Reasonable Suspicion Information

Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard standard of proof in United States law that is less than probable cause, the legal standard for arrests and warrants, but more than an "inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or 'hunch' ";^[1] it must be based on "specific and articulable facts", "taken together with rational inferences from those facts".^[2] Police may briefly detain a person if they have reasonable suspicion that the person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity; such a detention is known as a Terry stop. If police additionally have reasonable suspicion that a person so detained may be armed, they may "frisk" the person for weapons, but not for contraband like drugs. Reasonable suspicion is evaluated using the "reasonable person" or "reasonable officer" standard,^[3] in which said person in the same circumstances could reasonably believe a person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity; it depends upon the totality of circumstances, and can result from a combination of particular facts, even if each is individually innocuous.

Precedent

In Terry v. Ohio, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a person can be stopped and briefly detained by a police officer based on a reasonable suspicion of involvement in a crime. If the officer additionally has reasonable suspicion that the person is armed, the officer may perform a search of the person's outer garments for weapons. Such a detention does not violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizure, though it must be brief. Reasonable suspicion does not provide grounds for arrest; however, an arrest can be made if facts discovered during the detention provide probable cause that the suspect has committed a crime.

In Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada the Court further established that a state may require, by law, that a person identify himself or herself to an officer during a stop; some states (e.g., Colorado^[4]) require that a person detained provide additional information, but as of November 2010, the validity of such additional obligations has not come before the Supreme Court.

Other uses

Schools

New Jersey v. T. L. O. set the precedent that probable cause is not necessary to search a student; reasonable suspicion is enough to search a student's belongings. Overly intrusive searches, like a body cavity search, require probable cause.

Border Security, Customs, and Immigration

Although U.S. Customs can do routine suspicionless searches of people and effects crossing the border (including passing through airport customs), non-routine searches, like slashing the spare tire of a car, require reasonable suspicion. United States v. Flores-Montano. Anything even more intrusive, like compelled surgery of a suspected balloon swallower, requires probable cause. United States v. Montoya De Hernandez.

Examples

Courts have ruled (Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)) that a stop on reasonable suspicion may be appropriate in the following cases: when a person possesses many unusual items which would be useful in a crime like a wire hanger and is looking into car windows at 2am, when a person matches a description of a suspect given by another police officer over department radio, or when a person runs away at the sight of police officers who are at common law right of inquiry (founded suspicion). However, reasonable suspicion may not apply merely because a person refuses to answer questions, declines to allow a voluntary search, or is of a suspected race or ethnicity. At reasonable suspicion, you may be detained by a police officer (court officer on court grounds) for a short period of time and police can use force to detain you. If it is a violent crime (robbery, rape, gun run), the courts have recognized that an officer's safety is paramount and have allowed for a "frisk" of the outermost garment from head to toe and for an officer to stop an individual at gun point if necessary. For a non-violent crime (shoplifting for example) an officer may frisk while at reasonable suspicion if he noticed a bulge in the waistband area, for example, but can frisk in that area only. In the city of New York, once a person is released in a reasonable suspicion stop, a "stop, question and frisk report" is filled out and filed in the command that the stop occurs.

See also

• Stop and Identify statutes (refusing to identify oneself when detained may be a crime in some jurisdictions)
• United States v. Arnold (searches and seizures of electronic media at a United States port of entry by Customs and Border Protection)
• Samson v. California (individualized reasonable suspicion is not required for searches to be conducted of the persons and homes of parolees)

Notes

1. ^ Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 27 (1968).
2. ^ Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. at 21
3. ^ Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. at 21–22
4. ^ Colo. Rev. Stat. §16-3-101(1)

External links

• A definition on Dictionary.com
• A Checklist for Use in Workplace

Categories: Criminal law | Searches and seizures

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