Michigan v. Summers

452 U.S. 692, 101 S. Ct. 2587, 69 L. Ed. 2d 340, 1981 U.S. LEXIS 118, 49 U.S.L.W. 4776

Opinions

Justice Stevens

delivered the opinion of the Court.

As Detroit police officers were about to execute a warrant to search a house for narcotics, they encountered respondent descending the front steps. They requested his assistance in gaining entry and detained him while they searched the premises. After finding narcotics in the basement and ascertaining that respondent owned the house, the police arrested him, searched his person, and found in his coat pocket an envelope containing 8.5 grams of heroin.¹

Respondent was charged with possession of the heroin found on his person. He moved to suppress the heroin as the product of an illegal search in violation of the Fourth Amendment,² and the trial judge granted the motion and quashed the information. That order was affirmed by a divided panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals, 68 Mich. App. 571, 243 N. W. 2d 689, and by the Michigan Supreme Court over the dissent of three of its justices. 407 Mich. 432, 286 N. W. 2d 226. We granted the State’s petition for certiorari, 449 U. S. 898, and now reverse.

I

The dispositive question in this case is whether the initial detention of respondent violated his constitutional right to be secure against an unreasonable seizure of his person. The State attempts to justify the eventual search of respondent’s person by arguing that the authority to search premises granted by the warrant implicitly included the authority to search persons on those premises, just as that authority included an authorization to search furniture and containers in which the particular things described might be concealed. But as the Michigan Court of Appeals correctly noted, even if otherwise acceptable, this argument could not justify the initial detention of respondent outside the premises described in the warrant. See 68 Mich. App., at 578-580, 243 N. W. . If that detention was permissible, there is no need to reach the question whether a search warrant for premises includes the right to search persons found there, because when the police searched respondent, they had probable cause to arrest him and had done so.³ Our appraisal of the validity of the search of respondent’s person therefore depends upon a determination whether the officers had the authority to require him to re-enter the house and to remain there while they conducted their search.⁴

II

In assessing the validity of respondent’s initial detention, we note first that it constituted a “seizure” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.⁵ The State does not contend otherwise, and the record demonstrates that respondent was not free to leave the premises while the officers were searching his home. It is also clear that respondent was not formally arrested until after the search was completed. The dispute therefore involves only the constitutionality of a pre-arrest “seizure” which we assume was unsupported by probable cause.

In Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, the Court reaffirmed the general rule that an official seizure of the person must be supported by probable cause, even if no formal arrest is made. In that case police officers located a murder suspect at a neighbor’s house, took him into custody, and transported him to the police station, where interrogation ultimately produced a confession. Because the suspect was not arrested until after he had confessed, and because he presumably would have been set free if probable cause had not been established during his questioning, the State argued that the pre-arrest detention should not be equated with an arrest and should be upheld as “reasonable” in view of the serious character of the crime and the fact that the police had an articulable basis for suspecting that Dunaway was involved. Id., at 207. The Court firmly rejected the State’s argument, noting that “the detention of petitioner was in important respects indistinguishable from a traditional arrest.” Id., at 212.⁶ We stated:

“Indeed, any ‘exception’ that could cover a seizure as intrusive as that in this case would threaten to swallow the general rule that Fourth Amendment seizures are ‘reasonable’ only if based on probable cause.

“The central importance of the probable-cause requirement to the protection of a citizen’s privacy afforded by the Fourth Amendment’s guarantees cannot be compromised in this fashion. ‘The requirement of probable cause has roots that are deep in our history.’ Henry v. United States, 361 U. S. 98, 100 (1959). Hostility to seizures based on mere suspicion was a prime motivation for the adoption of the Fourth Amendment, and decisions immediately after its adoption affirmed that ‘common rumor or report, suspicion, or even “strong reason to suspect” was not adequate to support a warrant for arrest.’ Id., at 101 (footnotes omitted). The familiar threshold standard of probable cause for Fourth Amendment seizures reflects the benefit of extensive experience accommodating the factors relevant to the ‘reasonableness’ requirement of the Fourth Amendment, and provides the relative simplicity and clarity necessary to the implementation of a workable rule. See Brinegar v. United States, [338 U. S., at 175-176].” Id., at 213.

