OCTOBER TERM, 1999
Syllabus
FLORIDA
v. J. L.
CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA No. 98-1993. Argued
February 29, 2000-Decided March 28, 2000
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 justify a stop and frisk even if
267
the accusation would fail standard pre-search reliability
testing. The facts of this case do not require the Court to
speculate about the circumstances under which the danger alleged in
an anonymous tip might be so great--e.
g., a report of a
person carrying a bomb-as to justify a search even without a
showing of reliability. Pp.269-274.
727 So. 2d 204, affirmed.
GINSBURG, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
KENNEDY, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which REHNQUIST, C. J.,
joined,
post, p.274.
Michael J. Neimand, Assistant Attorney
General of Florida, argued the cause for petitioner. With him on
the briefs was
Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General.
Irving L. Gornstein argued the cause for the United States as
amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief were Solicitor
General Waxman, Assistant Attorney General Robinson, and Deputy
Solicitor General Dreeben.
Harvey J. Sepler argued the cause for respondent. With
him on the brief were
Bennett H. Brummer and
Andrew
Stanton. *
*Briefs of
amici curiae urging reversal were filed for
Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, Inc., et al. by
Wayne W
Schmidt, James P. Manak, Richard Weintraub, and
Bernard
J. Farber; for the Justice Coalition by
Scott D.
Makar; for the National Association of Police Organizations by
Stephen R. McSpadden; and for the State of Illinois et al.
by
James E. Ryan, Attorney General of Illinois,
Joel D.
Bertocchi, Solicitor General,
William Browers and
Michael M. Glick, Assistant Attorneys General, and
Dan
Schweitzer, joined by the Attorneys General for their
respective jurisdictions as follows:
Bill Pryor of Alabama,
Janet Napolitano of Arizona,
Mark Pryor of Arkansas,
Bill Lockyer of California,
Ken Salazar of Colorado,
John M. Bailey of Connecticut,
M. Jane Brady of
Delaware,
Earl I. Anzai of Hawaii,
Jeffrey A.
Modisett of Indiana,
Thomas J. Miller of
Iowa,
Carla J. Stovall of Kansas,
Richard
P. Ieyoub of Louisiana,
J. Joseph Curran of
Maryland,
Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan,
Mike
Hatch of Minnesota,
Jeremiah W (Jay) Nixon of Missouri,
Joseph P. Mazurek of Montana,
Frankie Sue Del Papa of
Nevada,
Philip T. McLaughlin of New Hampshire,
Patricia
A. Madrid of New Mexico,
Michael F.
Easley of
North Carolina,
Betty D. Montgomery of Ohio,
W A. Drew
Edmondson of Oklahoma,
Hardy Myers of Oregon,
D.
Michael Fisher of
268
JUSTICE GINSBURG delivered the opinion of the Court. The
question presented in this case is whether an anonymous tip that a
person is carrying a gun is, without more, sufficient to justify a
police officer's stop and frisk of that person. We hold that it is
not.
I
On October 13, 1995, 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. App. to Pet.
for Cert. A-40 to A-41. So far as the record reveals, there is no
audio recording of the tip, and nothing is known about the
informant. Sometime after the police received the tip-the record
does not say how longtwo officers were instructed to respond. They
arrived at the bus stop about six minutes later and saw three black
males "just hanging out [there]."
Id., at A-42. One of the
three, respondent J. L., was wearing a plaid shirt.
Id., at
A-41. 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, and J. L. made no threatening or otherwise unusual
movements.
Id., at A-42 to A-44. One of the officers
approached J. L., told him to put his hands up on the bus stop,
frisked him, and seized a gun from J. L.'s pocket. The second
officer frisked the other two individuals, against whom no
allegations had been made, and found nothing.
Pennsylvania,
Jose A. Fuentes Agostini of Puerto Rico,
Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island,
Charles M. Condon
of South Carolina,
Paul G.
Summers of Tennessee,
John Cornyn of Texas,
Jan Graham of Utah,
Christine O.
Gregoire of Washington, and
Gay
Woodhouse of Wyoming.
Briefs of
amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for
the Congress of Racial Equality, Inc., by
Stefan B.
Tahmassebi; for the National Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers et al. by
James J. Tomkovicz and
Barbara E. Bergman; for the National Rifle Association of
America et al. by
Robert Dowlut and
David B. Kopel;
and for the Rutherford Institute by
John W Whitehead and
Steven H. Aden.
