Terry v. Ohio

• Article

• Talk

Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the court ruled that it is constitutional for American police to "stop and frisk" a person they reasonably suspect to be armed and involved in a crime. Specifically, the decision held that a police officer does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution 's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures when questioning someone even though the officer lacks probable cause to arrest the person, so long as the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime.[1] The court also ruled that the police officer may perform a quick surface search of the person's outer clothing for weapons if they have reasonable suspicion that the person stopped is "armed and presently dangerous." This reasonable suspicion must be based on "specific and articulable facts," and not merely upon an officer's hunch.

This permitted police action has subsequently been referred to in short as a "stop and frisk ", "stop, question, and frisk," or simply a "Terry stop." The Terry standard was later extended to temporary detentions of persons in vehicles, known as traffic stops ; see Terry stop for a summary of subsequent jurisprudence. The rationale behind the Supreme Court decision revolves around the notion that, as the opinion argues, "the exclusionary rule has its limitations." According to the court, the meaning of the rule is to protect persons from unreasonable searches and seizures aimed at gathering evidence, not searches and seizures for other purposes (like prevention of crime or personal protection of police officers).[_citation needed
_]

Legal scholars have criticized this ruling stating that "the people's constitutional right against the use of abusive police power" has been sacrificed in favor of a "police-purported need for a workable tool short of probable cause to use in temporary investigatory detentions."[2] Critics also state that it has led to negative legislative outcomes and permitting instances of racial profiling.[2]

Contents

• 1 Background

  • 1.1 Legal history

  • 1.2 Case background

• 2 Supreme Court decision

  • 2.1 Opinion of the court

  • 2.2 Concurring opinion of Justice White

  • 2.3 Dissenting opinion of Justice Douglas

  • 2.4 Later criticism

• 3 Subsequent jurisprudence

• 4 See also

• 5 References

  • 5.1 Citations

  • 5.2 Works cited

• 6 External links

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Terry_v._Ohio&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

Legal history

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Terry_v._Ohio&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Legal history")

"Stop-and-frisk" is a practice in which a police officer stops a person suspected of involvement in a crime, briefly searches the person's clothing for weapons, and then questions the person, all without requiring the person's consent and without enough grounds to execute a lawful arrest. All major American police forces routinely employed the stop-and-frisk practice.[3] It was historically viewed as a "low visibility" police procedure and was "largely ignored by commentators and dealt with ambiguously by most courts."[4]

In the early 1960s, several major changes in American criminal law raised the issue's importance. In its 1961 decision _Mapp v. Ohio _, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the exclusionary rule —which prevents the government from using evidence in criminal prosecutions if it had been illegally obtained—applies to the U.S. states as well as to the federal government. In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled in _Miranda v. Arizona _ that the Fifth Amendment requires courts to suppress confessions that law-enforcement personnel obtain without first providing certain specific legal warnings to an arrestee.[5] Stop-and-frisk quickly became a popular topic for law-review articles.[6] Several cases forced state supreme courts to address the practice more directly, such as the Supreme Court of California 's 1963 decision in People v. Mickelson.[7]

Case background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Terry_v._Ohio&action=edit&section=3 "Edit section: Case background")

On October 31, 1963, police officer Martin McFadden was on duty in downtown Cleveland, Ohio when he noticed two men standing on a street corner. McFadden watched one of the men, John W. Terry, walk down the street, look through a store window, then walk a short distance further before turning around and returning to where he had started, stopping to peer in the store window again on his way back. The other man, Richard Chilton, then repeated Terry's movements. As McFadden watched, the pair repeated this routine many times. A third man then joined them and the three began walking down the street toward the store. McFadden suspected the men had been "casing" the store in preparation for robbing it, so he followed and confronted them. He asked their names, but they offered only noncommittal, mumbling answers. McFadden then grabbed Terry and Chilton and frisked them, discovering they both had pistols in their jacket pockets.[8]

McFadden arrested Terry and Chilton for suspicion of carrying illegally concealed weapons. Both men were charged and tried in the Ohio Court of Common Pleas for Cuyahoga County . Terry's lawyer filed a motion to suppress the evidence of the discovered pistol, arguing McFadden's frisk had been a violation of Terry's Fourth Amendment rights and that the pistol should be excluded from evidence under the exclusionary rule . The trial judge denied his motion on the basis that the stop-and-frisk was generally presumed legal, and Terry was convicted. He appealed to the Ohio District Court of Appeals , which affirmed his conviction, and then to the Supreme Court of Ohio , which dismissed his appeal.[9] He then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear his case and granted _certiorari _.

Supreme Court decision

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Terry_v._Ohio&action=edit&section=4 "Edit section: Supreme Court decision")

On June 10, 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an 8–1 decision against Terry that upheld the constitutionality of the "stop-and-frisk" procedure as long as the police officer has a "reasonable suspicion" that the person is about to commit a crime, has committed a crime or is in the process of committing a crime, and may be "armed and presently dangerous."

Opinion of the court

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Terry_v._Ohio&action=edit&section=5 "Edit section: Opinion of the court")

Chief Justice Earl Warren , the author of the majority opinion in Terry

Eight justices formed the majority and joined an opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren . The court began by accepting Terry's arguments, which Ohio had disputed, that policeman McFadden's stopping, questioning, and frisking of Terry and Chilton constituted actual searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment. But the court ruled that the Fourth Amendment "searches" and "seizures" that occurred during a "st

…