Although we refused in Dunaway to find an exception that would swallow the general rule, our opinion recognized that some seizures significantly less intrusive than an arrest have withstood scrutiny under the reasonableness standard embodied in the Fourth Amendment. In these cases the intrusion on the citizen’s privacy “was so much less severe” than that involved in a traditional arrest that “the opposing interests in crime prevention and detection and in the police officer’s safety” could support the seizure as reasonable. Id., at 209.

In the first such case, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, the Court recognized the narrow authority of police officers who suspect criminal activity to make limited intrusions on an individual’s personal security based on less than probable cause. The Court approved a “frisk” for weapons as a justifiable response to an officer’s reasonable belief that he was dealing with a possibly armed and dangerous suspect.⁷ In the second such case, Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143, the Court relied on Terry to hold that an officer could forcibly stop a suspect to investigate an informant’s tip that the suspect was armed and carrying narcotics.⁸ And in United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873, the Court held that the special enforcement problems confronted by roving Border Patrol agents, though not sufficient to justify random stops of vehicles near the Mexican border to question their occupants about their citizenship, id., at 882-884,⁹ were adequate to support vehicle stops based on the agents’ awareness of specific articulable facts indicating that the vehicle contained illegal aliens. The Court reasoned that the difficulty in patrolling the long Mexican border and the interest in controlling the influx of illegal aliens justified the limited intrusion, usually lasting no more than a minute, involved in the stop. Id., at 878-880.¹⁰ See also United States v. Cortez, 449 U. S. 411.

These cases recognize that some seizures admittedly covered by the Fourth Amendment constitute such limited intrusions on the personal security of those detained and are justified by such substantial law enforcement interests that they may be made on less than probable cause, so long as police have an articulable basis for suspecting criminal activity. In these cases, as in Dunaway, the Court was applying the ultimate standard of reasonableness embodied in the Fourth Amendment.¹¹ They are consistent with the general rule that every arrest, and every seizure having the essential attributes of a formal arrest, is unreasonable unless it is supported by probable cause. But they demonstrate that the exception for limited intrusions that may be justified by special law enforcement interests is not confined to the momentary, on-the-street detention accompanied by a frisk for weapons involved in Terry and Adams.12 Therefore, in order to decide whether this case is controlled by the general rule, it is necessary to examine both the character of the official intrusion and its justification.

Ill

Of prime importance in assessing the intrusion is the fact that the police had obtained a warrant to search respondent’s house for contraband. A neutral and detached magistrate had found probable cause to believe that the law was being violated in that house and had authorized a substantial invasion of the privacy of the persons who resided there. The detention of one of the residents while the premises were searched, although admittedly a significant restraint on his liberty, was surely less intrusive than the search itself.¹³ Indeed, we may safely assume that most citizens- — unless they intend flight to avoid arrest — -would elect to remain in order to observe the search of their possessions. Furthermore, the type of detention imposed here is not likely to be exploited by the officer or unduly prolonged in order to gain more information, because the information the officers seek normally will be obtained through the search and not through the detention.¹⁴ Moreover, because the detention in this case was in respondent’s own residence, it could add only minimally to the public stigma associated with the search itself and would involve neither the inconvenience nor the indignity associated with a compelled visit to the police station.¹⁵ In sharp contrast to the custodial interrogation in Dunaway, the detention of this respondent was “substantially less intrusive” than an arrest. 442 U. S., at 210.¹⁶

In assessing the justification for the detention of an occupant of premises being searched for contraband pursuant to a valid warrant, both the law enforcement interest and the nature of the “articulable facts” supporting the detention are relevant. Most obvious is the legitimate law enforcement interest in preventing flight in the event that incriminating evidence is found. Less obvious, but sometimes of greater importance, is the interest in minimizing the risk of harm to the officers. Although no special danger to the police is suggested by the evidence in this record, the execution of a warrant to search for narcotics is the kind of transaction that may give rise to sudden violence or frantic efforts to conceal or destroy evidence.¹⁷ The risk of harm to both the police and the occupants is minimized if the officers routinely exercise unquestioned command of the situation. Cf. 2 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure §4.9, pp. 150-151 (1978). Finally, the orderly completion of the search may be facilitated if the occupants of the premises are present. Their self-interest may induce them to open locked doors or locked containers to avoid the use of force that is not only damaging to property but may also delay the completion of the task at hand.

