C|M|LAW Library Blog

Check out our newest collection at C|M|Law library: Terry v. Ohio.

Terry v. Ohio, 392 US 1,  the case that gave us the “Terry stop” in modern policing started right here (almost literally) at 1276 Euclid Avenue.  The decision by the United States Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures is not violated when a police officer stops a suspect on the street and frisks him or her without probable cause to arrest, if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person “may be armed and presently dangerous.”

On October 31, 1963, Veteran Cleveland Police Detective Martin J. McFadden, dressed in plain clothes, was walking his regular beat when he became suspicious of three men whom he thought might be “casing a job, a stick-up.” He testified that he considered it his duty as a police officer to investigate further, so he approached the men, identifying himself as a police officer and asking for their names.  He ended up searching the men and found concealed firearms.

Before Judge Bernard Friedman in the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, defense attorney and future Congressman Louis Stokes, moved to suppress the weapons. Friedman denied the motion, holding that while McFadden did not have probable cause at the outset, he was entitled to briefly stop and frisk the men based on his reasonable cause to believe they were engaged in suspicious activity. Stokes appealed the case and it eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court  affirmed the decision and announced a new legal standard: police may “stop and frisk” a suspect whom the officer reasonably suspects may be armed and dangerous.  Hence the Terry Stop that all lawyers and law students know about.

This landmark case has many connections to Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Congressman Stokes and prosecutor Reuben M. Payne who argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, were both 1953 graduates of Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Two of the judges who heard the appeal for Cuyahoga County’s Eighth District Court of Appeals, Samuel H. Silbert, Class of 1907, and Joseph A. Artl, Class of 1923, were graduates of the Cleveland Law School (Cleveland Law School and John Marshall Law School merged in 1946 to become Cleveland-Marshall Law School). A third judge, James Joseph Patrick Corrigan, taught at Cleveland-Marshall Law School, as did Judge Silbert.

Our Terry v. Ohio collection is made up of items from Louis Stokes’ personal archives and collection along with items donated by Brett Hammond (Louis Stokes’ grandson and currently a Cuyahoga County  Assistant Prosecutor).

Louis Stokes