Reasonable suspicion

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Tue Oct 3 08:17:11 PDT 2000



>>> JKSCHW at aol.com 10/03/00 10:56AM >>>
The Terry stop doctrine is that a cop can frisk a person for weapons on reasonable suspicion that he might be armed, but he cannot be looking for other evidence, e.g., drugs, although if he finds something that might appear to a reasonable person to be a weapon in the frisk, even though it wasn't, he can use it in evidence. The rationale is that cops have to protect themselves against armed attack.

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CB: With the erosions of the 4A by the Burger and Rehnquist courts, such as plainview doctrine type stuff, I bet if the cop finds narcotics incident to the frisk.. the narcotics get in as evidence.

When I was in law school , I worked for criminal defense attorneys, and the particular 4A questions we were briefing had to do with profiles police used for drug couriers.

Now, with racial profiling and the like rampant, yet upheld or ignored by courts, the subtle 4A lines we were drawing in 1977 are legal history, a brief blip in an American history which has been big on due process language , but in a larger sea of police license.

The police officers who shot Diallo with a reasonable suspicion that his wallet was a gun, graphically illustrate that the rule is now , Stop and Shoot is ok upon a racist paranoid suspicion , leaving Terry and Mapp v Ohio in the time warp of the Warren Court.

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You are right that Warren court 4A protections against search and seizure have been eroded alsmot to the point of nonexistence. --jks

In a message dated Tue, 3 Oct 2000 10:45:52 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "Charles Brown" <CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes:

<< About all they could be saying was that a frisk is not a full search. I can't remember.

Since then, even the Fourth Amendment accomplishments of the Warren Court have been significantly obliterated.

CB


>>> JKSCHW at aol.com 10/03/00 10:29AM >>>
Hey, that was the Warren court, allegedly the good guys. --jks

In a message dated Mon, 2 Oct 2000 5:23:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Charles Brown" <CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes:

<<


>>> JKSCHW at aol.com 10/02/00 05:07PM >>>

CB: By the way, since probable cause is the constitutional standard, how is it that reasonable suspicion passes constitutional muster ?

>>

Take it up with the Supreme Court, who said it was in Terry. --jks

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CB: Yes, Stop and Frisk. Just seems a patently , logically wrong decision.

I ain't about to say anything to the Supreme Hoods.

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