Terry Stop Case Study

A "Terry Stop" is a stop of a person by law enforcement officers based upon "reasonable suspicion" that a person may have been engaged in criminal activity, whereas an arrest requires "probable cause" that a suspect committed a criminal offense. The name comes from the standards established in a 1968 case, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S.1. The issue in the case was whether police should be able to detain a person and subject him to a limited search for weapons without probable cause for arrest. The court held that police may conduct a limited search of a person for weapons that could endanger the officer or those nearby, even in the absence of probable cause for arrest and any weapons seized may be introduced in evidence. When a police officer observes
Though the trial court rejected the prosecution theory that the guns had been seized during a search incident to a lawful arrest, the court denied the motion to suppress and admitted the weapons into evidence on the ground that the officer had cause to believe that Terry and Chilton were acting suspiciously, that their interrogation was warranted, and that the officer, for his own protection, had the right to pat down their outer clothing having reasonable cause to believe that they might be armed. The court distinguished between an investigatory "stop" and an arrest, and between a "frisk" of the outer clothing for weapons and a full-blown search for evidence of crime. Terry and Chilton were found guilty, an intermediate appellate court affirmed, and the State Supreme Court dismissed the appeal on the ground that "no substantial constitutional question" was
Justice Harlan wholeheartedly agree with the Court 's ultimate holding in this case, He was constrained to fill in a few gaps, as he saw it because what was said by this Court has serve as initial guidelines for law enforcement authorities and courts throughout the land as this important new field of law develops. A police officer 's right to make an on-the-street "stop" and an accompanying "frisk" for weapons is, of course, bounded by the protections afforded by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court holds and he agrees, that, while the right does not depend upon possession by the officer of a valid warrant, nor upon the existence of probable cause, such activities must be reasonable under the circumstances as the officer credibly relates them in court. Since the question in this and most cases is whether evidence produced by a frisk is admissible, the problem is to determine what makes a frisk reasonable. Concealed weapons create an immediate and severe danger to the public, and though that danger might not warrant routine general weapons checks, it could well warrant action on less than a "probability." In the absence of state authority, policemen have no more right to "pat down" the outer clothing of passers-by, or of persons to whom they address casual questions, than does any other citizen. Consequently, the Ohio courts did not rest the constitutionality of this frisk upon any