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Bloomingdale v. State1/2/2004
there may be circumstances when such a delay may well constitute a waiver. The mere fact that a defendant's arrest occurred following a Terry stop should prompt defense counsel seasonably to seek all available information about the stop, including the precise details of the tip that was received, the steps the law enforcement officers took in response to the tip and any additional information gleaned by police before effectuating the stop.
Reasonable Suspicion Based on Anonymous Tips
We now turn to the merits. We have concluded that the stop was permissible because the tip at issue in this case had sufficient indicia of reliability to give rise to reasonable suspicion.
An individual's right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is secured in Delaware by both the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution [FN14] and Article I, Section 6 of the Delaware Constitution. [FN15] In Terry v. Ohio, the *1217 United States Supreme Court held that a law enforcement officer may conduct a brief, investigatory seizure of an individual based on the officer's reasonable and articulable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot. [FN16]
FN14. See U.S. CONST. amend. IV ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated....").
FN15. See Del. Const. art. I, § 6 ("The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions, from unreasonable searches and seizures....").
FN16. 392 U.S. 1, 30, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).
An officer's suspicion of criminal activity must be based on an adequate quantity of information of sufficient quality to create a reasonable and articulable suspicion that a crime has occurred, is occurring, or is about to occur. Therefore, when an officer's suspicion is aroused by an anonymous tip, whether that "tip suffices to give rise to reasonable suspicion depends on both the quantity of the information it conveys as well as the quality ... of that information, viewed under the totality of the circumstances." [FN17] With respect to the quality of the information, the key issue is the degree of the reliability of that information.
FN17. United States v. Wheat, 278 F.3d 722, 726 (8th Cir.2001).
Bloomingdale asserts that the anonymous tip in the present case was not sufficiently reliable to give rise to reasonable suspicion because it conveyed only readily observable facts and did not demonstrate the basis of the informant's knowledge that Bloomingdale was engaged in criminal activity. In Florida v. J.L., [FN18] the United States Supreme Court held that an anonymous tip that "a young black male standing at a particular bus stop and wearing a plaid shirt was carrying a gun" [FN19] was not sufficiently reliable to justify a Terry stop and frisk of that individual. The Court stated that a tip that merely describes readily observable facts about a subject does not demonstrate that the informant has knowledge of concealed criminal activity. [FN20] It held that the reasonable suspicion standard "requires that a tip be reliable in its assertion of illegality, not just in its tendency to identify a determinate person." [FN21] The Court rejected the argument that the dangerousness of firearms justified a reduced standard for the reliability of tips about firearms. [FN22]
FN18. 529 U.S. 266, 120 S.Ct. 1375, 146 L.Ed.2d 254 (2000).
FN19. Id. at 268, 120 S.Ct. 1375.
FN20. Id. at 272, 120 S.Ct. 1375.
FN21. Id.
FN22. Id. at 272-73, 120 S.Ct. 1375.
This Court also has held that certain anonymous tips lacked the requisite indicia of reliability to justify an investigatory stop. In Jones v. State, the police received an anony
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