Why Stop-and-Frisk is Legal | Terry v. Ohio

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In episode 55 of Supreme Court Briefs, an undercover detective stops and frisks three men who were acting "suspiciously" outside of a jewelry store. Was that an invasion of their Fourth Amendment rights? #supremecourtbriefs #4thamendment #stopandfrisk

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Produced by Matt Beat. All images by Matt Beat, found in the public domain, or used under fair use guidelines. Thanks to the AP Archive for additional footage.

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Cleveland, Ohio

October 31, 1963

That’s right, Halloween

Martin McFadden, a Cleveland detective with 39 years of experience, gets suspicious when he sees two men pacing back and forth in front of a jewelry store. The two men, John Terry and Richard Chilton, would go back and forth, according to various reports, between 12 and 24 times. They took turns starting a block or two away, and then would routinely walk up to the jewelry store window to peek in, and return back to chat about it. Soon, a third man, named Carl Katz, approached Terry and Chilton and talked with them and then left.

McFadden had seen enough. After the three men rejoined in front of Zucker’s, a clothing store, McFadden decided to approach them. McFadden was in street clothes, but identified himself as a police officer and asked them for their names. After the men “mumbled something” in response, McFadden frisked them. Frisk, by the way, means patting someone down to search for hidden weapons or illegal stuff.

Well after McFadden frisked the men, he found a .38-caliber automatic pistol in Terry’s overcoat pocket and a .38-caliber revolver in Chilton’s pocket. Later McFadden would argue he only did a pat-down before reaching into their pockets for the guns.

At the trial, Terry and Chilton’s lawyer argued the evidence of the guns couldn’t be used in court since McFadden’s frisk of them went against the Fourth Amendment. It was an illegal search and seizure. You see, there was this law called the exclusionary rule. The exclusionary rule said you couldn’t use evidence if the police got it illegally.

The Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court disagreed, finding Terry and Chilton guilty. They ruled that, due to both the suspicious nature of their behavior and McFadden’s concern for his own safety, the “stop-and-frisk,” as it’s now commonly known, was reasonable. Terry appealed to the Ohio District Court of Appeals, which agreed with the lower court. So he appealed again, this time to the Supreme Court of Ohio, but it dismissed the appeal saying that it involved “no constitutional question.”

By the time Terry had tried to appeal his case to the United States Supreme Court, it was 1967, a time when more and more Americans were losing their trust in the police. Especially African Americans. Oh, by the way, here is what Terry looked like. Here is what Chilton looked like. Here is what Katz looked like.

The Supreme Court did hear arguments on December 12, 1967. The big question: was the stop and frisk of Terry and the other men a violation of the Fourth Amendment?

The Court said no. On June 10, 1968, it announced it had sided with Ohio. It was 8-1. They said that the police could stop-and-frisk suspects as long as there was a “reasonable suspicion” that the suspect was actually about to commit a crime. So the search and seizure was reasonable in Terry and the others’ case since it did seem like they were gonna rob that jewelry store. After all, McFadden had 39 years of police experience, so he would know better than about anyone what an armed robbery was about to look like.