holding that customs inspectors' articulable suspicion of drug smuggling permitted inspectors to detain suspect for 16 hours to either verify or dispel their suspicion; noting that "[t]he 'reasonable suspicion' standard has been applied in a number of contexts and effects a needed balance between private and public interests when law enforcement officials must make a limited intrusion on less than probable cause"
How later courts described this case
- holding that customs inspectors' articulable suspicion of drug smuggling permitted inspectors to detain suspect for 16 hours to either verify or dispel their suspicion; noting that "[t]he 'reasonable suspicion' standard has been applied in a number of contexts and effects a needed balance between private and public interests when law enforcement officials must make a limited intrusion on less than probable cause"
- explaining that “the Fourth Amendment’s balance of reasonableness is qualitatively different at the international border than in the interior” due to the government’s interest in protecting “the integrity of the border” from the entry of unwanted persons and contraband into this country, as well as individuals’ lessened privacy interests when crossing international borders
- explaining that the Customs officers were not required by the Fourth Amendment to “simply shrug [their] shoulders” and allow an alimentary canal smuggling defendant into the interior because she had been detained for too long before passing cocaine-filled balloons (quoting Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 145, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972))
- holding that the reason ableness of a search or seizure "depends upon all the circumstances surrounding the search or seizure”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
*545 Justice Stevens,
concurring in the judgment.
If a seizure and a search of the person of the kind disclosed by this record may be made on the basis of reasonable suspicion, we must assume that a significant number of innocent persons will be required to undergo similar procedures. The rule announced in this case cannot, therefore, be supported on the ground that respondent’s prolonged and humiliating detention “resulted solely from the method by which she chose to smuggle illicit drugs into this country.” Ante, at 544.
The prolonged detention of respondent was, however, justified by a different choice that respondent made; she withdrew her consent to an x-ray examination that would have easily determined whether the reasonable suspicion that she was concealing contraband was justified. I believe that customs agents may require that a nonpregnant person reasonably suspected of this kind of smuggling submit to an x-ray examination as an incident to a border search. I therefore concur in the judgment.