Petitioner
State of Florida
Respondent
Mark Royer
Petitioner's Claim
Dade County detectives did not violate Royer's Fourth Amendment rights when they detained him in an airport and opened his luggage to find illegal drugs.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Calvin L. Fox
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Theodore Klein
Justices for the Court
William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., John Paul Stevens, Byron R. White (writing for the Court)
Justices Dissenting
Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
23 March 1983
Decision
The detectives violated Royer's Fourth Amendment rights by exceeding the legal limits of the encounter.
Significance
The Royer decision approved of a police stop but disapproved of the detention that followed, reinforcing the concept that there are limits to the things that police officers can do when they stop a person based on a level ofbelief that does not rise to the level of probable cause.
Mark Royer was in the Miami International Airport on 3 January 1978, preparing to take a flight to New York City. To plain clothes detectives of the DadeCounty, Florida, Public Safety Department, Royer's appearance, luggage, and actions fit the profile of a drug courier. Specifically, Royer was young, casually dressed, seemed pale and nervous, looked around at other people, paid for his ticket with a large number of bills, failed to complete his luggage identification tag, and used luggage that appeared to be heavy.
The detectives approached Royer and asked if he had a "`moment'" to speak with them. Royer responded "`Yes.'" The detectives asked for Royer's driver's license and his airline ticket, and Royer, without giving his oral consent, handed them over. The airline ticket, like Royer's luggage tickets, bore the name "Holt." When he was questioned about the discrepancy, Royer responded thata friend had made the reservation for him. Royer became nervous, and the detectives informed him that they were investigating illegal drug violations andthat they had reason to believe that Royer was transporting illegal drugs.
The detectives retained possession of Royer's airline ticket and identification and asked Royer to accompany them to a small room adjacent to the concourse. Saying nothing, Royer went with the detectives. One of the detectives retrieved Royer's luggage and brought it to the room without asking for Royer's consent. The detectives asked Royer if they could open the suitcases and search inside, and Royer, again without verbally responding, handed the detectivesa key. Without asking for Royer's consent, a detective tried the key on oneof the suitcases and opened it and found marijuana. The second suitcase, fastened by a combination lock and opened with a screwdriver, yielded more marijuana. While he had not given his oral consent, Royer also had not verbally objected to the uncovering of 65 pounds of marijuana in his possession. Later, Royer would testify that he did not object because "`[t]hey were police officers'" and he "`thought [he] had to.'"
Royer was charged with felony possession of marijuana in Florida state court.At trial, he moved the court to suppress, or exclude, the marijuana evidencebecause it was obtained in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. The trial court denied the motion, ruling that Royer had consented to the search. Royer changed his not guilty plea to a no contest plea, reserving the right toappeal the court's ruling on the suppression motion. On appeal, the districtcourt of appeal first affirmed, and then, after a hearing, reversed the decision. According to the appeals court, because Royer had been confined involuntarily without probable cause and because the detention had gone beyond the boundaries established by the Supreme Court's decision in Terry v. Ohiofor such detentions, and any consent given by Royer was invalid. The encounter was like an arrest, explained the appeals court, and Royer was justified inhis belief that he was not free to leave. Such a detention can only be justified by the presence of probable cause to believe that Royer was guilty of acrime, and the detectives did not have enough evidence to support that.
The state of Florida appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which voted to affirm the appeals court's ruling by a narrow 5-4 margin. Justice White, writing for the plurality, began the opinion by observing the general rules that guided the case. Under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Court's prior case law, a police officer had to have probable cause to believe that a person had committed a crime before the officer could seize the person. One exception to this rule, under the Court's decision in Terry v. Ohio, was the temporary detention of a criminal suspect. If a police officer hada reasonable, articulable suspicion that a person was guilty of a crime or was about to commit a crime, the officer could stop the person and briefly detain the person for questioning and perform a limited pat-down search for weapons.
