The Fourth Amendment, of course, provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. The Supreme Court has recently emphasized that this text “establishes a simple baseline”—namely, “[w]hen the Government obtains information by physically intruding on persons, houses, papers, or effects, a search within the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment has undoubtedly occurred.” Jardines,133 S.Ct. at 1414 (citing United States v. Jones, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 945, 950–51, 950 n. 3, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Applying this “traditional property-based understanding of the Fourth Amendment,” id. at 1417, the Jardines Court held that “using a drug-sniffing dog on a homeowner's porch to investigate the contents of the home is a ‘search’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,” id. at 1413. The Court explained that by going onto the home's front porch, the officers had undoubtedly entered the home's curtilage—that is, the “area immediately surrounding and associated with the home” that is treated “as part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes.” Id. at 1414 (internal quotation marks omitted). And because “the officers' investigation took place in a constitutionally protected area,” it was a search implicating the Fourth Amendment unless the officers had license, either explicit or implicit, to gather information there. Id. at 1415. The Court concluded that the officers lacked such permission because “the background social norms that invite a visitor to the front door do not invite him there to conduct a search.” Id. at 1416.

The test used to determine the boundaries of a home's curtilage is not “a finely tuned formula that, when mechanically applied, yields a ‘correct’ answer to all extent-of-curtilage questions.” United States v. Dunn,480 U.S. 294, 301, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 94 L.Ed.2d 326 (1987). In Dunn, the Supreme Court instructed “that curtilage questions should be resolved with particular reference to four factors: [1] the proximity of the area claimed to be curtilage to the home, [2] whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home, [3] the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and [4] the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by.” Id.

Because the police did not physi

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After an anonymous caller reported to the Miami-Dade Police that a young black male standing at a particular bus stop and wearing a plaid shirt was carrying a gun, officers went to the bus stop and saw three black males, one of whom, respondent J. L., was wearing a plaid shirt. Apart from the tip, the officers had no reason to suspect any of the three of illegal conduct. The officers did not see a firearm or observe any unusual movements. One of the officers frisked J. L. and seized a gun from his pocket. J. L., who was then almost 16, was charged under state law with carrying a concealed firearm without a license and possessing a firearm while under the age of 18. The trial court granted his motion to suppress the gun as the fruit of an unlawful search. The intermediate appellate court reversed, but the Supreme Court of Florida quashed that decision and held the search invalid under the Fourth Amendment.

Held: An anonymous tip that a person is carrying a gun is not, without more, sufficient to justify a police officer's stop and frisk of that person. An officer, for the protection of himself and others, may conduct a carefully limited search for weapons in the outer clothing of persons engaged in unusual conduct where, inter alia, the officer reasonably concludes in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons in question may be armed and presently dangerous. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 30. Here, the officers' suspicion that J. L. was carrying a weapon arose not from their own observations but solely from a call made from an unknown location by an unknown caller. The tip lacked sufficient indicia of reliability to provide reasonable suspicion to make a Terry stop: It provided no predictive information and therefore left the police without means to test the informant's knowledge or credibility. See Alabama v. White, 496 U. S. 325, 327. The contentions of Florida and the United States as amicus that the tip was reliable because it accurately described J. L.'s visible attributes misapprehend the reliability needed for a tip to justify a Terry stop. The reasonable suspicion here at issue requires that a tip be reliable in its assertion of illegality, not just in its tendency to identify a determinate person. This Court also declines to adopt the argument that the standard Terry analysis should be modified to license a "firearm exception," under which a tip alleging an illegal gun would justif

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Justin Wells Grigg appeals the district court's denial of his motion to suppress an unregistered automatic firearm that police officers discovered while conducting an investigative stop of Grigg pursuant to a citizen's complaint that Grigg had been playing his car stereo at an excessive volume earlier in the day.

Most of the constitutional principles at play in this appeal are well established. The Fourth Amendment protects the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures." U.S. Const. Amend. IV. Under Terry and its progeny, police may, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, stop persons in the absence of probable cause under limited circumstances. See Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 207-11, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979). In particular, law enforcement officers may briefly stop a moving automobile to investigate a reasonable suspicion that its occupants are involved in criminal activity.

Acknowledging the differences between investigating past criminal conduct and detecting ongoing or imminent crime, the Supreme Court recognized that the exigencies involved in crime prevention are attenuated in the context of completed past crimes: A stop to investigate an already completed crime does not necessarily promote the interest of crime prevention as directly as a stop to investigate suspected ongoing criminal activity.

We decline to adopt a per se standard that police may not conduct a Terry stop to investigate a person in connection with a past completed misdemeanor simply because of the formal classification of the offense. We think it depends on the nature of the misdemeanor.

We adopt the rule that a reviewing court must consider the nature of the misdemeanor offense in question, with particular attention to the potential for ongoing or repeated danger (e.g., drunken and/or reckless driving), and any risk of escalation (e.g., disorderly conduct, assault, domestic violence). An assessment of the "public safety" factor should be considered within the totality of the circumstances, when balancing the privacy interests at stake against the efficacy of a Terry stop, along with the possibility that the police may have alternative means to identify the suspect or achieve the investigative purpose of the stop.

Read full case here: US v. Grigg, 498 F. 3d 1070 - Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit 2007, https://scholar.g

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