John W Terry et al. v State of Ohio (also known as Terry v Ohio)

Case Name: John W Terry, et al. v State of Ohio (also known as Terry v Ohio)

392 U.S. 1 (1968)

NAME OF THE COURT: US SUPREME COURT

NAME OF THE JUDGES:

Justice Earl Warren

Justice Hugo Black

Justice William Brennan

Justice Abe Fortas

Justice John Harlan

Justice Thurgood Marshall

Justice Potter Stewart

Justice Byron White

Justice William Douglas (dissenting)

DATE OF JUGDMENT: 10th June 1968

PARTIES INVOLVED:

Appellants-John Terry and Richard Chilton.

John Terry had a criminal record prior to his arrest by Detective McFadden. Following his conviction for carrying a concealed weapon in the bench trial, Terry was sentenced to prison, served time and then was paroled. In August 1966, Terry was arrested again on the charge of heroin possession. Although he faced return to the state penitentiary for violating his parole, Terry instead was confined, while his gun case was pending before the Supreme Court, in the State Hospital at Lima (Ohio), because he was a narcotics user. His subsequent activities are largely unreported.

Richard Chilton had no criminal record until he was arrested by Detective McFadden on 31st October 1963. According to his own testimony, he had some work experience as a printer and had moved from Chicago to Cleveland in 1962. Chilton was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon in the 1964 bench trial. He served a 13-month sentence in the Ohio State Reformatory for this conviction. The United States Supreme Court granted Chilton and Terry’s petition for a writ of certiorari to the Ohio Supreme Court on 29th May 1967. A few weeks later, Chilton was killed during a shoot-out that erupted as he and three other armed men attempted to rob a drugstore in Columbus (Ohio).

Defendants-The state of Ohio and the local Cleveland police force who conducted a search and seizure of Terry’s person and property. 

Detective Martin J McFadden (Cleveland Police Department)-Martin McFadden was born in Cleveland. After attending high school and working as a Cleveland Railway Company timekeeper, he joined the Cleveland Police Department in 1925. In 1930, McFadden was promoted to the detective bureau. He joined its fraud unit in 1934, where he specialized in detecting pickpockets and other perpetrators of frauds against Cleveland’s downtown department stores. As a tribute to his years of service, he was selected to be Cleveland’s representative to the security force at the inaugurations of Presidents Eisenhower (in 1957), Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon (in 1969). He retired in 1970.

FACTS OF THE CASE

The case began on 31st October 1963, when Detective Martin McFadden, a veteran Cleveland police officer, was patrolling a particular area. McFadden noticed two men, John Terry and Richard Chilton, behaving suspiciously near a jewellery store. They took turns walking past the store window, peering inside, and then meeting to converse on a street corner. This repeated behaviour aroused McFadden’s suspicion that the men were planning a robbery. Acting on his instincts and training, McFadden approached the men, identified himself as a police officer, and asked for their names. Unsatisfied with their responses and concerned for his safety, McFadden conducted a frisk of their outer clothing. He discovered a concealed weapon on Terry, leading to Terry’s arrest and subsequent conviction for carrying a concealed weapon.

Chilton was also searched, and a gun was retrieved from him. Both men were charged with carrying a concealed weapon. The trial court denied the defendants’ motion to suppress the guns on the ground that the officer, “on the basis of his experience, had reasonable cause to believe…that the defendants were conducting themselves suspiciously, and some interrogation should be made of their action.” The court held that the officer had the right, for his protection, to pat down the outer clothing of these men who he reasonably believed might be armed. It “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 a crime.” Both Terry and Chilton were found guilty of carrying a concealed weapon, and the Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed their appeal on the ground that no substantial constitutional question was involved.

Terry then appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which agreed to hear his case and granted certiorari. 

ISSUES RAISED

Laws applied: Fourth amendment of the US Constitution and fourteenth amendment of the US Constitution.