The plurality listed six "observations" about Fourth Amendment jurisprudencethat guided the case. "[I]f the events in this case amounted to no more thana permissible police encounter in a public place or a justifiable Terry-type detention," the Court surmised, "Royer's consent, if voluntary, wouldhave been effective to legalize the search of his two suitcases." The appealscourt had concluded that Royer's consent was tainted by the illegality of the detention, and so the question was "whether the record warrant[ed] that conclusion."
The state of Florida had argued that Royer was not detained. In the state's view, the entire encounter was consensual, so there was no detention of Royer.Even if the encounter was not consensual, the state maintained, the police had a reasonable, articulable suspicion that Royer was transporting drugs, andthis belief justified the detention. Furthermore, claimed the state, the police had probable cause to arrest Royer, and so he was not being illegally held. To the High Court, the argument that the encounter was consensual was "untenable" because the detectives used "a show of authority" that would have made a reasonable person feel detained.
The Court gave more attention to the argument that the police officers had reasonable suspicion to stop Royer. They conceded that the officers had reasonable suspicion, but believed that "at the time Royer produced the key to his suitcase, the detention to which he was then subjected was a more serious intrusion on his personal liberty than is allowable on mere suspicion of criminalactivity." What may have been a permissible stop at first "escalated into aninvestigatory procedure in a police interrogation room, where the police, unsatisfied with previous explanations, sought to confirm their suspicions . .. [a]s a practical matter, Royer was under arrest." Moreover, the actions ofthe detectives were too intrusive to qualify as a limited Terry stop.The detectives did not return Royer's driver's license and ticket, they removed him from the immediate area, and the detectives may have been able to "investigate the contents of Royer's bags in a more expeditious way." The plurality mentioned the use of trained dogs as a less intrusive alternative to the kind of methods employed by the detectives.
To justify Royer's arrest, the police had to have probable cause, a standardof belief that is stronger than reasonable suspicion and requires more supporting information. The state of Florida argued that the police had enough information to support probable cause, but the Court disagreed. The Court could not agree that "every nervous young man paying cash for a ticket to New York City under an assumed name and carrying two heavy bags may be arrested and held to answer for a serious felony charge." Ultimately, the Court affirmed theappeals court's decision and the prosecution of Royer was over.
Justice Powell wrote a concurring opinion to emphasize that despite the Court's holding, "the public has a compelling interest in identifying by all lawful means those who traffic in illicit drugs for personal profit." However, inRoyer's case, the actions of the detectives went beyond lawful means. Powellnoted that Royer "found himself in a small, windowless room--described as a "`large closet'"--alone with two officers who, without his consent, already had obtained possession of his checked baggage." Royer clearly was not free toleave and, in Powell's opinion, Royer's surrender of the luggage key could not be seen as consensual.
Justice Brennan concurred in the result of the case, but he felt that the plurality had decided more issues than was necessary. The plurality did not haveto hold that the stop of Royer was legal; it could have merely affirmed theruling of the appeals court on the basis that the stop exceeded the bounds ofsuch a stop delineated in Terry. Brennan believed that the stop itself was illegal because the detectives did not have enough information to support a reasonable suspicion that Royer was committing a crime. The observationsmade by the detectives (Royer was young, nervous, pale, paid with cash, looked around at other people, and used heavy luggage) were "perfectly consistentwith innocent behavior and [could not] possibly give rise to any inference supporting a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity." Brennan admitted that"traffic in illicit drugs is a matter of pressing national concern," but hewarned that the nation's "zeal for effective law enforcement" should not obscure "the peril to our free society that lies in this Court's disregard of theprotections afforded by the Fourth Amendment."
Chief Justice Burger and Justices Blackmun, Rehnquist, and O'Connor dissented. In his own dissenting opinion, Justice Blackmun expressed his view that, inlight of the threats posed by illegal drug traffic, the actions of the police officers were reasonable and therefore not violative of the Fourth Amendment. Justice Rehnquist, joined by Chief Justice Burger and Justice O'Connor, offered a more pointed dissent. "The plurality's meandering opinion," Rehnquistwrote, "contains in it a little something for everyone." Although much of its opinion indicated that it was not indifferent to the dangers of drug trafficking, the plurality managed to affirm the reversal of conviction, all of which reminded Rehnquist of an old nursery rhyme: "`The King of France/With forty thousand men/Marched up the hill/And then marched back again.'" Rehnquist compared the plurality's "mind-set" to that of shuffleboard officials, more "concerned with which particular square the disc has landed on" than administering criminal justice.
