The Arrest
A Detective named McFaden observed two strangers on a street corner in Cleveland. He saw them
both walking back and forth across a sidewalk repeatedly, stopping only to look in the same store
window, which they did almost 24 times. Each completion of the routine was followed by
a conference between the two on a corner. Suspecting the two men of "casing a job, a stick-up," the detective followed them and
saw them join a third man a couple of blocks away in front of another store. The officer approached
the three, identified himself as a policeman, and asked their names. The men "mumbled something,"
whereupon McFadden spun petitioner around, patted down his outside clothing, and found in his
overcoat pocket a pistol. The officer ordered the three into the store. He
removed petitioner's overcoat, took out a revolver, and ordered the three to face the wall with their
hands raised. He patted down the outer clothing of Chilton, the man with Terry, and Katz, whom the two had met up with, and seized a revolver from
Chilton's outside overcoat pocket. The three were taken to the police station. Terry
and Chilton were charged with carrying concealed weapons. The defense moved to suppress
the weapons. Though the trial court rejected the prosecution theory that the guns had been seized
during a search incident to a lawful arrest, the court denied the motion to suppress and admitted the
weapons into evidence on the ground that the officer had cause to believe that Terry and Chilton
were acting suspiciously, that their interrogation was warranted, and that McFadden, for his own
protection, had the right to pat down their outer clothing having reasonable cause to believe that they
might be armed. The court distinguished between an investigatory "stop" and an arrest, and between
a "frisk" of the outer clothing for weapons and a full-blown search for evidence of crime. Petitioner
and Chilton were found guilty, an intermediate appellate court affirmed, and the State Supreme
Court dismissed the appeal on the ground that "no substantial constitutional question" was involved.
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