Terry v. Ohio Case Brief

392 U.S. 1 | 88 S. Ct. 1868 | 20 L. Ed. 2d 889 | 1968 U.S. LEXIS 1345 | 44 Ohio Op. 2d 383

Takeaway

In short, this case created the modern stop-and-frisk doctrine: police may briefly stop a person on reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity and conduct a narrowly tailored weapons patdown when they reasonably believe the person is armed and dangerous.

Background

While patrolling downtown Cleveland in plain clothes, Detective Martin McFadden watched John Terry and Richard Chilton repeatedly walk past and peer into the same store window, return to confer at a corner, and repeat the pattern roughly a dozen times. A third man briefly met with them, left, and was later rejoined by Terry and Chilton. Based on his long experience in that neighborhood, McFadden suspected they were casing a store for a robbery and feared they might be armed.

McFadden approached the three men, identified himself, and asked their names. After an indistinct response, he grabbed Terry, patted down the outside of his clothing, felt a pistol in Terry's overcoat pocket, and removed it. He then frisked the others, finding a revolver on Chilton. Terry was charged and convicted of carrying a concealed weapon.

The trial court denied Terry's motion to suppress the gun. It found that McFadden lacked probable cause to arrest before the frisk, but held that the officer had reasonable cause to investigate the suspicious conduct and could conduct a limited outer-clothing patdown to protect himself. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed, and the Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed the appeal for want of a substantial constitutional question. The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari and affirmed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether an officer's street encounter, forcible stop, and patdown for weapons are governed by the Fourth Amendment even though they do not amount to a formal arrest or a full evidentiary search.

Holding

Yes. A forcible stop is a seizure, and a patdown of a person's outer clothing for weapons is a search; both must be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

Reasoning

The Fourth Amendment protects personal security on public streets as well as privacy in homes and other private places. The Court rejected the suggestion that a stop and frisk falls outside the Amendment merely because it is less intrusive than a formal arrest and a full search.

When Officer McFadden grabbed Terry and restricted his freedom to leave, he seized him. When the officer explored the outer surfaces of Terry's clothing to find weapons, he searched him. A public patdown is a serious invasion of personal security, not a trivial inconvenience.

The governing inquiry is therefore reasonableness in all the circumstances. The Court framed that inquiry in two parts: whether the officer's action was justified at its inception, and whether the action was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances that initially justified it.

Issue #2

Whether the Fourth Amendment always requires probable cause to arrest before an officer may briefly detain a person and conduct a protective frisk for weapons.

Holding

No. An officer may conduct a carefully limited protective frisk without probable cause to arrest when specific and articulable facts reasonably support the belief that criminal activity may be afoot and that the person is armed and presently dangerous.

Reasoning

This kind of on-the-spot police work ordinarily cannot be preceded by a warrant. The Court therefore evaluated it under the Fourth Amendment's general ban on unreasonable searches and seizures, balancing the governmental interests against the intrusion on individual liberty and security.

An officer's subjective good faith or an unparticularized hunch is insufficient. The officer must identify specific and articulable facts, together with rational inferences from those facts, that would lead a reasonably prudent person to think the intrusion appropriate.

Crime prevention and detection are legitimate governmental interests, and officers need not ignore suspicious conduct until they have probable cause for an arrest. In addition, an officer legitimately investigating a person at close range need not take unnecessary risks when the circumstances reasonably indicate that the person may be armed and dangerous.

The frisk is justified solely by protection of the officer and nearby persons, not by a general interest in finding evidence. Accordingly, it is narrower than a search incident to arrest: it must be confined to discovering weapons that could be used to assault the officer or others.

Issue #3

Whether Detective McFadden's seizure and frisk of Terry were reasonable in their inception and scope.

Holding

Yes. McFadden had reasonable grounds to believe that Terry was involved in a planned robbery and might be armed and dangerous, and his limited patdown was properly confined to locating weapons.

Reasoning

Terry and Chilton's repeated pacing, peering into the same store window, returning to confer, meeting with a third man, and then rejoining him reasonably suggested to an experienced detective that they were casing a location for a robbery. Although each act could appear innocent in isolation, the combined pattern warranted investigation.

Because McFadden reasonably suspected a planned daylight robbery, he could reasonably infer a risk that the men were armed. Nothing in the men’s conduct or their indistinct response when he approached dispelled that concern. His decision to take protective measures was thus based on concrete observations rather than imagination or harassment.

McFadden initially patted only the outer clothing of the three men. He reached inside Terry's and Chilton's clothing only after feeling objects that appeared to be guns, and he did not search beneath Katz's clothing because the patdown revealed no weapon. The search was therefore limited to what was necessary to identify and neutralize weapons.

Concurrences

Justice Black

Reasoning

Justice Black joined the judgment and the Court's opinion, except for its reliance on Katz v. United States and Justice Fortas's concurrence in Warden v. Hayden. He did not otherwise explain a different basis for his agreement.

Justice Harlan

Reasoning

Justice Harlan agreed that the frisk was reasonable, but emphasized that the officer's authority arose from the necessities of a lawful forced encounter rather than from a general police power to frisk anyone suspected of carrying a weapon. In the absence of state-law authority creating such a broader power, an officer has no greater right than an ordinary citizen to pat down passersby who are merely approached for casual questions.

For Harlan, a protective frisk depends first on the constitutional validity of the stop. An officer must have grounds to forcibly stop the person to investigate a suspected crime; otherwise, the person may decline to answer questions and walk away. Once a justified stop occurs, however, a frisk should follow immediately and automatically when the officer has an articulable suspicion of a violent crime, because the officer need not risk being shot while waiting for further answers.

McFadden met that standard because his observations reasonably supported suspicion that Terry was preparing to commit burglary or robbery. The suspected violent offense justified both a brief forced stop and the immediate limited frisk for the officer's protection.

Justice White

Reasoning

Justice White joined the Court's opinion but reserved judgment on its broader statements about the purposes and operation of the exclusionary rule. He did not view those observations as necessary to resolve the case.

He also stressed that police may ask questions of anyone in public, but a person generally remains free to refuse cooperation and leave. When circumstances justify a temporary detention, however, an officer may ask pertinent questions while briefly restraining the person.

A detained person cannot be compelled to answer, and a refusal to answer alone cannot justify arrest. Still, a justified investigative detention may support a protective frisk, both to uncover weapons and to address the safety risk created by the encounter.

Dissents

Justice Douglas

Reasoning

Justice Douglas agreed that Terry was seized and searched, but maintained that the Fourth Amendment permits a nonconsensual seizure and search only on probable cause. Because McFadden lacked probable cause to believe Terry was committing the offense of carrying a concealed weapon, Douglas would have held the frisk unconstitutional and excluded the revolver.

In Douglas's view, the majority gave police greater power to seize and search a person than a magistrate would have to authorize the same action by warrant. A magistrate could not issue a warrant based merely on reasonable suspicion, and warrantless police action should be held to at least the same constitutional standard.

Probable cause, he argued, is the historically rooted safeguard that distinguishes reasonable law-enforcement action from an officer's mere suspicion or dislike of a person's appearance. Lowering that standard risks leaving law-abiding people subject to police discretion and shifts control from neutral judges to officers in the field.

Douglas acknowledged the practical pressure to give police more latitude in combating crime, but believed that such a fundamental revision of Fourth Amendment protection should come through constitutional amendment rather than judicial decision.

Terry v. Ohio

Background

Issues

Concurrences

Dissents

Quiz