Terry v. Ohio Case Brief Summary | Law Case Explained

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Terry v. Ohio | 392 U.S. 1 (1968)

Imagine a police officer reasonably suspects that a person is about to commit a crime and is armed with a weapon. But it’s mostly a hunch, and the officer lacks probable cause to arrest or search the person for evidence. Does the Fourth Amendment nevertheless permit the officer to stop and frisk the person? The United States Supreme Court addressed this question in Terry versus Ohio.

One afternoon in 1963 in Cleveland, Officer Martin McFadden, who had patrolled the same beat for thirty years, observed John Terry and Richard Chilton repeatedly peer into a store window and walk away, only to return shortly thereafter and peer into it again. The two men did so around six times each. Eventually, the men walked away from the store.

McFadden, who’d never before seen the men, believed that they were casing the store for a robbery. He approached them and inquired about their actions. The men mumbled something unintelligible in response. Officer McFadden then grabbed Terry, spun him around, and patted down his outer clothing. During the pat-down, McFadden felt what was clearly a pistol inside Terry’s coat pocket. McFadden removed the pistol and then patted down Chilton. McFadden found a second pistol during the frisk of Chilton. Eventually, a prosecutor charged Terry and Chilton with carrying concealed weapons.

In a pretrial motion to suppress the evidence of the pistols, Terry and Chilton contended that McFadden’s stop and frisk violated the Fourth Amendment. The trial court denied the motion, holding that McFadden’s search was permissible under the Fourth Amendment. Following a bench trial, both men were convicted. On appeal, the Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s judgment, and the Ohio Supreme Court then dismissed a further appeal as lacking a substantial constitutional question. Terry and Chilton filed a joint cert petition.

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