It is also appropriate to consider the nature of the articu-lable and individualized suspicion on which the police base the detention of the occupant of a home subject to a search warrant. We have already noted that the detention represents only an incremental intrusion on personal liberty when the search of a home has been authorized by a valid warrant. The existence of a search warrant, however, also provides an objective justification for the detention. A judicial officer has determined that police have probable cause to believe that someone in the home is committing a crime. Thus a neutral magistrate rather than an officer in the field has made the critical determination that the police should be given a special authorization to thrust themselves into the privacy of a home.¹⁸ The connection of an occupant to that home gives the police officer an easily identifiable and certain basis for determining that suspicion of criminal activity justifies a detention of that occupant.

In Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573, we held that police officers may not enter a private residence to make a routine felony arrest without first obtaining a warrant. In that case we rejected the suggestion that only a search warrant could adequately protect the privacy interests at stake, noting that the distinction between a search warrant and an arrest warrant was far less significant than the interposition of the magistrate’s determination of probable cause between the zealous officer and the citizen:

“It is true that an arrest warrant requirement may afford less protection than a search warrant requirement, but it will suffice to interpose the magistrate’s determination of probable cause between the zealous officer and the citizen. If there is sufficient evidence of a citizen’s participation in a felony to persuade a judicial officer that his arrest is justified, it is constitutionally reasonable to require him to open his doors to the officers of the law. Thus, for Fourth Amendment purposes, an arrest warrant founded on probable cause implicitly carries with it the limited authority to enter a dwelling in which the suspect lives when there is reason to believe the suspect is within.” Id., at 602-603.

That holding is relevant today. If the evidence that a citizen’s residence is harboring contraband is sufficient to persuade a judicial officer that an invasion of the citizen’s privacy is justified, it is constitutionally reasonable to require that citizen to remain while officers of the law execute a valid warrant to search his home.¹⁹ Thus, for Fourth Amendment purposes, we hold that a warrant to search for contraband²⁰ founded on probable cause implicitly carries with it the limited authority to detain the occupants of the premises while a proper search is conducted.²¹

Because it was lawful to require respondent to re-enter and to remain in the house until evidence establishing probable cause to arrest him was found, his arrest and the search incident thereto were constitutionally permissible. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Michigan must therefore be reversed.

It is so ordered.

1 The execution of the warrant is described in greater detail in Justice Moody’s opinion for the Michigan Supreme Court:

“Upon arriving at the named address, Oflieer Roger Lehman saw the defendant go out the front door of the house and proceed across the porch and down the steps. When defendant was asked to open the door he replied that he could not because he left his keys inside, but he could ring someone over the intercom. Dwight Calhoun came to the door, but did not admit the police officers. As a result, the officers obtained entrance to the premises by forcing open the front door. Once admittance had been gained Officer Lehman instructed Officer Conant, previously stationed along the side of the house, to bring the defendant, still on the porch, into the house.

“After the eight occupants of the house were detained, a search of the premises revealed two plastic bags of suspected narcotics under the bar in the basement. After finding the suspected narcotics in the basement and upon determining that the defendant was the owner of the house, Officer Conant formally arrested the defendant for violation of the Controlled Substances Act of 1971. MCL 336.341 (4) (a); MSA 18.1070 (41) (4) (a). A custodial search conducted by Officer Conant revealed a plastic bag containing suspected heroin in the defendant’s jacket pocket. It is this heroin, discovered on the person of the defendant, that forms the basis of the instant possession charge.” 407 Mich. 432, 441, 286 N. W. 2d 226, 226-227.

2 The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The Fourteenth Amendment requires the several States to secure these rights. See Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573, 576; Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 207.

3 Because there were several other occupants of the house, under Michigan law the evidence that narcotics had been found in the basement of respondent’s house would apparently be insufficient to support a conviction. See People v. Davenport, 39 Mich. App. 252, 197 N. W. 2d 521 (1972). The Michigan Court of Appeals relied on Davenport to conclude that the officers did not have probable cause to arrest or search respondent even though he was the owner of a house in which contraband was found. 68 Mich. App., at 580-582, 243 N. W. 2d, at 692-693. Judge Bashara, dissenting in the Court of Appeals, id., at 585, 243 N. W. 2d, at 695, and the three dissenting justices of the Michigan Supreme Court, 407 Mich., at 450, 463-464, 286 N. W. 2d, at 231, 237, pointed out that Davenport, which concerns the proof necessary to support a conviction, is not dispositive of the question whether the police had probable cause to arrest. See Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 174-176. Regardless of whether the police had probable cause to arrest respondent under Michigan law, probable cause within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment is not at issue here. Respondent does not challenge the conclusion that the evidence found in his home established probable cause to arrest him. See Brief for Respondent 17.

