Probable Cause Article Summary

The Case

In a recent case, Cost v Commonwealth, a man was sitting in his car in a parking lot of a public housing area that was being patrolled by officers looking for people who were parked there but did not live there. Upon the officer's approach to a vehicle where Cost was sitting in the passenger seat, Cost quickly reached across his pants to his left front pocket and the action was observed by the officer. The officer asked what he was doing and Cost did not reply, the officer then asked that Cost take his hand away from his pocket and Cost did not, as a result the officer removed Cost from the car. Once out of the car, Cost told the officer that he could frisk him but not search him. The officer went directly to the left front pocket and began his frisk where he said that he felt a "large bulge of capsules", (Call 2008). Based on the officer's training and experience in the field along with prior arrests involving heroine capsules, the officer believed that the capsules were heroine. The officer then reached into the pocket and pulled out a bag that was filled with twenty heroine capsules.

This case is an example of probable cause used in a stop and frisk. Probable cause as defined by legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com, is the "Apparent facts discovered through logical inquiry that would lead a reasonably intelligent and prudent person to believe that an accused person has committed a crime, thereby warranting his or her prosecution," Warrantless searches, such as the one that was done in the case of Cost v Commonwealth, require some sort of probable cause in order to occur. There are thirteen exceptions to the warrant requirement under the Fourth Amendment. These thirteen exceptions are as follows : exigent circumstance, stop and frisk, search incident to arrest, custodial, plain view, vehicle, border, open fields, abandoned property, consent, administrative, probation search, and a protective sweep, (Belling, 2012).

Stop and Frisk The Terry Stop

The case of Cost v Commonwealth is giving an example of the stop and frisk exception to a warrantless search. The officer had reasonable suspicion that Cost was hiding something and therefore requested that he step out of the vehicle and frisked him. Reasonable suspicion has been defined by the U.S. Supreme Court as "the sort of common-sense conclusion about human behavior upon which practical people . . . are entitled to rely." Further, it has defined reasonable suspicion as requiring only something more than an "unarticulated hunch." It requires facts or circumstances that give rise to more than a bare, imaginary, or purely conjectural suspicion", (uslegal.com).

If an officer has reasonable suspicion that an individual has committed or is about to commit a crime then the officer may seize that person briefly pending an investigation. If there