508 U.S. 366 (1993)
On the evening of November 9, 1989, two Minneapolis police officers were patrolling an area on the city's north side in a marked squad car.1 At about 8:15 p.m., one of the officers observed respondent leaving a 12-unit apartment building on Morgan Avenue North.2 The officer, having previously responded to complaints of drug sales in the building's hallways and having executed several search warrants on the premises, considered the building to be a notorious crack house.3 According to testimony credited by the trial court, respondent began walking toward the police but, upon spotting the squad car and making eye contact with one of the officers, abruptly halted and began walking in the opposite direction.4 His suspicion aroused, this officer watched as respondent turned and entered an alley on the other side of the apartment building.5
Based upon respondent's seemingly evasive actions and the fact that he had just left a building known for cocaine traffic, the officers decided to stop respondent and investigate further.6 The officers pulled their squad car into the alley and ordered respondent to stop and submit to a patdown search.7 The search revealed no weapons, but the officer conducting the search did take an interest in a small lump in respondent's nylon jacket.8 The officer later testified that as he pat-searched the front of his body, he felt a lump, a small lump, in the front pocket.9 He examined it with his fingers and it slid and it felt to be a lump of crack cocaine in cellophane.10
The officer then reached into respondent's pocket and retrieved a small plastic bag containing one fifth of one gram of crack cocaine.11 Respondent was arrested and charged in Hennepin County District Court with possession of a controlled substance.12 Before trial, respondent moved to suppress the cocaine.13 The trial court denied the suppression motion, and respondent proceeded to trial and was found guilty.14 On appeal, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed.15 The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the reversal.16 The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the matter.17
Whether the Fourth Amendment permits the seizure of contraband detected through a police officer's sense of touch during a protective patdown search?18
The Fourth Amendment permits warrantless seizures of contraband when police are lawfully positioned to observe it and its incriminating character is immediately apparent.19 This plain-view doctrine extends by analogy to plain-feel discoveries made during a lawful Terry patdown search for weapons.20 The limited intrusion authorized by Terry to detect weapons creates no additional privacy invasion when an officer immediately recognizes contraband by touch.21 Practical considerations justify dispensing with a warrant in such circumstances.22
Yes. The established facts show that officers observed Dickerson leaving a notorious crack house and then behaving evasively upon seeing their squad car, supplying reasonable suspicion for a Terry stop and protective patdown.23 During that patdown the officer felt a small lump in the nylon jacket pocket.24 Because the patdown itself was justified solely by the need to discover weapons, any object whose contour or mass makes its identity as contraband immediately apparent may be seized without violating the Fourth Amendment.25
The analogy to plain view holds because the officer has already been granted lawful access to the suspect's outer clothing, and the seizure requires no further search beyond what Terry allows.26
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Scalia joined the Court's opinion in full but wrote separately.29 He noted his concern that the Terry frisk itself may lack firm grounding in the common-law understanding of unreasonable searches at the time the Fourth Amendment was adopted.30 He observed that historical sources support temporary detention of suspicious night-walkers for questioning.31
Yet those sources provide little precedent for a physical search short of arrest.32 Nevertheless, because the constitutionality of the frisk was neither challenged nor argued, he accepted the premise that any evidence discovered incidentally during a lawful frisk would be admissible.33
Whether the officer who conducted the patdown search exceeded the lawful bounds of that search at the time he gained probable cause to believe that the lump in respondent's jacket was contraband?34
A Terry patdown must be strictly limited to the discovery of weapons.35 Once an officer concludes that an object is not a weapon, any further manipulation or exploration of the object exceeds the sole justification of the search.36 Such action converts it into an unauthorized evidentiary search whose fruits must be suppressed.37
Yes. The established facts demonstrate that the officer felt a small lump, then examined it with his fingers, causing it to slide, before concluding it was crack cocaine wrapped in cellophane.38 The Minnesota Supreme Court, after close examination of the record, found that this determination occurred only after the officer squeezed, slid, and otherwise manipulated the contents of the pocket he already knew contained no weapon.39 Because that continued exploration was unrelated to the protection of the officers or others nearby, it fell outside the narrow bounds Terry permits and amounted to the sort of general rummaging the Fourth Amendment forbids.40
The officer therefore exceeded the lawful bounds of the Terry search, rendering the subsequent seizure of the cocaine unconstitutional.41
Related opinions on this issue
Chief Justice Rehnquist joined Parts I and II of the opinion, agreeing that the plain-feel doctrine is a sound extension of plain-view principles.42 He agreed that the dispositive question is whether the officer remained within Terry's bounds at the moment probable cause arose.43 He emphasized that the state trial court and the Minnesota Supreme Court had made only imprecise findings on that timing.44
The state court's Fourth Amendment analysis also differed significantly from the one the Court adopted.45 For those reasons he would have vacated the judgment and remanded for further proceedings in light of the new analytical framework rather than affirming outright.46