SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Florida v. Bostick
501 U.S. 429 (1991)

As a part of Florida’s war on drugs the police engaged in a process of randomly searching buses and requesting that certain passengers consent to a search of their luggage. Two officers, who were clearly wearing badges, boarded a bus on which Terrance Bostick was a passenger. It was apparent that one of the officers had a pouch that contained a handgun. The officers for no articuable reason, chose to target Bostick for a search. They asked him to produce his bus ticket and identification. The officers proceeded to examine these and returned them to him, finding them to be in order. The officers then explained that they were narcotics officers who were looking for illegal narcotics. They then requested to search Bostick’s luggage. Although disputed by Bostick, the trial court concluded as a matter of fact that Bostick was informed that he could refuse consent. The police then searched Bostick’s luggage finding illegal contraband.

The issue before the court was whether the circumstances present on the bus created an illegal seizure of Bostick under the Fourth Amendment which would as a result require the suppression of any evidence obtained as a result of that seizure.

The court reasoned that a seizure is not effectuated by the mere presence of police officers, or by the fact that they ask a few questions of a citizen. Bostick argued that his case was more intrusive because it happened on a bus where he was confined to a small area with only one exit, and that when coupled with the fact that the two officers were towering over him, clearly possessing a weapon, it produced a very “intimidating” situation which denied him the freedom to leave. Bostick argued that not only did he feel this way, but that any other reasonable passenger under similar circumstance would have reasonably concluded that he or she was denied the freedom to leave as well. Bostick claimed he had nowhere to go on the bus to avoid the police and that if he left the bus he would have risked losing his luggage because the bus was about to depart the station.

The Supreme Court stated that simply because Bostick did not feel free to leave did not automatically lead to the conclusion that he was seized. The court argued that he would not have felt free to leave even if the police were not present because the bus was scheduled to depart, and that his confinement in the enclosed area of the bus was a natural result of his choosing this form of transportation. The court concluded that Bostick’s “freedom of movement was restricted by a factor independent of police conduct”.

The court then returned the case to Florida and instructed the Florida Supreme Court to apply a TOTALITY OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES TEST to the facts of the case and warned them not to evaluate the situation solely on the fact that it took place on a bus. The court stated its reasoning as follows:

“We adhere to the rule that, in order to determine whether a particular encounter constitutes a seizure, a court must consider all the circumstances surrounding the encounter to determine whether the police conduct would have communicated to a reasonable person that the person was not free to decline the police officers’ request or otherwise terminate the encounter.”

The dissent in this case argued that these random sweeps are violations of our right to liberty that are being embraced as proper under the guise of the drug war. The dissenters, quoting from an earlier Florida case, stated:

This is not Hitler’s Berlin, nor Stalin’s Moscow, nor is it white supremacist South Africa. Yet in Boward County, Florida, these police officers approach every person on board buses and trains (“that time permits”) and check identification [and] tickets, [and] ask to search luggage – all in the name of “voluntary cooperation” with law enforcement…”