''Minnesota v. Dickerson'', 508 U.S. 366 (1993), was a decision by the
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...
. The Court unanimously held that, when a police officer who is conducting a lawful patdown search for weapons feels something that plainly is contraband, the object may be seized even though it is not a weapon. By a 6-to-3 vote, however, the court held that the officer in this case had gone beyond the limits of a lawful patdown search before he could determine that the object was contraband, making the search and the subsequent seizure unlawful under the Fourth Amendment.
[.]
Associate Justice
An associate justice or associate judge (or simply associate) is a judicial panel member who is not the chief justice in some jurisdictions. The title "Associate Justice" is used for members of the Supreme Court of the United States and some ...
Byron White gave the
opinion of the court.
Background
The
defendant
In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case.
Terminology varies from one juris ...
, Timothy Dickerson, was in a known drug area. An officer investigated by ordering a
patdown of Dickerson to search for any weapons. During that search, he felt a small lump in his coat. Without further evidence, he reached in and grabbed the lump and found it was
cocaine
Cocaine is a tropane alkaloid and central nervous system stimulant, derived primarily from the leaves of two South American coca plants, ''Erythroxylum coca'' and ''Erythroxylum novogranatense, E. novogranatense'', which are cultivated a ...
. In lower court, Dickerson moved that the cocaine be suppressed as evidence because the officer violated his right against
unreasonable search and seizure under the
Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, but the trial court overruled this objection, ruling that the frisking and the seizure of the cocaine were justified.
Procedural history
The
Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's ruling. The
state Supreme Court held that both the stop and the frisk of respondent were valid under ''
Terry v. Ohio'', but found the seizure of the cocaine to be
unconstitutional
In constitutional law, constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applic ...
. Refusing to enlarge the
"plain-view" exception to the Fourth Amendment's
warrant requirement, the court appeared to adopt a categorical rule barring the seizure of any
contraband
Contraband (from Medieval French ''contrebande'' "smuggling") is any item that, relating to its nature, is illegal to be possessed or sold. It comprises goods that by their nature are considered too dangerous or offensive in the eyes of the leg ...
detected by an officer through the sense of touch during a patdown search. The court further noted that, even if it recognized such a "plain-feel" exception, the search in this case would not qualify because it went far beyond what is permissible under Terry.
[
]
Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the cocaine in this case was inadmissible as evidence even though the Court held that officers were allowed to assume that an object was contraband through touch.[
]If a police officer lawfully pats down a suspect's outer clothing and feels an object whose contour or mass makes its identity immediately apparent, there has been no invasion of the suspect's privacy beyond that already authorized by the officer's search for weapons; if the object is contraband, its warrantless seizure would be justified by the same practical considerations that inhere in the plain-view context.[''Dickerson'', 508 U.S. at 375-76.]
References
External links
*
Minnesota v. Dickerson: Case Summary
{{US4thAmendment, warrantexceptions, state=expanded
United States Supreme Court cases
United States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court
United States Fourth Amendment case law
1993 in United States case law