269
J. L., who was at the time of the frisk "10 days shy of his 16th
birth[day]," Tr. of Oral Arg. 6, was charged under state law with
carrying a concealed firearm without a license and possessing a
firearm while under the age of 18. He moved to suppress the gun as
the fruit of an unlawful search, and the trial court granted his
motion. The intermediate appellate court reversed, but the Supreme
Court of Florida quashed that decision and held the search invalid
under the Fourth Amendment. 727 So. 2d 204 (1998).
Anonymous tips, the Florida Supreme Court stated, are generally
less reliable than tips from known informants and can form the
basis for reasonable suspicion only if accompanied by specific
indicia of reliability, for example, the correct forecast of a
subject's "'not easily predicted'" movements.
Id., at 207
(quoting
Alabama v.
White, 496 U. S. 325, 332
(1990)). The tip leading to the frisk of J. L., the court observed,
provided no such predictions, nor did it contain any other
qualifying indicia of reliability. 727 So. 2d, at 207-208. Two
justices dissented. The safety of the police and the public, they
maintained, justifies a "firearm exception" to the general rule
barring investigatory stops and frisks on the basis of bare-boned
anonymous tips.
Id., at 214-215.
Seeking review in this Court, the State of Florida noted that
the decision of the State's Supreme Court conflicts with decisions
of other courts declaring similar searches compatible with the
Fourth Amendment. See,
e. g., United States v.
DeBerry, 76 F.3d
884, 886-887
(CA7 1996);
United States v.
Clipper, 973 F.2d
944, 951
(CADC 1992). We granted certiorari, 528 U. S.
963 (1999), and now affirm the judgment of the Florida Supreme
Court.
II
Our "stop and frisk" decisions begin with
Terry v.
Ohio, 392 U. S.
1 (1968). This Court held in
Terry:
"[W]here a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads
him reasonably to conclude in light of his
270
experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the
persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently
dangerous, where in the course of investigating this behavior he
identifies himself as a policeman and makes reasonable inquiries,
and where nothing in the initial stages of the encounter serves to
dispel his reasonable fear for his own or others' safety, he is
entitled for the protection of himself and others in the area to
conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such
persons in an attempt to discover weapons which might be used to
assault him." Id., at 30.
In the instant case, the officers' suspicion that J. L. was
carrying a weapon arose not from any observations of their own but
solely from a call made from an unknown location by an unknown
caller. Unlike a tip from a known informant whose reputation can be
assessed and who can be held responsible if her allegations turn
out to be fabricated, see
Adams v.
Williams, 407 U. S. 143, 146-147
(1972), "an anonymous tip alone seldom demonstrates the informant's
basis of knowledge or veracity,"
Alabama v.
White,
496 U. S., at 329. As we have recognized, however, there are
situations in which an anonymous tip, suitably corroborated,
exhibits "sufficient indicia of reliability to provide reasonable
suspicion to make the investigatory stop."
Id., at 327. The
question we here confront is whether the tip pointing to J. L. had
those indicia of reliability.
In
White, the police received an anonymous tip asserting
that a woman was carrying cocaine and predicting that she would
leave an apartment building at a specified time, get into a car
matching a particular description, and drive to a named motel.
Ibid. Standing alone, the tip would not have justified a
Terry stop. 496 U. S., at 329. Only after police observation
showed that the informant had accurately predicted the woman's
movements, we explained, did it become reasonable to think the
tipster had inside knowledge about the suspect and therefore to
credit his assertion about the cocaine.
271
Id., at 332. Although the Court held that the suspicion
in
White became reasonable after police surveillance, we
regarded the case as borderline. Knowledge about a person's future
movements indicates some familiarity with that person's affairs,
but having such knowledge does not necessarily imply that the
informant knows, in particular, whether that person is carrying
hidden contraband. We accordingly classified
White as a
"close case."
Ibid.
The tip in the instant case lacked the moderate indicia of
reliability present in
White and essential to the Court's
decision in that case. The anonymous call concerning J. L. provided
no predictive information and therefore left the police without
means to test the informant's knowledge or credibility. That the
allegation about the gun turned out to be correct does not suggest
that the officers, prior to the frisks, had a reasonable basis for
suspecting J. L. of engaging in unlawful conduct: The
reasonableness of official suspicion must be measured by what the
officers knew before they conducted their search. All the police
had to go on in this case was the bare report of an unknown,
unaccountable informant who neither explained how he knew about the
gun nor supplied any basis for believing he had inside information
about J. L. If
White was a close case on the reliability of
anonymous tips, this one surely falls on the other side of the
line.