Rehnquist mocked the plurality's assessment of the detectives' conduct. The plurality had mentioned that Royer was kept in a small room with two chairs; this left Rehnquist wondering whether the encounter would have been constitutional if the detectives had searched the luggage in the busy concourse, or "[i]f the room had been large and spacious, rather than small, if it had possessed three chairs rather than two." Rehnquist compared the plurality's vague opinion to an Impressionist painting, and insisted that the Court's holding wasforeclosed by the Court's decision in United States v. Mendenhall. Inthat case, the Court had upheld the stop, detention, and strip search of a woman who was suspected of possessing drugs. The search of the woman in Mendenhall had been upheld on the basis that the woman had consented to thesearch. Rehnquist believed that Royer, who went on to gain a college degree in communications, also had consented, and that the detectives had done nothing to warrant invalidation of that consent.
Impact
Although the Royer case has not been reversed, subsequent decisions bythe Court have eroded its importance. In 1991, for example, the Court upheldthe warrantless, random stop and search of bus passengers for drugs. In 1996, Justice Rehnquist enjoyed some vindication for his dissent in Royerfrom the Court's decision in Ohio v. Robinette. In that case, the Court held that a police officer's subjective intentions have no bearing on the legality of a continuing detention, and that a police officer need not advisea detained person that he or she is free to go before the person's consent toa search will be deemed voluntary.
Related Cases
State of Florida
Respondent
Mark Royer
Petitioner's Claim
Dade County detectives did not violate Royer's Fourth Amendment rights when they detained him in an airport and opened his luggage to find illegal drugs.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Calvin L. Fox
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Theodore Klein
Justices for the Court
William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., John Paul Stevens, Byron R. White (writing for the Court)
Justices Dissenting
Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
23 March 1983
Decision
The detectives violated Royer's Fourth Amendment rights by exceeding the legal limits of the encounter.
Significance
The Royer decision approved of a police stop but disapproved of the detention that followed, reinforcing the concept that there are limits to the things that police officers can do when they stop a person based on a level ofbelief that does not rise to the level of probable cause.
Mark Royer was in the Miami International Airport on 3 January 1978, preparing to take a flight to New York City. To plain clothes detectives of the DadeCounty, Florida, Public Safety Department, Royer's appearance, luggage, and actions fit the profile of a drug courier. Specifically, Royer was young, casually dressed, seemed pale and nervous, looked around at other people, paid for his ticket with a large number of bills, failed to complete his luggage identification tag, and used luggage that appeared to be heavy.
The detectives approached Royer and asked if he had a "`moment'" to speak with them. Royer responded "`Yes.'" The detectives asked for Royer's driver's license and his airline ticket, and Royer, without giving his oral consent, handed them over. The airline ticket, like Royer's luggage tickets, bore the name "Holt." When he was questioned about the discrepancy, Royer responded thata friend had made the reservation for him. Royer became nervous, and the detectives informed him that they were investigating illegal drug violations andthat they had reason to believe that Royer was transporting illegal drugs.
The detectives retained possession of Royer's airline ticket and identification and asked Royer to accompany them to a small room adjacent to the concourse. Saying nothing, Royer went with the detectives. One of the detectives retrieved Royer's luggage and brought it to the room without asking for Royer's consent. The detectives asked Royer if they could open the suitcases and search inside, and Royer, again without verbally responding, handed the detectivesa key. Without asking for Royer's consent, a detective tried the key on oneof the suitcases and opened it and found marijuana. The second suitcase, fastened by a combination lock and opened with a screwdriver, yielded more marijuana. While he had not given his oral consent, Royer also had not verbally objected to the uncovering of 65 pounds of marijuana in his possession. Later, Royer would testify that he did not object because "`[t]hey were police officers'" and he "`thought [he] had to.'"
