declaration of the officer’s best professional factual determination. It may not go behind this determination to justify Officer Cruzan’s actions on the basis of what, upon the objective, articulable circumstances, he, or some other reasonable officer, might have thought. The requirement of objective, articulable circumstances in a Terry-type, protective seizure is designed to be a limitation on, not a substitute for, the officer’s subjective determination of what the circumstances required. The Court should thus rely on the professional expertise of the individual officer and allow him to make the initial determination of the necessity for a protective frisk. It should then review his action, in light of the objective facts and constitutional standards.
Because of the similarity of objective facts and the constitutional question involved in Sibron to the instant case, I believe *747Sibron controls this case. Therefore, Patrolman Cruzan’s grabbing defendant’s hand and jerking it out of his pants, under circumstances which gave Cruzan “no reason to believe that the Defendant was going for a weapon,” constituted an illegal seizure. The illegal seizure caused the packet containing the MDA to come into Cruzan’s view. Thus the first requisite for application of the plain view doctrine, ie., that the officer was in a legally justifiable position when he observed the drugs, was not met. See Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443 (1971).
Chief Justice BRANCH and Justice CARLTON join in this dissenting opinion.