{"id":8525,"date":"2013-03-23T14:11:37","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T14:10:36","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-23T14:10:36","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=8525","title":{"rendered":"SSRN: Redefining Fourth Amendment Reasonableness: A Crime-Severity Model for Terry Stops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SSRN: <a href=\"http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2235707\">Redefining Fourth Amendment Reasonableness: A Crime-Severity Model for Terry Stops<\/a> by David Keenan &amp; Tina Mary Thomas. Abstract:      <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This Comment joins a growing chorus of scholarship criticizing the lack of proportionality analysis in the Supreme Court\u2019s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Rather than bemoan the current state of legal doctrine, we offer a practical test that courts could use to determine the permissible scope of pedestrian Terry stops. Specifically, we propose that courts adopt a crime-severity model that distinguishes non-criminal, malum prohibitum infractions punishable by fine only (like jaywalking, simple trespass, and open container laws), from malum in se misdemeanors or felonies punishable by jail time. Two state supreme courts \u2014 Massachusetts\u2019 and Washington\u2019s \u2014 have already adopted such an approach. As a result, police in those states may only detain persons suspected of non-criminal infractions briefly for the purpose of writing tickets; they cannot use non-criminal conduct to justify intrusive stop-and-frisks. Our Comment takes these decisions as a starting point to engage in a broader debate about crime-severity\u2019s usefulness as a rubric for assessing police conduct under the Fourth Amendment. The recent adoption by many states of laws decriminalizing marijuana possession raises the stakes of the debate and helps underscore the practical significance of our contribution. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>b2evALnk.b2WPAutP <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=8525\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}