4 The “seizure” issue in this case should not be confused with the “search” issue presented in Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U. S. 85. In Ybarra the police executing a search warrant for a public tavern detained and searched all of the customers who happened to be present. No question concerning the legitimacy of the detention was raised. Rather, the Court concluded that the search of Ybarra was invalid because the police had no reason to believe he had any special connection with the premises, and the police had no other basis for suspecting that he was armed or in possession of contraband. See id., at 90-93. In this case, only the detention is at issue. The police knew respondent lived in the house, and they did not search him until after they had probable cause to arrest and had done so.

5 “It is quite plain that the Fourth Amendment governs ‘seizures’ of the person which do not eventuate in a trip to the station house and prosecution for crime — ‘arrests’ in traditional terminology. It must be recognized that whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has ‘seized’ that person.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 16.

6 The Court noted that Dunaway was “taken from a neighbor’s home fo a police car, transported to a police station, and placed in an interrogation room.” He was not informed that he was free to leave; he would not have been free to leave and would have been physically restrained had he attempted to do so. 442 U. S., at 212.

7 In upholding the “frisk” employed by the officer in that case, the Court assumed, without explicitly stating, that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit forcible stops when the officer has a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is being committed. See 392 U. S., at 32-33 (Harlan, J., concurring); id., at 34 (White, J., concurring). In Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S., at 146, the Court made explicit what was implicit in Terry.

“A brief stop of a suspicious individual, in order to determine his identity or to maintain the status quo momentarily while obtaining more information, may be most reasonable in light of the facts known to the officer at the time.”

See also United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873; United States v. Cortez, 449 U. S. 411.

8 The Court noted that the informant’s tip was insufficient to justify an arrest or search based on probable cause under Spinelli v. United States, 393 U. S. 410, and Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U. S. 108, but the information “carried enough indicia of reliability to justify the officer’s forcible stop of Williams.” 407 U. S., at 147.

9 In several cases, the Court has concluded that the absence of any articulable facts available to the officer rendered a detention unreasonable. In Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U. S. 648, 663, the Court held that police could not make random stops of vehicles in order to check drivers’ licenses and vehicle registrations in the absence of “articulable and reasonable suspicion” that the motorist was unlicensed or the ear unregistered. In Brown v. Texas, 443 U. S. 47, we held that a statute requiring individuals to identify themselves was unconstitutional as applied because the police did not have any reasonable suspicion that the petitioner had committed or was committing a crime. Finally, in Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U. S. 85, we held that police executing a search warrant at a tavern could not invoke Terry to frisk a patron unless the officers had individualized suspicion that the patron might be armed or dangerous.

10 The detention approved in Brignoni-Ponce did not encompass a search of the vehicle. The Court had held in Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U. S. 266, that such a search must be supported by probable cause. In United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, the Court held that stops at permanent checkpoints involved even less intrusion to a motorist than the detention by the roving patrol, and thus a stop at such a checkpoint need not even be based on any individualized suspicion.

11 In his opinion for the Court in Terry, Chief Justice Warren identified “the central inquiry under the Fourth Amendment” as “the reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of a citizen’s personal security.” 392 U. S., at 19. Before analyzing the specific stop and frisk involved in that case, he stated:

“The scheme of the Fourth Amendment becomes meaningful only when it is assured that at some point the conduct of those charged with enforcing the laws can be subjected to the more detached, neutral scrutiny of a judge who must evaluate the reasonableness of a particular search or seizure in light of the particular circumstances. And in making that assessment it is imperative that the facts be judged against an objective standard: would the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search 'warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief’ that the action taken was appropriate? Cf. Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 (1925); Beck v. Ohio, 379 U. S. 89, 96-97 (1964).” Id., at 21-22 (footnotes omitted).

