holding investigative stop of five individuals illegal when based upon an inarticulable suspicion that one individual had been involved in a crime
How later courts described this case
- holding investigative stop of five individuals illegal when based upon an inarticulable suspicion that one individual had been involved in a crime
- “[T]here was no evidence that the information about the assault was current.”
- officers responded to report of assault but “found no evidence upon [arrival] to corroborate that an assault had taken place”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
NEWMAN, Associate Judge,
concurring:
This is a simple case decided wrongly by the trial court; it does not merit extended discussion. Unless we are to again countenance arrests for investigation in this city, see Lawrence v. United States, 509 A.2d 614, 618-19 (D.C.1986) (Newman J., dissenting), we must declare such dragnet detentions as occurred here constitutionally invalid. To sanction the pat-down of five persons on the unsupportable suspicion that one of them has committed a crime would be to write the Fourth Amendment out of our jurisprudence. What if there had been fifteen men in that room? What if there had been fifty? What if it had been RFK Stadium during a Washington Redskins football game?