# Adams v. Williams > Supreme Court of the United States · June 12, 1972 · 407 U.S. 143 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9424937 ## Case - **Full name:** Adams, Warden v. Williams - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** June 12, 1972 - **Citations:** 407 U.S. 143; 92 S. Ct. 1921; 32 L. Ed. 2d 612; 1972 U.S. LEXIS 2206 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Dissent by Brennan - **Judges:** Rehnquist, Burgee, Stewart, White, Blackmun-, Powell, Douglas, Marshall, Brennan - **Cited by:** 4,329 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases. - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9424937 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - concluding an officer who “was alone early in the morning on car patrol duty in a high-crime area” and investigating a reliable tip that a suspect “was carrying narcotics and had a gun at his waist” acted reasonably when he reached into the suspect’s open car window and remove… - concluding that a forcible stop of suspect was justified based on face-to-face tip from informant known to police officer, noting that "[t]his is a stronger case than obtains in the case of an anonymous telephone tip. The informant here came forward personally to give informat… - holding that the officer lawfully reached into the suspect’s clothing without performing a pat-down where the suspect’s failure to comply with the officer’s command to exit the vehicle made it impossible for the officer to pat down the suspect without the officer placing himse… - holding that an officer performed a legal Terry stop when he acted on an anonymous tip that a man in a car had narcotics and a gun by approaching the car and grabbing the gun that had not been visible from outside the car from the man’s waistband where the informant had stated… - holding that officer had particularized suspicion that defendant was armed and presently dangerous where a known informant reported moments earlier that the defendant was carrying narcotics and a concealed weapon, and defendant was sitting alone in a car in a high-crime area a… ## Opinion text Me. Justice Brennan, dissenting. The crucial question on which this case turns, as the Court concedes,, is whether, there being no contention that Williams acted voluntarily in rolling down the win-, dow of his car, the State had shown sufficient cause to justify Sgt. Connolly’s “forcible” stop. I would affirm, believing, for the following reasons stated by Judge, now Chief Judge, Friendly, dissenting, 436 F. 2d 30, 38-39 , that the State did not make that showing: “To begin, I have the gravest hesitancy in extending [Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968)] to crimes like the possession of narcotics .... There is too much danger that, instead of the stop being the object and the protective frisk, an incident thereto, the reverse will be true. Against that we have here the added fact of the report'that Williams had a gun on his person. . . . [But] Connecticut allows its citizens to carry weapons, concealed or *152 otherwise, at will, provided only they have a permit, ■Conn. Gen. Stat. §§29-35 and 29-38, and gives its police officers no special authority to stop for the purpose of determining whether the citizen has one. . . . “If I am wrong in thinking that Terry should not be applied at all to mere possessory offenses,... I would not find the combination of Officer Connolly’s almost meaningless observation and the tip in this case to be sufficient justification for the intrusion. The tip suffered from a threefold defect, with each fold compounding the others. The informer was unnamed, he was not shown to have been reliable with respect to guns or narcotics, and he gave no information which demonstrated personal knowledge or — what is worse — could not readily have been manufactured by the officer after the event. To my mind, it has not been sufficiently recognized that the difference between this sort of tip and the accurate prediction of an unusual event is as important on the latter score as on the former. [Ini Draper v. United States, 358 U. S. 307 (1959),] Narcotics Agent Marsh would hardly have been at the Denver Station at the exact moment of the arrival of the train Draper had taken from Chicago unless someone had told him something important, although the agent might later have embroidered the details to fit the observed facts.. .. There is no such guarantee of a patrolling officer’s veracity when he testifies to a ‘tip’ from an unnamed informer saying no more than that the officer will find a gun and narcotics on a man across the street, as he later does. If the state wishes to rely on a tip of that nature to validate a stop and frisk, revelation of the name of the informer or demonstration that his name is unknown and could *153 not reasonably have been ascertained should be the price. “Terry v. Ohio was intended to free a police officer from the rigidity of a rule that would prevent his doing anything to a man reasonably suspected of being about to commit or having just committed a crime of violence, no matter how grave the problem or impelling the need for swift action, unless the. officer had what a court would later determine to be probable cause for arrest. . It was meant for the serious cases of imminent danger or of harm recently perpetrated to persons or property, not the conventional ones of possessory offenses. If it is to be extended to the latter at all, this should be only where observation by the officer himself or well authenticated information shows 'that criminal activity may be afoot.’ 392 U. S., at 30 . . . . I greatly fear that if the [contrary view]' should be-followed, Terry will have opened the sluicegates for serious and unintended erosion of the protection of the Fourth Amendment.” --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9424937. Public record. Not legal advice.