Florida contends that the tip was reliable because its
description of the suspect's visible attributes proved
accurate:
There really was a young black male wearing a plaid shirt at the
bus stop. Brief for Petitioner 20-21. The United States as
amicus curiae makes a similar argument, proposing that a
stop and frisk should be permitted "when (1) an anonymous tip
provides a description of a particular person at a particular
location illegally carrying a concealed firearm, (2) police
promptly verify the pertinent details of the tip except the
existence of the firearm, and (3) there are no factors that cast
doubt on the reliability of the tip .... " Brief
272
for United States 16. These contentions misapprehend the
reliability needed for a tip to justify a
Terry stop.
An accurate description of a subject's readily observable
location and appearance is of course reliable in this limited
sense: It will help the police correctly identify the person whom
the tipster means to accuse. Such a tip, however, does not show
that the tipster has knowledge of concealed criminal activity. 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. Cf. 4 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure
§ 9.4(h), p. 213 (3d ed. 1996) (distinguishing reliability as to
identification, which is often important in other criminal law
contexts, from reliability as to the likelihood of criminal
activity, which is central in anonymous-tip cases).
A second major argument advanced by Florida and the United
States as
amicus is, in essence, that the standard
Terry analysis should be modified to license a "firearm
exception." Under such an exception, a tip alleging an illegal gun
would justify a stop and frisk even if the accusation would fail
standard pre-search reliability testing. We decline to adopt this
position.
Firearms are dangerous, and extraordinary dangers sometimes
justify unusual precautions. Our decisions recognize the serious
threat that armed criminals pose to public safety;
Terry's
rule, which permits protective police searches on the basis of
reasonable suspicion rather than demanding that officers meet the
higher standard of probable cause, responds to this very concern.
See 392 U. S., at 30. But 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
target's unlawful carriage of a gun. Nor could one securely confine
such an exception to allegations involving firearms.
273
Several Courts of Appeals have held it
per se foreseeable
for people carrying significant amounts of illegal drugs to be
carrying guns as well. See,
e. g., United States v.
Sakyi, 160 F. 3d 164, 169
(CA4 1998);
United
States v.
Dean, 59 F.3d
1479, 1490, n. 20
(CA5 1995);
United States v.
Odom, 13 F.3d
949, 959
(CA6 1994);
United States v.
Martinez, 958 F.2d
217, 219
(CA8 1992). If police officers may properly
conduct
Terry frisks on the basis of bare-boned tips about
guns, it would be reasonable to maintain under the above-cited
decisions that the police should similarly have discretion to frisk
based on bare-boned tips about narcotics. As we clarified when we
made indicia of reliability critical in
Adams and
White, the Fourth Amendment is not so easily satisfied. Cf.
Richards v.
Wisconsin, 520 U. S. 385, 393-394
(1997) (rejecting a
per se exception to the "knock and
announce" rule for narcotics cases partly because "the reasons for
creating an exception in one category [of Fourth Amendment cases]
can, relatively easily, be applied to others," thus allowing the
exception to swallow the rule). *
The facts of this case do not require us to speculate about the
circumstances under which the danger alleged in an anonymous tip
might be so great as to justify a search even without a showing of
reliability. We do not say, for example, that a report of a person
carrying a bomb need bear the
* At oral argument, petitioner also advanced the position that
J. L.'s youth made the stop and frisk valid, because it is a crime
in Florida for persons under the age of 21 to carry concealed
firearms. See Fla. Stat. § 790.01 (1997) (carrying a concealed
weapon without a license is a misdemeanor), § 790.06(2)(b) (only
persons aged 21 or older may be licensed to carry concealed
weapons). This contention misses the mark. Even assuming that the
arresting officers could be sure that J. L. was under 21, they
would have had reasonable suspicion that J. L. was engaged in
criminal activity only if they could be confident that he was
carrying a gun in the first place. The mere fact that a tip, if
true, would describe illegal activity does not mean that the police
may make a
Terry stop without meeting the reliability
requirement, and the fact that J. L. was under 21 in no way made
the gun tip more reliable than if he had been an adult.
