explaining that responses to a police officer’s questions may be consensual even though individual may feel compelled and may not have been informed of the right not to respond; questioning does not result in Fourth Amendment detention unless the circumstances of the encounter are so intimidating as to demonstrate that a reasonable person would have believed he was not free to leave if he had not responded
How later courts described this case
- explaining that responses to a police officer’s questions may be consensual even though individual may feel compelled and may not have been informed of the right not to respond; questioning does not result in Fourth Amendment detention unless the circumstances of the encounter are so intimidating as to demonstrate that a reasonable person would have believed he was not free to leave if he had not responded
- stating that the seizure analysis "properly looks not to the subjective impressions of the person questioned but rather to the objective characteristics of the encounter which may suggest whether or not a reasonable person would believe that he remained free during the course of the questioning to disregard the questions and walk away"
- holding that no seizure occurred when INS agents positioned themselves near factory exits, and noting that “[ojrdinarily, when people are at work their freedom to move about has been meaningfully restricted, not by the actions of law enforcement officials, but by the workers’ voluntary obligations to their employers”
- stating that a consensual encounter between an officer and a citizen “can be transformed into a seizure or detention within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, if, in view of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by United States v. Franco Antonio Alarcon-Gonzalez, 73 F.3d 289 (1996)
Delgado, supra, is distinguishable because in that case the workers questioned were given no reason to believe the agents were restricting their freedom in any significant way.
The opinion
Justice Stevens,
concurring.
A trial has not yet been held in this case. The District Court entered summary judgment against respondents, and the Court of Appeals, in reversing, did not remand the case for trial but rather directed the District Court to enter summary judgment for respondents and a permanent injunction against petitioners. As the case comes to us, therefore, we must construe the record most favorably to petitioners, and resolve all issues of fact in their favor. Because I agree that this record is insufficient to establish that there is no genuine issue of fact on the question whether any of the respondents could have reasonably believed that he or she had been detained in some meaningful way, I j oin the opinion of the Court.