PEOPLE V. DE BOUR 386 N.Y.S.2D 375 (1976)

People v. De Bour 386 N.Y.S.2d 375 (1976)



People v. De Bour 386 N.Y.S.2d 375 (1976)

Both of these request the very perceptive and troublesome matters pertaining to the environment and span of policeman performance in the direction of personal citizens. In People v De Bour the alignment of the Appellate Division should be affirmed; in People v La Pene the alignment of the Appellate Division should be reversed. With this admonition to the judiciary to guard against unjustified police conduct, the United States Supreme Court in Terry v Ohio sustained the police practice of forcible Street detentions against a challenge that this practice constituted a seizure in violation of the fourth amendment. The Court failed, however to adequately explain what constitutes a seizure within the fourth amendment and to delineate the criteria the police must satisfy in order to justify street detentions. This failure by the Court not only left these important tasks to the lower federal and state courts but also seriously undermined the ability of these courts to perform the protective function assigned to them in Terry. As a result, the variations existing prior to Terry in the lower courts regarding the resolution of the street detent ion issues continued.

The Court decided in the first instance in a few cases: cases involving the States of the Union, a State or a foreign diplomat. For all other cases, it has an appellate jurisdiction. In any case, its judgments are final. It is generally limited to the most important cases, and in particular, to decide whether the laws of the United States or those of different States, conform to the Constitution, which it is the final interpreter. The case of People v. DeBour is an example of the continuing efforts of the New York Court of Appeals to fill the definitional void left by Terry. Prior to DeBour, the court of appeals had developed a three-tiered hierarchy of permissible police intrusions into individual privacy, along with correlative standards for justifying each tier. In DeBour, the court added to these existing tiers by recognizing a new level of permissible police intrusion and by creating a new justification for this level. In so doing, however, the court appears to have abdicated the protective responsibility assigned to it in Terry. This graduated analysis of seizure situations, which was further extended in DeBour, substantially lessens the quality of suspicion necessary to justify an intrusion into individual privacy (Justia, 1968).

A basic principle of the independent society is that people are to be free from unnecessary governmental interruption into their private lives. The 4th amendment has been held to communicate an immeasurable right of personal security that belongs as much to the person on the street as to the person in his home. However, effective law enforcement is essential to provide full pleasure of a society that is orderly and peaceful according to the established regulations of law. Therefore, the policymakers and courts have acknowledged that when ...