Patdown Search

In a rural area of Michigan one evening shortly after midnight, Deputies Howell and Lewis observed a car traveling erratically and at excessive speed. The officers observed the car turning down a side road, where it swerved off into a shallow ditch. The officers stopped to investigate. Long, the only occupant of the automobile, met the deputies at the rear of the car, which was protruding from the ditch onto the road. The door on the driver's side of the vehicle was left open. Deputy Howell requested Long to produce his operator's license, but he did not respond. After the request was repeated, Long produced his license. Long again failed to respond when Howell requested him to produce the vehicle registration. After another repeated request, Long, who Howell thought appeared to be under the influence of something, turned from the officers and began walking toward the open door of the vehicle. The officers followed Long and both observed a large hunting knife on the floorboard of the driver's side of the car. The officers then stopped Long's progress and subjected him to a Terry protective patdown, which revealed no weapons. Long and Deputy Lewis then stood by the rear of the vehicle while Deputy Howell shined his flashlight into the interior of the vehicle, but did not actually enter it. The purpose of Howell's action was to search for other weapons. The officer noticed that something was protruding from under the armrest on the front seat. He knelt in the vehicle and lifted the armrest. He saw an open pouch on the front seat, and upon flashing his light on the pouch, determined that it contained what appeared to be marihuana. After Deputy Howell showed the pouch and its contents to Deputy Lewis, Long was arrested for possession of marihuana. A further search of the interior of the vehicle, including the glovebox, revealed neither more contraband nor the vehicle registration. The officers decided to impound the vehicle. Deputy Howell opened the trunk, which did not have a lock, and discovered inside it approximately 75 pounds of marihuana. The Barry County Circuit Court denied Long's motion to suppress the marihuana taken from both the interior of the car and its trunk. He was subsequently convicted of possession of marihuana. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed Long's conviction, holding that the search of the passenger compartment was valid as a protective search under Terry. The Michigan Supreme Court reversed. The court held that the sole justification of the Terry search, protection of the police officers and others nearby, cannot justify the search in this case. The marihuana found in Long's trunk was considered by the court below to be the fruit of the illegal search of the interior, and was also suppressed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the authority of a police officer to protect himself by conducting a Terry-type search of the passenger compartment of a motor vehicle during the lawful investigatory stop of the occupant of the vehicle.

The sheriff's department in Humboldt County, Nevada, received an afternoon telephone call reporting an assault. The caller reported seeing a man assault a woman in a red and silver GMC truck on Grass Valley Road. Deputy Sheriff Lee Dove was dispatched to investigate. When the officer arrived at the scene, he found the truck parked on the side of the road. A man was standing by the truck, and a young woman was sitting inside it. The officer observed skid marks in the gravel behind the vehicle, leading him to believe it had come to a sudden stop. The officer approached the man and explained that he was investigating a report of a fight. The man appeared to be intoxicated. The officer asked him if he had any identification on him, which the officer understood as a request to produce a driver's license or some other form of written identification. The man refused and asked why the officer wanted to see identification. The officer responded that he was conducting an investigation and needed to see some identification. The man refused the officer's requests for identification eleven times. He began to taunt the officer by placing his hands behind his back and telling the officer to arrest him and take him to jail. After warning the man that he would be arrested if he continued to refuse, the officer placed him under arrest. The man arrested on Grass Valley Road is Larry Dudley Hiibel. Hiibel was charged with willfully resisting, delaying or obstructing a public officer in discharging or attempting to discharge any legal duty of his office in violation of Nev. Rev. Stat. § 199.280. Hiibel was tried in the Justice Court of Union Township. The court convicted Hiibel and fined him $250. The Sixth Judicial District Court affirmed the conviction. On review the Supreme Court of Nevada affirmed the conviction in a divided opinion. Hiibel petitioned for rehearing, seeking explicit resolution of his Fifth Amendment challenge. The petition was denied without opinion. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.

On March 1, 1976, a special agent of the Illinois Bureau of Investigation presented a complaint for a search warrant to an Illinois circuit court judge. The complaint recited that a reliable informant had observed fifteen to twenty-five tin-foil packets on the person of the bartender Greg and behind the bar at the Aurora Tap Tavern over the weekend of February 28 and 29. The informant had seen such packets on Greg and in a drawer on at least ten other occasions. The informant had been told by Greg that he would have heroin for sale on March 1. On the strength of this complaint the judge issued a warrant authorizing the search of the Aurora Tap Tavern and the person of Greg the bartender for heroin, contraband, other controlled substances, money, instrumentalities, and narcotics paraphernalia. In the late afternoon of March 1, 1976, seven or eight officers proceeded to the tavern. Upon entering they announced their purpose and advised all those present that they were going to conduct a cursory search for weapons. One officer then patted down each of the nine to thirteen customers present while the remaining officers searched the premises. The officer who frisked the patrons found Ventura Ybarra standing by a pinball machine. In the first patdown the officer felt a cigarette pack with objects in it but did not remove it. After completing the process the officer returned to Ybarra two to ten minutes later, relocated and retrieved the pack from Ybarra's pants pocket, and found six tinfoil packets containing a brown powdery substance that later proved to be heroin. Ybarra was subsequently indicted by an Illinois grand jury for the unlawful possession of a controlled substance. He filed a pretrial motion to suppress the contraband seized from his person. At the suppression hearing the State sought to justify the search by reference to an Illinois statute authorizing officers to detain and search persons found on premises being searched pursuant to a warrant. The trial court denied the motion, finding that the search had been conducted under the authority of the statute to prevent the disposal or concealment of things described in the warrant. The case proceeded to a bench trial and Ybarra was found guilty. On appeal the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the conviction, holding that the statute was not unconstitutional in its application to the facts of the case because the search occurred in a one-room bar where heroin was being sold, the packets could easily have been concealed, and Ybarra was not an innocent stranger having no connection with the premises. The Illinois Supreme Court denied Ybarra's petition for leave to appeal. There followed an appeal to the United States Supreme Court, which noted probable jurisdiction.