Court Opinion

ID: 9610272
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:39:14.85763+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:47:04.001772
License: Public Domain

Baker, J.,
concurring.
I concur in the finding that appellants’ Fourth Amendment rights were violated when their car was stopped. I am troubled by the apparent acceptance by some courts—and seemingly the majority here—that there is a legally meaningful entity known as a drug courier profile.
I am of the opinion that reviewing courts have permitted themselves to become so engrossed with the phrase “drug courier profile” that they have attributed to it more significance than it is due. The phrase, created by drug enforcement officers, has been declared in some quarters to be a useful law enforcement tool. It *390may be that; however, it is a legally meaningless term, for there is no such thing as a drug courier profile. As stated by Judge Moylan in Grant v. Maryland, 461 A.2d 524, 526 (Md. App. 1983): “[T]here is no such thing as a single drug courier profile. . . . It is simply an open-ended laundry list of more or less suspicious circumstances, some of which may occur in a particular case.” Some members of the Supreme Court of the United States have referred to it as “an informally compiled abstract of characteristics thought typical of persons carrying illicit drugs.” Mendenhall v. United States, 446 U.S. 544, 547 n.1 (1980).
In my judgment, it is time that all courts deemphasize the references to the profile and consider the cases on the basis of the real issue that is before them, to-wit: Evaluated by the neutral scrutiny of a judge, do the specific and articulated facts upon which, according to the record, the particular seizure was based, warrant the intrusion? See United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417 (1981). Thus, the issue to be decided is not whether the so called “drug courier profile” may alone justify the intrusion, but whether there is a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity.
Courts have used a variety of terms to capture the elusive concept of what cause is sufficient to authorize police to stop a person. Terms like “articulable reasons” and “founded suspicion” are not self-defining; they fall short of providing clear guidance dispositive of the myriad factual situations that arise. But the essence of all that has been written is that the totality of the circumstances—the whole picture—must be taken into account. Based upon that whole picture the detaining officers must have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity.
The second element contained in the idea that an assessment of the whole picture must yield a particularized suspicion is the concept that the process just described must raise a suspicion that the particular individual being stopped is engaged in wrongdoing.
*391Id. at 417-18 (citations omitted).
While it is well established that trained police officers may observe and be able to perceive and articulate meaning to presumably innocent conduct which may pass without notice by an untrained observer, see Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 52 n.2 (1979), those observations and perceptions must be explained for the record so that the trial judge may evaluate the basis for the officer’s conclusion that criminal activity may have been afoot, and determine independently of the officer’s conclusion, whether the suspicion upon which he acted was reasonable. United States v. Gooding, 695 F.2d 78, 82 (4th Cir. 1982). Thus, it is for the trial judge to decide, based upon the evidence presented, whether, in light of the circumstances, the articulated facts are of such import as to support a reasonable suspicion that the person stopped was illegally engaged in transporting drugs. Id:, United States v. Berry, 670 F.2d 583, 601 (5th Cir. 1982). A particular seizure may be constitutionally valid, not because the facts supporting the seizure have been designated as a drug courier profile, but because the articulated facts meet the foregoing requirements.
I agree that in a particular case an experienced officer, employing a profile, may be able to demonstrate that certain articulated facts will warrant a limited intrusion for the purpose of further investigation.
A larger number of the more suspicious circumstances may well pass constitutional muster in a given case, whereas a smaller number of more ambiguous circumstances will not pass muster in another case. In United States v. Mendenhall, the particular characteristics there present were deemed to be enough to establish articulable suspicion for a Terry-type stop. In Reid v. Georgia, a different collection of characteristics from the laundry list did not pass constitutional muster. Yet, in the next case, Florida v. Royer, a different collection of characteristics did pass constitutional muster. There is no inconsistency among these three cases.
Grant, 461 A.2d at 526.
Stopping an automobile in transit is “materially more intrusive” than airport stops of deplaning passengers. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. *392at 556-57. Appellants were stopped while in transit. The investigating officers do not allege that they observed any specific violation of law prior to stopping appellants’ vehicle. The profile characteristics used to justify the seizure included conduct associated with innocent travel. It is not illegal to be young, black, travel in a rented car, travel on the north-south route known as Interstate 95, or “cut” one’s eyes at a police officer who drives up beside you, first on your left side and then to your right. Nor does it inevitably follow that if one slows his vehicle under such circumstances such behavior should be classified as “suspicious.”
For the reasons stated above I am of the opinion that the selections from the “laundry list” articulated as the reason for the stop were not sufficient to justify the seizure. Accordingly, I agree that the judgment of the trial court should be reversed and appellants dismissed from further prosecution.