Curtis Mitchell Paul v. United States
FourthAmendment CriminalProcedure Privacy JusticiabilityDoctri
Whether a police officer violates the Fourth Amendment when he seizes for criminal investigation a pedestrian walking in the vicinity of a recent robbery when the officer has on his smart phone three color images of the robbery suspect wearing attire that does not match the pedestrian's attire, and no commonsense inference or officer experience can explain away the mismatch
QUESTION PRESENTED Under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), the Fourth Amendment permits officers to stop a person in the street to ask a few brief investigatory questions only if they have a specific and articulable basis, objectively reasonable in the totality of the circumstances, to suspect the person of criminal activity. Id. at 20-21. The question presented is: Whether a police officer violates the Fourth Amendment when he seizes for criminal investigation a pedestrian walking in the vicinity of a recent robbery when the officer has on his smart phone three color images of the robbery suspect wearing attire that does not match the pedestrian’s attire, and no commonsense inference or officer experience can explain away the mismatch. ii