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Case #8Criminal Defense
Terry v. Ohio
Detective Martin McFadden stopped and frisked John Terry after watching him pace back and forth outside a Cleveland store in what McFadden suspected was preparation for a robbery. The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that brief stops and pat-downs based on reasonable suspicion are constitutional. Critics say this opened the door to stop-and-frisk policies that disproportionately target Black Americans. Was officer instinct worth sacrificing the Fourth Amendment?
Your Progress
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Read2
Exhibits3
Argued4
VotedWhat happened
On October 31, 1963, Cleveland police detective Martin McFadden watches three men walk past a downtown jewelry store again and again. He has been a beat cop for thirty-nine years. The pattern reads to him like men casing a robbery. He approaches them, identifies himself, and pats down the outside of their clothing. He finds two pistols. He arrests John Terry and Richard Chilton. Neither man has done anything illegal in McFadden's presence. He acts on a hunch built from decades of experience and seconds of observation.
Why this is contested
Terry argues that the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause to search a person, and that an officer's gut feeling does not meet that bar. The State argues that police on patrol need a way to investigate suspicion that has not yet ripened into evidence, and that the alternative is either ignoring potential crimes or waiting until shots are fired.
What's at stake
If Terry wins, the protection against unreasonable search reaches the moment an officer first lays hands on a person. If the State wins, "stop and frisk" becomes a permanent feature of American policing, with consequences that fall hardest on the people most often stopped.