Royer was charged with felony possession of marijuana in Florida state court.At trial, he moved the court to suppress, or exclude, the marijuana evidencebecause it was obtained in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. The trial court denied the motion, ruling that Royer had consented to the search. Royer changed his not guilty plea to a no contest plea, reserving the right toappeal the court's ruling on the suppression motion. On appeal, the districtcourt of appeal first affirmed, and then, after a hearing, reversed the decision. According to the appeals court, because Royer had been confined involuntarily without probable cause and because the detention had gone beyond the boundaries established by the Supreme Court's decision in Terry v. Ohiofor such detentions, and any consent given by Royer was invalid. The encounter was like an arrest, explained the appeals court, and Royer was justified inhis belief that he was not free to leave. Such a detention can only be justified by the presence of probable cause to believe that Royer was guilty of acrime, and the detectives did not have enough evidence to support that.
The state of Florida appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which voted to affirm the appeals court's ruling by a narrow 5-4 margin. Justice White, writing for the plurality, began the opinion by observing the general rules that guided the case. Under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Court's prior case law, a police officer had to have probable cause to believe that a person had committed a crime before the officer could seize the person. One exception to this rule, under the Court's decision in Terry v. Ohio, was the temporary detention of a criminal suspect. If a police officer hada reasonable, articulable suspicion that a person was guilty of a crime or was about to commit a crime, the officer could stop the person and briefly detain the person for questioning and perform a limited pat-down search for weapons.
The plurality listed six "observations" about Fourth Amendment jurisprudencethat guided the case. "[I]f the events in this case amounted to no more thana permissible police encounter in a public place or a justifiable Terry-type detention," the Court surmised, "Royer's consent, if voluntary, wouldhave been effective to legalize the search of his two suitcases." The appealscourt had concluded that Royer's consent was tainted by the illegality of the detention, and so the question was "whether the record warrant[ed] that conclusion."
The state of Florida had argued that Royer was not detained. In the state's view, the entire encounter was consensual, so there was no detention of Royer.Even if the encounter was not consensual, the state maintained, the police had a reasonable, articulable suspicion that Royer was transporting drugs, andthis belief justified the detention. Furthermore, claimed the state, the police had probable cause to arrest Royer, and so he was not being illegally held. To the High Court, the argument that the encounter was consensual was "untenable" because the detectives used "a show of authority" that would have made a reasonable person feel detained.
The Court gave more attention to the argument that the police officers had reasonable suspicion to stop Royer. They conceded that the officers had reasonable suspicion, but believed that "at the time Royer produced the key to his suitcase, the detention to which he was then subjected was a more serious intrusion on his personal liberty than is allowable on mere suspicion of criminalactivity." What may have been a permissible stop at first "escalated into aninvestigatory procedure in a police interrogation room, where the police, unsatisfied with previous explanations, sought to confirm their suspicions . .. [a]s a practical matter, Royer was under arrest." Moreover, the actions ofthe detectives were too intrusive to qualify as a limited Terry stop.The detectives did not return Royer's driver's license and ticket, they removed him from the immediate area, and the detectives may have been able to "investigate the contents of Royer's bags in a more expeditious way." The plurality mentioned the use of trained dogs as a less intrusive alternative to the kind of methods employed by the detectives.
To justify Royer's arrest, the police had to have probable cause, a standardof belief that is stronger than reasonable suspicion and requires more supporting information. The state of Florida argued that the police had enough information to support probable cause, but the Court disagreed. The Court could not agree that "every nervous young man paying cash for a ticket to New York City under an assumed name and carrying two heavy bags may be arrested and held to answer for a serious felony charge." Ultimately, the Court affirmed theappeals court's decision and the prosecution of Royer was over.
