Stop and Frisk – Terry v. Ohio

Terry v. Ohio (1968)

Background

On October 31, 1963 while conducting his regular patrol in downtown Cleveland, seasoned Cleveland Police detective Martin McFadden, who brought 39 years of law enforcement experience to the job, observed three men behaving suspiciously as they paced back and forth in front of a jewelry store located on Euclid Avenue.

Concerned that the men were planning a robbery and possibly armed, McFadden identified himself as a police officer and inquired about their names. When the men merely mumbled their responses, McFadden conducted a frisk, discovering a pistol in John W. Terry’s overcoat pocket and a revolver in Richard Chilton’s coat pocket.

The unarmed third man, Katz, was noted in the incident where McFadden apprehended and charged Terry and Chilton for carrying concealed weapons. Judge Bernard Friedman of the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court subsequently found the defendants guilty, deeming that the suspicious behavior displayed by the men, coupled with McFadden’s genuine concern for his safety, justified the decision to conduct a frisk. This ruling was later upheld by the appeals court. In 1967, Terry brought the case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In June 1968, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and set a precedent that allows police officers to interrogate and frisk suspicious individuals without probable cause for an arrest, providing that the officer can articulate a reasonable basis for the stop and frisk.

Significantly, Terry does not provide blanket authority to intrude on an individual’s right to be left alone, nor does it allow such intrusion based on a police offers inarticulate hunch that a crime is about to occur or is in progress.

However, it does radically expand police authority to investigate crimes where there is a reasonable basis for suspicion.

Read the United State Supreme Court Opinion on Terry v Ohio

More in depth case detail can also be read here

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