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GA: Plain feel did not support seizure from defendant's pocket

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Object in defendant's pocket felt during a frisk was not immediately perceived as a weapon, so going in after it was not reasonable. Brown v. State, 2008 Ga. App. LEXIS 1010 (September 16, 2008)*: The record shows that Bohannon lacked authority to intrude into Brown's pocket. We recognize that, while patting down the outside of that pocket, Bohannon detected the corner of a hard object. Nothing indicates, however, that the object felt like a gun or other weapon. On the contrary, Bohannon did not know what it was and decided to investigate further based only on the broad assumption that "anything can house a weapon." Moreover, when questioned at the suppression hearing, Bohannon pointed to no particularized facts that reasonably led him to believe that Brown might have a weapon...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on September 20, 2008 (boomark / email).