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State v. Boyea12/1/2000
nparticularized suspicion or hunch. The Fourth Amendment requires some minimal level of objective justification for making the stop." Id. at 329-30 (quoting United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989)) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted; alteration in original).
The Court in White elaborated further on the distinction between reasonable suspicion and probable cause:
Reasonable suspicion is a less demanding standard than probable cause not only in the sense that reasonable suspicion can be established with information that is different in quantity or content than that required to establish probable cause, but also in the sense that reasonable suspicion can arise from information that is less reliable than that required to show probable cause. Id. at 330.
Applying this standard, the Court found, under the totality of the circumstances, that the anonymous tip, as corroborated by the officers, exhibited sufficient indicia of reliability to justify the investigatory stop of the car. In so holding, the Court placed considerable reliance on the fact that the anonymous tip included predictions of future actions by White, specifically her travel towards the predicted destination. Again, the dissenting opinions are revealing. Justice Stevens, writing for Justices Brennan and Marshall, noted that " illions of people leave their apartments at about the same time every day carrying an attaché case and heading for a destination known to their neighbors. . . . An anonymous neighbor's prediction about somebody's time of departure and probable destination is anything but a reliable basis for assuming that the commuter is in possession of an illegal substance-particularly when the person is not even carrying the attaché case described by the tipster." Id. at 333. The dissent also raised concerns about an officer's veracity in claiming to have received an anonymous tip. " nder the Court's holding, every citizen is subject to being seized and questioned by any officer who is prepared to testify that the warrantless stop was based on an anonymous tip predicting whatever conduct the officer just observed." Id.
The dissent in White pointedly illustrates the Court's generous approach to the finding of reasonable suspicion on the basis of an anonymous informant's tip. Furthermore, while White relied heavily on the predictive information of the suspect's itinerary, other federal courts interpreting White have held that predictive information may be sufficient, but is not necessary to establish reasonable suspicion. See, e.g., United States v. Gibson, 64 F.3d 617, 623 (11th Cir. 1995) ("White does not prevent law enforcement officers from relying and acting on anonymous tips when the information to be corroborated does not refer to future actions but instead details present circumstances."); United States v. Bold, 19 F.3d 99, 104 (2nd Cir. 1994) ("There is nothing in White that precludes police from acting on an anonymous tip when the information to be corroborated refers to present rather than future actions.").
Thus, notwithstanding the fact that the suspect in the case before us was traveling on a public access highway and that little precognition was needed to deduce that the car would continue on that highway, the tip does not fail for lack of predictive information. Moreover, as noted earlier, the facts here do not present the same potential for law-enforcement fabrication of anonymous tips that so concerned the dissenters in Adams and White.
Recently, the Court decided Illinois v. Wardlow, 120 S.Ct. 673 (2000), a decision that further spotlights the Court's liberal standards for finding "reasonable suspicion." In this case Wardlow, who had simply
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