Court Opinion

ID: 9749097
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:24:01.848031+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:43.965019
License: Public Domain

DUFFY, Justice,
concurring:
I concur in the judgment of the Court and I agree with much of the opinion. But I am not persuaded that Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979), requires the narrow reading which the Court implicitly gives it and, for that reason, I think it is unnecessary to consider whether Dunaway is to be given or is not to be given a retroactive application.
In Michigan v. Summers, - U.S. -, 101 S.Ct. 2587, 69 L.Ed.2d 340 (1981), the United States Supreme Court discussed Dunaway just last month. The Court made clear that Dunaway “reaffirmed the general rule that an official seizure of the person must be supported by probable cause, even if no formal arrest is made.” But, said the Court,
“[although we refused in Dunaway to find an exception that would swallow the general rule, our opinion recognized that some seizures significantly less intrusive than an arrest have withstood scrutiny under the reasonableness standard embodied in the Fourth Amendment. In these cases the intrusion on the citizen’s privacy ‘was so much less severe’ than that involved in a traditional arrest that ‘the opposing interests in crime prevention and detection and in the police officer’s safety’ could support the seizure as reasonable.”
After discussing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972), and United States v. Brigoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975), (all were cases involving “intrusions” on less than probable cause), the Court derived the followed principle from them:
“These cases recognize that some seizures admittedly covered by the Fourth Amendment constitute such limited intrusions on the personal security of those detained and are justified by such substantial law enforcement interests that they may be made on less than probable cause, so long as police have an articula-ble basis for suspecting criminal activity. In these cases, as in Dunaway, the Court was applying the ultimate standard of reasonableness embodied in the Fourth Amendment. They are consistent with the general rule that every arrest, and every seizure having the essential attributes of a formal arrest, is unreasonable unless it is supported by probable cause. But they demonstrate that the exception for limited intrusions that may be justified by special law enforcement interests is not confined to the momentary on-the-street detention accompanied by a frisk for weapons involved in Terry and Adams.”
In my view, the situation in which the police found themselves at the time Andre Deputy was stopped falls within that exception. Specifically, the police had “an articu-lable basis for suspecting criminal activity” and the limited intrusion on Deputy’s personal security was justified by the substantial law enforcement interest that was at stake.
As the Court’s opinion shows, the police were investigating the brutal murders of an elderly couple: the murders were first reported to the police at about 8:30 A.M. on February 7, a snowy day; the investigation led the police to the victims’ house, to their abandoned automobile on a town street, to William Henry Flamer’s residence, to a Justice of the Peace Court to secure a warrant *1047for Flamer’s arrest and then to a search for Flamer. The warrant charged Flamer with the murders. There was reason to believe, on the basis of the investigation, that more than one killer may have been involved in the murders. Acting on a tip, at about 3:15 P.M. on February 7, the police found Flamer walking with Deputy (and a third man) on the shoulder of U. S. Route 13; the police stopped all three men and, when Deputy was asked his name and where he was from the police concluded (based on his demeanor) that his answers were “evasive.” The police then took all men in to Troop 5 for questioning.
To paraphrase what Justice Stevens said in Summers, the limited intrusion outlined in those events is justified, in my judgment, by the special law enforcement interest at stake, that is, detaining Deputy when the police had reason to believe that the murders with which Flamer had been charged had been committed with one or more accomplices.
In short, in my opinion, the circumstances of the detention amount to an “articulable basis for suspecting criminal activity” by Deputy and justify the limited intrusion on his Fourth Amendment rights.* That intrusion required Deputy to go with the police from the public highway on a snowy February day to the Troop while the investigation was continued. The total “detention” time was less than two hours, the special law enforcement interest was high.

There is a striking parallel in the factual circumstances in Summers and those shown by the record before us: in the former case the police had a warrant to search the house (but not the person of Summers who had been first found outside the house); here, the police had a warrant to arrest Flamer in whose company (on a public highway) Deputy was found shortly after the murders. In both cases, the critical question is “whether the officers had the authority to require,” - U.S. -, 101 S.Ct. 2587, 69 L.Ed.2d 340 the respective defendants to accompany them: in Summers, defendant was required to “re-enter the house and to remain there”; in this case, Deputy was required to accompany the police to the Troop and remain there.