On an afternoon in downtown Cleveland, John Terry and Richard Chilton paced the street, each time taking a moment to stare into the window of a store.\u00a0 The duo repeated this approximately 24 times, and after making their pass would confer with a third man, Carl Katz, a few blocks away.\u00a0 Officer-Detective Martin McFadden was on the same street at the time on patrol in plain clothes, and the 39-year veteran of the force recognized the pattern as what he believed to be casing a store for robbery.\u00a0 Accordingly, he confronted the three men and asked them to identify themselves.\u00a0 After evasively mumbling a response, McFadden chose to pat Terry down and found a pistol.\u00a0 Upon this discovery, he promptly patted the other two men down, found another weapon, and arrested the trio.<\/p>\n
In the 8-1 decision, the Court ruled that McFadden\u2019s behavior constituted a reasonable search under the Fourth Amendment, and the evidence was admissible in Terry\u2019s conviction.\u00a0 The Court opinion, delivered by Chief Justice Warren, establishes that following that for an officer if \u201ccriminal activity may be afoot and the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dangerous,\u201d then one may \u201cconduct a limited search of outer clothing.\u201d\u00a0 In his concurring opinion, Justice Harlan wrote briefly to clarify one particular matter of the case.\u00a0 He wished to \u201cmake explicit what I think is implicit,\u201d stating that the officer\u2019s \u201cright to interrupt Terry\u2019s freedom . . . arose only because circumstances warranted forcing an encounter with Terry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justice Douglas wrote the lone dissenting opinion, insisting that a seizure may only be reasonable under the guidance of the Fourth Amendment if \u201cwe require the police to possess \u2018probable cause\u2019 before they seize him.\u201d In this opinion, Justice Douglas places a much greater emphasis on the facts of the situation rather than the beliefs of the officer, and declares that if this precedent is to be established, it must be done by a \u201cdeliberate choice of the people through a constitutional amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n
In my assessment of Terry v. Ohio<\/em>, I agreed with the majority opinion\u2019s assessment of the situation and reasonable behavior for the officer.\u00a0 Despite the Court\u2019s declaration that they \u201cemphatically reject\u201d the notion of differentiating between a \u201cstop\u201d and arrest\/seizure, and a \u201cfrisk\u201d and \u201cseizure,\u201d they were nonetheless able to demonstrate the constitutionality of McFadden\u2019s actions.\u00a0 Their belief is that any distinction between the two serves only to obscure constitutional analysis of initial actions by officers.<\/p>\n With this matter settled, the Court moved to address what they believed to be the more crucial aspect of the case, in whether there was \u201cjustification for McFadden\u2019s invasion of Terry\u2019s personal security\u201d in an investigative search.\u00a0 I agree with the court that it would be \u201cunreasonable to require police officers to take unnecessary risks in the performance of their duties,\u201d and concurrently, that it is \u201cclearly unreasonable to deny the officer the power to take necessary measures\u201d in determining if a weapon is present.\u00a0 Specifically to this case, McFadden conducted the search judiciously, and in a broader sense he was acting for his own safety.\u00a0 While Justice Douglas expressed his belief of the ruling\u2019s excessive scope, officers must still possess the ability to protect themselves and the immediate community.\u00a0 If the Court ruled that officers are unable to exercise their judgment as McFadden did, then it would have exposed them to greater violence in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On an afternoon in downtown Cleveland, John Terry and Richard Chilton paced the street, each time taking a moment to stare into the window of a store.\u00a0 The duo repeated this approximately 24 times, and after making their pass would confer with a third man, Carl Katz, a few blocks …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2097,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60375],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terry-v-ohio","column","twocol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/americanlegalsystem-bowie01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/americanlegalsystem-bowie01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/americanlegalsystem-bowie01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/americanlegalsystem-bowie01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2097"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/americanlegalsystem-bowie01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/americanlegalsystem-bowie01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/americanlegalsystem-bowie01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/americanlegalsystem-bowie01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/americanlegalsystem-bowie01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}