12 Justice White, concurring in Dunaway, noted that Terry is not “an almost unique exception to a hard-and-fast standard of probable cause.” Rather, “the key principle of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness — the balancing of competing interests.” 442 U. S., at 219. If the purpose underlying a Terry stop — investigating possible criminal activity — is to be served, the police must under certain' circumstances be able to detain the individual for longer than the brief time period involved in Terry and Adams. As one commentator observed:

“It is clear that there are several investigative techniques which may be utilized effectively in the course of a Terry-type stop. The most common is interrogation, which may include both a request for identification and inquiry concerning the suspicious conduct of the person detained. Sometimes the officer will communicate with others, either police or private citizens, in an effort to verify the explanation tendered or to confirm the identification or determine whether a person of that identity is otherwise wanted. Or, the suspect may be detained while it is determined if in fact an offense has occurred in the area, a process which might involve checking certain premises, locating and examining objects abandoned by the suspect, or talking with other people. If it is known that an offense has occurred in the area, the suspect may be viewed by witnesses to the crime. There is no reason to conclude that any investigative methods of the type just listed are inherently objectionable; they might cast doubt upon the reasonableness of the detention, however, if their use makes the period of detention unduly long or involves moving the suspect to another locale.” 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 9.2, pp. 36-37 (1978).

13 “As the Court reiterated just a few years ago, the 'physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.’ United States v. United States District Court, 407 U. S. 297, 313. And we have long adhered to the view that the warrant procedure minimizes the danger of needless intrusions of that sort.” Payton v. New York, 445 U. S., at 585-586.

14 Professor LaFave has noted that the reasonableness of a detention may be determined in part by “whether the police are diligently pursuing a means of investigation which is likely to resolve the matter one way or another very soon 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 9.2, p. 40 (1978).

15 Moreover, unlike the seizure in Dunaway, which was designed to provide an opportunity for interrogation and did lead to Dunaway’s confession, the seizure in this case is not likely to have coercive aspects likely to induce self-incrimination.

16 We do not view the fact that respondent was leaving his house when the officers arrived to be of constitutional significance. The seizure of respondent on the sidewalk outside was no more intrusive than the detention of those residents of the house whom the police found inside.

17 The fact that our holding today deals with a case in which the police had a warrant does not, of course, preclude the possibility that comparable police conduct may be justified by exigent circumstances in the absence of a warrant. No such question, however, is presented by this case.

18 Justice Jackson recognized the significance of this determination in Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 13-14:

“The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime. Any assumption that evidence sufficient to support a magistrate’s disinterested determination to issue a search warrant will justify the officers in making a search without a warrant would reduce the Amendment to a nullity and leave the people’s homes secure only in the discretion of police officers. Crime, even in the privacy of one’s own quarters, is, of course, of grave concern to society, and the law allows such crime to be reached on proper showing. The right of officers to thrust themselves into a home is also a grave concern, not only to the individual but to a society which chooses to dwell in reasonable security and freedom from surveillance. When the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a policeman or government enforcement agent.” (Footnotes omitted.)

19 In refusing to approve seizures based on less than probable cause, the Dunaway Court declined to adopt a “multifactor balancing test of 'reasonable police conduct under the circumstances’ to cover all seizures that do not amount to technical arrests.” The Court noted:

“[T]he protections intended by the Framers could all too easily disappear in the consideration and balancing of the multifarious circumstances presented by different cases, especially when that balancing may be done in the first instance by police officers engaged in the 'often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.’ ” 442 U. S., at 213.

As Justice White noted in his concurrence in Dunaway, if police are to have workable rules, the balancing of the competing interests inherent in the Terry principle “must in large part be done on a categorical basis— not in an ad hoc, case-by-case fashion by individual police officers.” 442 U. S., at 219-220. The rule we adopt today does not depend upon such an ad hoc determination, because the officer is not required to evaluate either the quantum of proofo justifying detention or the extent of the intrusion to be imposed by the seizure.

20 We do not decide whether the same result would be justified if the search warrant merely authorized a search for evidence. Cf. Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U. S. 547, 560. See also id., at 581 (Stevens, J., dissenting).

21 Although special circumstances, or possibly a prolonged detention, might lead to a different conclusion in an unusual case, we are persuaded that this routine detention of residents of a house while it was being searched for contraband pursuant to a valid warrant is not such a case.