Search and Seizure

Traffic Stop In the example, four men of unidentified race, acting in an unpredictable way in a marginal area of a city, fled in a car when asked simple questions by police. The police pursued, pulled them over, questioned them, and found that their stories did not seem truthful. Items found in the car were eventually connected to a crime. According to LaFave (2004), the only issue in such a case is whether the traffic stop was legitimate or not (LaFave, 2004).

To establish that, the police must have "probable cause." In this case, the officers suspected that the men may have engaged in a crime, but were essentially acting on a hunch. LaFave illustrates that such traffic stops meet such probable cause even when the evidence is not clear. Other rulings have demonstrated that during this stop, officers can ask questions of the occupants of the car, and that these initial questions do not constitute an "interrogation.

Called a "Terry Stop" based on a famous case, they fall short of questioning done after an arrest, and do not require Mirandizing the individuals being questioned (LaFave, 2004). The Terry case ruled that whether initial questioning turns into questioning that should have been Mirandized depends on the length of time the individuals were questioned and whether the questioning was justified.

In this case, the indications are that as soon as the officers believed they were not getting truthful answers, they did Mirandize and repeated their questions, so the stop seems legitimate under the Terry rule: they did not question the individuals long before Mirandizing, and they had some suspicion that a crime might have been committed. In a ruling in Florda (Florda v.

Royer), the court ruled that the investigative detention (questioning the individuals without an arrest or Mirandizing) must be short and limited to the purpose of the stop, and that this investigation must be as non-intrusive as possible in order to answer the questions that caused the stop (LaFave, 2004). In this case, the officers may have had more leeway. Although they did stop a moving car, they did not do it because of a traffic violation but because the occupants fled when faced with a Terry interrogation.

LaFave goes on to explain that when the stop was made because the occupants were suspected of having committed a crime, the courts have supported the idea that the officers must take that into consideration when questioning (LaFave, 2004). Again, the officers did this by providing their results under Miranda early in the stop.

In fact, rulings have established that the police may question people who are simply walking down the street (LaFave, 2004), so the situation these men were in, in an area not typically occupied by people simply standing around on the street, has more justification. However, there are restrictions. The city of Chicago, as part of its efforts to combat gang activity, passed a law allowing police to disperse groups on the street if they included gang members.

The United States Supreme Court ruled that this law was unacceptably vague and ruled it unconstitutional (Rosenthal, 2000). Rules have been tightened regarding when police can make a legitimate traffic stop. The Supreme Court has ruled that the police cannot stop people on a traffic violation when their real goal is to look for signs of criminal activities, such as drug related crimes (Johnson, 1999).

However, this does not apply in the example provided, because although the officers stopped the car, they did not stop it on the pretext of a traffic violation. However, the Supreme Court has also ruled that the police have the right to stop a person and detain them "briefly" simply based on the possibility that criminal activity may have occurred in the area. This applies even if the officer has no prior reason to connect this individual to any criminal activity (Rosenthal, 2000).

This, again, justifies the officers' initial interest in the four men. A distinctive feature of this situation is that although the question is whether the traffic stop was or was not legal, the incident did not begin in moving traffic. The only reason a moving car is involved is that the men used the car in a possible attempt to get away from the police's questions. If they did not have a car handy, they might well have fled on foot.

Such behavior would increase any suspicions, and as established before, the officers did not need strong evidence of wrong-doing to ask some questions of the men. In addition, the Supreme Court has ruled that police must.