Justice Powell wrote a concurring opinion to emphasize that despite the Court's holding, "the public has a compelling interest in identifying by all lawful means those who traffic in illicit drugs for personal profit." However, inRoyer's case, the actions of the detectives went beyond lawful means. Powellnoted that Royer "found himself in a small, windowless room--described as a "`large closet'"--alone with two officers who, without his consent, already had obtained possession of his checked baggage." Royer clearly was not free toleave and, in Powell's opinion, Royer's surrender of the luggage key could not be seen as consensual.
Justice Brennan concurred in the result of the case, but he felt that the plurality had decided more issues than was necessary. The plurality did not haveto hold that the stop of Royer was legal; it could have merely affirmed theruling of the appeals court on the basis that the stop exceeded the bounds ofsuch a stop delineated in Terry. Brennan believed that the stop itself was illegal because the detectives did not have enough information to support a reasonable suspicion that Royer was committing a crime. The observationsmade by the detectives (Royer was young, nervous, pale, paid with cash, looked around at other people, and used heavy luggage) were "perfectly consistentwith innocent behavior and [could not] possibly give rise to any inference supporting a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity." Brennan admitted that"traffic in illicit drugs is a matter of pressing national concern," but hewarned that the nation's "zeal for effective law enforcement" should not obscure "the peril to our free society that lies in this Court's disregard of theprotections afforded by the Fourth Amendment."
Chief Justice Burger and Justices Blackmun, Rehnquist, and O'Connor dissented. In his own dissenting opinion, Justice Blackmun expressed his view that, inlight of the threats posed by illegal drug traffic, the actions of the police officers were reasonable and therefore not violative of the Fourth Amendment. Justice Rehnquist, joined by Chief Justice Burger and Justice O'Connor, offered a more pointed dissent. "The plurality's meandering opinion," Rehnquistwrote, "contains in it a little something for everyone." Although much of its opinion indicated that it was not indifferent to the dangers of drug trafficking, the plurality managed to affirm the reversal of conviction, all of which reminded Rehnquist of an old nursery rhyme: "`The King of France/With forty thousand men/Marched up the hill/And then marched back again.'" Rehnquist compared the plurality's "mind-set" to that of shuffleboard officials, more "concerned with which particular square the disc has landed on" than administering criminal justice.
Rehnquist mocked the plurality's assessment of the detectives' conduct. The plurality had mentioned that Royer was kept in a small room with two chairs; this left Rehnquist wondering whether the encounter would have been constitutional if the detectives had searched the luggage in the busy concourse, or "[i]f the room had been large and spacious, rather than small, if it had possessed three chairs rather than two." Rehnquist compared the plurality's vague opinion to an Impressionist painting, and insisted that the Court's holding wasforeclosed by the Court's decision in United States v. Mendenhall. Inthat case, the Court had upheld the stop, detention, and strip search of a woman who was suspected of possessing drugs. The search of the woman in Mendenhall had been upheld on the basis that the woman had consented to thesearch. Rehnquist believed that Royer, who went on to gain a college degree in communications, also had consented, and that the detectives had done nothing to warrant invalidation of that consent.
Impact
Although the Royer case has not been reversed, subsequent decisions bythe Court have eroded its importance. In 1991, for example, the Court upheldthe warrantless, random stop and search of bus passengers for drugs. In 1996, Justice Rehnquist enjoyed some vindication for his dissent in Royerfrom the Court's decision in Ohio v. Robinette. In that case, the Court held that a police officer's subjective intentions have no bearing on the legality of a continuing detention, and that a police officer need not advisea detained person that he or she is free to go before the person's consent toa search will be deemed voluntary.
Related Cases
- Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968).
- United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544 (1980).
- Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429 (1991).
- Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. 33 (1996).
Further Readings
- Choi, Jin S., and Ernest Kim. "The Constitutional Status of Photo Stops: The Implications of Terry and Its Progeny." Asian Pacific American Law Journal, fall 1994.
- Owens, John B., "Judge Baer and the Politics of the Fourth Amendment: AnAlternative to Bad Man Jurisprudence." Stanford Law & Policy Review, winter 1997.
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