01-1122 U.S. v. Morrison

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“What we have here is the police following a trail which led, very quickly, to Morrison. … [A] witness saw a black man running from the bank heading toward a parking lot for a neighboring apartment building. They had a general description of the robber. They traced the route and found currency, lending credence to the witness’ account. They then interviewed persons in the apartment buildings and were given two descriptions of a dark-colored Honda in the lot of one of the buildings and two descriptions of a large, old, reddish brown car in the other. Both cars stood out to the residents as not belonging where they were parked. Furthermore, a woman in the first building noted that there were two black men in the Honda almost exactly 24 hours before the robbery (the timing is significant if casing the bank was what the men were up to); she was a black woman who found the presence of the men suspicious because she knew she was the only black person living in the building. She wrote down the number on the license plate, further proof that she certainly suspected that something nefarious was a possibility. When the police conducted a search in a fairly large area surrounding the bank, in what surely had to seem like more than a mere coincidence, they found the two suspicious cars parked side by side.”

“We have no trouble concluding that the officers’ suspicions were reasonable and supported a Terry stop of the Honda.”

Affirmed.