Terry V. Ohio Case Study

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The case of Terry v. Ohio has been a landmark case that had gone before the Supreme Court in 1968. The courts state that an officer must have a reasonable suspicion that a driver or an individual has committed a crime or an intentional act to do so and must be able to have articulable facts that a crime may be committed by that individual, which warrants the officer from stopping an individual to investigate further. Yet, there are time that officers who make a judgement call to pull over an individual to make an investigatory stop based only on a hunch of speculation. Failure, by an officer to use good judgement when deciding to conduct an investigatory stop, can have serious consequences and lawsuits can occur deeming these poor judgment calls, as illegal terry stops.
For a terry stop to be legal and which may result in the officer finding any evidence obtained as a result from a lawful terry stop, the officer will need to base their decision to perform one from a viewpoint that is based on objective reasoning and reasonable suspicion. Furthermore, the officer must be able to have
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The officer's reasonable suspicion must accompany the decision for the police officer to do a Terry stop, so not to violate the Fourth Amendment (Cornell University Law School, 1992). We can see this by looking to what the fourth amendment states about the issue of reasonable suspicion of a potentially criminal activity. In quoting from the case "Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1884, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) the research on case analysis of this landmark case gives opinions of the courts that the officer should have a reasonable suspicion that they can back up with articulable facts for their Terry stop. That the legalities of the Terry stop were indeed to prevent or stop criminal activity is taking place or had recently taken place by the individual (Terry v. Ohio,