Florida v. J.L., a minor (03/28/2000)

By: Gigi Barnett, Medill News Service

Questions presented

Whether an anonymous tip which states that a person is carrying a concealed firearm at a specific location with a detailed description of the person and his attire is sufficiently reliable to justify an investigatory detention and frisk where the police immediately verify the accuracy of the tip?

Brief

It was a plaid shirt that caused Officer Carmen Anderson to stop and search a teen hanging out with two friends at a bus stop in front of a pawnshop near downtown Miami on Oct. 13, 1995.

The youths plaid shirt had been mentioned in an anonymous tip given to the 16-year police veteran earlier that day. The tip mentioned that of the several young black males at the bus stand, the one wearing a plaid shirt was carrying a concealed firearm. The informant also described the others at the bus stop.

Six minutes after receiving the tip Anderson and another police officer confirmed it. Based on the tip, the officer immediately began to frisk the teen wearing the plaid shirt.

The search revealed a gun lodged in his left pants pocket. The teen was arrested and charged with unlawfully carrying a concealed firearm and unlawful possession of a firearm by a minor.

The trial court threw out the evidence of the gun, finding that ""the evidence was insufficient to support a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.""

The state appealed. It argued that the officers didnt have any other options and they had enough evidence -- through the anonymous tip -- to search him without a warrant.

The state appeals court relied on a frisk-and-search case from the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals (United States v. Bold) to form its decision: ""Where a confirmed tip concerns an individual with a gun, the officer is faced with the choice of stopping and searching the individual, or waiting until the individual brandishes or uses the gun and the latter choice is unacceptable, thus leaving the stop and frisk as the only reasonable choice,"" the appeals court found.

Thus the search was legal, according to the appeals court.

The Supreme Court of Florida reversed, and reinstated the trial court's judgment.

The anonymous tip was not enough to search the teen, the Florida Supreme Court decided. It found the search unreasonable because the police officers independent investigation only corroborated the ""innocent details"" and did not establish that the suspect was engaging in suspicious behavior.

Furthermore, the tip was not enough because it did not point to future criminal behavior, the court ruled.

""Reliability of an anonymous tip can be established when the tip describes suspicious details concerning conduct that is presently occurring or is about to occur in the future and such conduct is verified by the police,"" the Florida Supreme Court said.

The states Supreme Court also suggested that the officer should have used a ""less intrusive means"" to determine if the teen had a gun, such as a consensual encounter, to determine if the suspect was armed and dangerous. The court also suggested the officers could wait until some observable suspicious conduct took place in order to justify the frisk.

The court based its holding on the 1968 landmark Supreme Court opinion in Terry v. Ohio, and held that to approve the stop and frisk in this case would create an unacceptable ""firearm exception"" to Terry, by requiring less than reasonable suspicion for a Terry stop in response to an anonymous tip which alleged that someone is carrying a firearm.

The dissent found the majoritys interpretation of Terry overly restrictive, arguing that an anonymous tip concerning an individual with an illegally concealed firearm presents a unique situation. When confronted with this situation, police officers may not be able to verify more than the innocent details of the tip without substantially risking their safety or the safety of the general public.

The state filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Nov. 1, 1999, the Court granted certiorari, and on March 28, 2000, a unanimous Court affirmed, holding that an anonymous tip that a person is carrying a gun is not, without more, enough to justify a police stop and frisk.

In so holding, the Court recognized that ""firearms are dangerous, and extraordinary dangers sometimes justify unusual precautions."" Nonetheless, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, ""an automatic firearm exception to our established reliability analysis would rove too far. Such an exception would enable any person seeking to harass another to set in motion an intrusive, embarrassing police search of the targeted person simply by placing an anonymous call falsely reporting the targets unlawful carriage of a gun.""

The opinion clarified that the reasonable suspicion in J.L.'s case was its tendency to identify him and was not in its assertion of illegality.

Finally, Ginsburg wrote, ""the requirement that an anonymous tip bear standard indicia of reliability in order to justify a stop in no way diminishes a police officers prerogative, in accord with Terry, to conduct a protective search of a person who has already been legitimately stopped.""

Justice Anthony Kennedy penned a concurrence, in which Chief Justice Rehnquist joined.