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WA: Plain touch did not justify a search after the officer had to continue manipulating the contents of the pocket during the patdown to determine what it was

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Plain touch did not justify the search of defendant's pocket. The officer felt something during a lawful patdown and had to continue squeezing it, past determining that it was not a weapon, to get a full sense of what it was. This was unreasonable. Court of appeals reversed. State v. Garvin, 2009 Wash. LEXIS 530 (May 28, 2009). Running wants or warrants on person stopped did not unduly prolong the stop, and there was no privacy interest in information in public records. The passenger was free to decline the officer's request to see the ID as opposed to an official request which would have come next. [How can anybody refuse an ID request? Not that this necessarily mattered.] People v. Galarza, 2009 Ill. App. LEXIS 283 (May 29, 2009): Moreover, as in Harris, validating the information on defendant's identification card with Collins' dispatcher did not infringe on any privacy interest, because, absent facts to the contrary, any information contained in the police department's computer system concerned matters of public record...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on June 08, 2009 (boomark / email).