STATE COURT LEGAL PROCEEDINGS- Terry and Chilton shared a lawyer. They made a joint motion in the Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga County to suppress the guns seized by McFadden. The prosecution argued that McFadden had lawfully arrested Terry and Chilton and had seized the guns in a search incident to arrest. The Ohio trial judge rejected the argument and concluded that McFadden had no probable cause to arrest the two prior to patting them down. The trial judge held both Terry and Chilton guilty.

Terry and Chilton prosecuted their state court appeals together. The Ohio Court of Appeals wrote that “the right of the proper authorities to stop and question persons in suspicious circumstances has its roots in early English practice where it was approved by the courts and the common-law commentators.” The court also noted that “today, in several states, the authority of police officers to detain suspects for a reasonable time for questioning is granted by statute,” or “is recognized by court decisions.” The court recognized that neither the United States Supreme Court nor the courts of Ohio had decided whether a police officer may stop and question suspicious persons and concluded in a case of first impression that “the better view seems to be that the stopping and questioning of suspicious persons is not prohibited by the Constitution.”

The Ohio Court of Appeals reasoned that McFadden had no intent to arrest anyone when he first encountered Terry and Chilton (and Katz) in front of the store, and that he intended “only to inquire as to the defendant’s activities.” The Court found that McFadden’s arrest of Terry occurred after McFadden discovered the gun on him. The Court approved the investigatory stop as a procedure that fell short of arrest. Thus, the Court upheld McFadden’s frisk for dangerous weapons.

The appeal of Terry and Chilton to Ohio Supreme Court was also dismissed. Terry then appealed to US Supreme Court.

On 10th June 1968, The United States 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 performing it has a “reasonable suspicion” that the targeted person is about to commit a crime, has committed a crime, or is committing a crime, and may be “armed and presently dangerous.”

THE SUPREME COURT’S REASONING

The first sentence of Chief Justice Warren’s opinion in Terry v Ohio is as follows:

“This case presents serious questions concerning the role of the Fourth Amendment in the confrontation on the street between the citizen and the policeman investigating suspicious circumstances.”

The Supreme Court had no question that McFadden seized Terry and searched him within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. In so holding, the Court declined to isolate stops and frisks from constitutional scrutiny and to adopt a rigid all-or-nothing model of justification and regulation, in which the Fourth Amendment either applied fully and completely to all conduct in a uniform way, or it did not apply at all. Instead, the Court turned to an analysis of whether McFadden’s search and seizure of Terry was justified at its inception, and whether it was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.

The Court held that a seizure occurs whenever a police officer accosts a person and restrains his freedom to walk away, and the Fourth Amendment applies to all such seizures. The Court also found that the thorough exploration of the outer clothing of an individual’s body is a serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person, which may inflict great indignity and arouse strong resentment. Again, the Fourth Amendment applies. Defining the scope of the search, the Court stated that “the scope of the search must be strictly tied to and justified by the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible.”

Had the actions of McFadden been deemed to have constituted an “arrest,” the court would have to determine whether probable cause existed. However, the conduct in question involved “on-the-spot” observation of an officer on duty, which could not be subject to warrant procedure and hence had to be judged on “reasonableness.” The Court had to balance the officer’s suspicion of a possible armed robbery and potential danger to the officer and store personnel and customers versus the intrusion on personal security which the seizure and frisk caused to Terry and Chilton. In justifying the government’s actions in such scenarios, a police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts, which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion. Courts must be able to determine whether the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the frisk “warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that the action was appropriate.”

THE FINAL DECISION

The Court ultimately reached the well-reasoned determination that McFadden’s actions were constitutionally appropriate, holding:

“…where a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dangerous, where in the course of investigating this behaviour he identifies himself as a policeman and makes reasonable inquiries, and where nothing in the initial stages of the encounter serves to dispel his reasonable fear for his own or others’ safety, he is entitled for the protection of himself and others in the area to conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such persons in an attempt to discover weapons which might be used to assault him. Such a search is a reasonable search under the Fourth Amendment, and any weapons seized may properly be introduced in evidence against the person from whom they were taken. Affirmed.”