366
O'Connor, J., dissenting
officers constitutional carte blanche to effect an arrest whenever there is probable cause to believe a fine-only misdemeanor has been committed is irreconcilable with the Fourth Amendment's command that seizures be reasonable. Instead, I would require that when there is probable cause to believe that a fine-only offense has been committed, the police officer should issue a citation unless the officer is "able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant [the additional] intrusion" of a full custodial arrest. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S., at 21.
The majority insists that a bright-line rule focused on probable cause is necessary to vindicate the State's interest in easily administrable law enforcement rules. See ante, at 347-351. Probable cause itself, however, is not a model of precision. "The quantum of information which constitutes probable cause—evidence which would 'warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief' that a [crime] has been committed—must be measured by the facts of the particular case." Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471, 479 (1963) (citation omitted). The rule I propose—which merely requires a legitimate reason for the decision to escalate the seizure into a full custodial arrest—thus does not undermine an otherwise "clear and simple" rule. Cf. ante, at 347.
While clarity is certainly a value worthy of consideration in our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, it by no means trumps the values of liberty and privacy at the heart of the Amendment's protections. What the Terry rule lacks in precision it makes up for in fidelity to the Fourth Amend-ment's command of reasonableness and sensitivity to the competing values protected by that Amendment. Over the past 30 years, it appears that the Terry rule has been workable and easily applied by officers on the street.
At bottom, the majority offers two related reasons why a bright-line rule is necessary: the fear that officers who arrest for fine-only offenses will be subject to "personal [42 U. S. C.]
Page: Index Previous 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007