Search and Seizure — reasonable suspicion

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U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Criminal

Search and Seizure — reasonable suspicion

Officers investigating a report of shots being fired had reasonable suspicion to stop the defendant’s car, which matched the car identified with the shooting.

“All told, the circumstances here—the dangerousness of the crime, the short lapse of time between the dispatches and the stop, the stop’s proximity to the reported shots, the car’s color, and the light traffic late at night—provided ample justification for stopping Burgess’s car. In such a situation, it is reasonable for police to act quickly lest they lose the only opportunity they may have to solve a recent violent crime or to interrupt an advancing one. After all, reasonable, articulable, particularized suspicion is not a matter of certainty, and recent reports of large caliber gunshots fired from a black car in a densely populated urban area added up to enough to permit a stop of this car to allow for further investigation.”

Affirmed.

13-3571 U.S. v. Burgess

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Chang, J., Tinder, J.