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Investigative detention and stops
Summary of the topic
A stop is a seizure of the person, so the Fourth Amendment governs it, and Texas enforces that guarantee through article 38.23 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which excludes evidence obtained in violation of the Constitution or laws of Texas or the United States. The doctrine is settled United States Supreme Court law rather than statute, so it is learned case by case.
Terry v. Ohio sets the threshold for a brief investigative stop. The officer needs specific and articulable facts, together with the rational inferences from them, that give reasonable suspicion that criminal activity may be afoot. The test is objective, a hunch is not enough, and reasonable suspicion is a lower standard than probable cause.
Florida v. Bostick supplies the line between a consensual encounter and a seizure. Officers may approach a person in public, ask questions and ask for consent to search without any suspicion, provided they do not convey that compliance is required. The question is whether a reasonable person would feel free to decline the requests or end the encounter.
Illinois v. Wardlow decides what flight adds. Presence in a high-crime area is not enough alone, but unprovoked headlong flight on noticing the police, in such an area, gives reasonable suspicion. A person who simply declines to talk and goes about their business has done nothing that supports a stop.
The frisk needs its own justification. Under Terry, an officer who has lawfully stopped a person may pat down the outer clothing if the officer reasonably believes the person is armed and presently dangerous. It is a search for weapons only. The officer may reach into a pocket only after feeling something that may be a weapon, and Minnesota v. Dickerson allows seizure of an object whose identity as contraband is immediately apparent by touch. Further squeezing or sliding of an object already known not to be a weapon goes beyond the frisk.
United States v. Sharpe holds that there is no fixed time limit for a stop. The question is whether the officers diligently pursued a means of investigation likely to confirm or dispel their suspicion quickly. Rodriguez v. United States fixes the end point of a traffic stop at the time the tasks tied to the infraction are, or reasonably should have been, completed. A dog sniff is outside the mission of the stop, so prolonging a stop for one violates the Fourth Amendment without independent reasonable suspicion. Berkemer v. McCarty adds that an ordinary traffic stop becomes custody only when freedom is curtailed to a degree associated with formal arrest.
Every question in this topic asks one of four things: whether there was a seizure, whether there was reasonable suspicion, whether the frisk was separately justified and kept within its purpose, and whether the stop ended when its mission ended.
Provisions this topic covers
- United States Constitution, Amendment 4
- Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 38.23
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