High Court to Decide if Tip Justifies Frisking Pedestrian

The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will decide whether police, acting on an anonymous tip, are free to stop and frisk a pedestrian.

Normally, an officer cannot stop and pat down a person without a specific reason to believe a crime is being committed.

At issue in a Florida case is whether a telephone tip from an unnamed informer is enough to justify confronting the pedestrian.

Courts in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Florida recently have thrown out charges against people targeted and arrested on the basis of anonymous tips.

Those courts said that, because police had no independent reasons to believe the tips were reliable, their searches of the pedestrians were unreasonable and violated the 4th Amendment.

But the Supreme Court has been inclined to give police more leeway in searching motorists and pedestrians. On Monday, the justices agreed to hear an appeal from Florida prosecutors who argue that officers need greater authority to search for concealed weapons.

The case to be heard by the high court began four years ago when a caller told police in Miami that a black youth wearing a plaid shirt was carrying a gun. He was said to be standing with two others youths at a bus stop near the corner of 183rd Street and 24th Avenue.

Six minutes later, officer Carmen Anderson arrived, saw a youth wearing a plaid shirt, frisked him and found a concealed gun. The 16-year-old, identified only as J.L., was charged with illegal possession of a concealed weapon.

A Florida judge threw out the charge and the Florida Supreme Court upheld that decision. The ruling was that police had not had enough evidence because they had not known the informer and could not judge the informer’s reliability. Moreover, the state court said, Anderson did not see the youth do anything suspicious.

State prosecutors said they appealed because the ruling endangers the public. People carrying concealed guns threaten public safety, they said, and officers should have more freedom, not less, to frisk them.

The case (Florida vs. J.L., 98-1993) will be heard in February, and a ruling will be handed down a few months later.

By coincidence, the high court will take up a related question Tuesday morning in the case of a Chicago man who ran away when police approached.

Officers pursued and frisked the man, Sam Wardlow, and arrested him because he was carrying a concealed gun. But police admitted that they had no reason to chase Wardlow, other than his fleeing when they arrived.

The Illinois Supreme Court said that Wardlow’s flight did not justify the police pursuit and it threw out the charges.

The Supreme Court will hear the prosecutor’s appeal in the case (Illinois vs. Wardlow, 98-1036).

In other actions Monday, the court:

* Rejected a free-speech challenge to a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., ordinance that prohibits “soliciting, begging or panhandling” along a five-mile strip of the city’s beaches (Smith vs. Fort Lauderdale, 99-377). Homeless people said that they had a right to beg, but the courts disagreed.

* Refused to review the death sentence of a Nevada killer who was 16 when he murdered a Las Vegas woman and her 4-year-old son (Domingues vs. Nevada, 98-8327). His lawyers said that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty ratified by the United States in 1992, forbids death sentences for juveniles. But prosecutors, backed by the Clinton administration, said that the treaty is not binding on American courts.