274
indicia of reliability we demand for a report of a person
carrying a firearm before the police can constitutionally conduct a
frisk. Nor do we hold that public safety officials in quarters
where the reasonable expectation of Fourth Amendment privacy is
diminished, such as airports, see
Florida v.
Rodriguez, 469
U. S. 1 (1984)
(per curiam), and schools, see
New
Jersey v.
T. L. 0., 469 U. S. 325 (1985),
cannot conduct protective searches on the basis of information
insufficient to justify searches elsewhere.
Finally, the requirement that an anonymous tip bear standard
indicia of reliability in order to justify a stop in no way
diminishes a police officer's prerogative, in accord with
Terry, to conduct a protective search of a person who has
already been legitimately stopped. We speak in to day's decision
only of cases in which the officer's authority to make the initial
stop is at issue. In that context, we hold that an anonymous tip
lacking indicia of reliability of the kind contemplated in
Adams and
White does not justify a stop and frisk
whenever and however it alleges the illegal possession of a
firearm.
The judgment of the Florida Supreme Court is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE KENNEDY, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE joins,
concurring.
On the record created at the suppression hearing, the Court's
decision is correct. The Court says all that is necessary to
resolve this case, and I join the opinion in all respects. It might
be noted, however, that there are many indicia of reliability
respecting anonymous tips that we have yet to explore in our
cases.
When a police officer testifies that a suspect aroused the
officer's suspicion, and so justifies a stop and frisk, the courts
can weigh the officer's credibility and admit evidence seized
pursuant to the frisk even if no one, aside from the officer and
defendant themselves, was present or observed the sei-
275
zure. An anonymous telephone tip without more is different,
however; for even if the officer's testimony about receipt of the
tip is found credible, there is a second layer of inquiry
respecting the reliability of the informant that cannot be pursued.
If the telephone call is truly anonymous, the informant has not
placed his credibility at risk and can lie with impunity. The
reviewing court cannot judge the credibility of the informant and
the risk of fabrication becomes unacceptable.
On this record, then, the Court is correct in holding that the
telephone tip did not justify the arresting officer's immediate
stop and frisk of respondent. There was testimony that an anonymous
tip came in by a telephone call and nothing more. The record does
not show whether some notation or other documentation of the call
was made either by a voice recording or tracing the call to a
telephone number. The prosecution recounted just the tip itself and
the later verification of the presence of the three young men in
the circumstances the Court describes.
It seems appropriate to observe that a tip might be anonymous in
some sense yet have certain other features, either supporting
reliability or narrowing the likely class of informants, so that
the tip does provide the lawful basis for some police action. One
such feature, as the Court recognizes, is that the tip predicts
future conduct of the alleged criminal. There may be others. For
example, if an unnamed caller with a voice which sounds the same
each time tells police on two successive nights about criminal
activity which in fact occurs each night, a similar call on the
third night ought not be treated automatically like the tip in the
case now before us. In the instance supposed, there would be a
plausible argument that experience cures some of the uncertainty
surrounding the anonymity, justifying a proportionate police
response. In to day's case, however, the State provides us with no
data about the reliability of anonymous tips. Nor do we know
whether the dispatcher or arresting officer had any
276
objective reason to believe that this tip had some particular
indicia of reliability.
If an informant places his anonymity at risk, a court can
consider this factor in weighing the reliability of the tip. An
instance where a tip might be considered anonymous but nevertheless
sufficiently reliable to justify a proportionate police response
may be when an unnamed person driving a car the police officer
later describes stops for a moment and, face to face, informs the
police that criminal activity is occurring. This too seems to be
different from the tip in the present case. See
United
States v.
Sierra-Hernandez, 581 F.2d
760 (CA9
1978).
Instant caller identification is widely available to police,
and, if anonymous tips are proving unreliable and distracting to
police, squad cars can be sent within seconds to the location of
the telephone used by the informant. Voice recording of telephone
tips might, in appropriate cases, be used by police to locate the
caller. It is unlawful to make false reports to the police,
e. g., Fla. Stat. Ann. § 365.171(16) (Supp. 2000);
Fla. Stat. § 817.49 (1994), and the ability of the police to trace
the identity of anonymous telephone informants may be a factor
which lends reliability to what, years earlier, might have been
considered unreliable anonymous tips.
These matters, of course, must await discussion in other cases,
where the issues are presented by the record.
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