protective search
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 407 U.S. 143 - Adams v. Williams · 1972Most cited · 9,335 citing opinions
Terry frisk
The purpose of this limited search is not to discover evidence of crime, but to allow the officer to pursue his investigation without fear of violence, and thus the frisk for weapons might be equally necessary and reasonable, whether or not carrying a concealed weapon violated any applicable state law. So long as the officer is entitled to make a forcible stop, and has reason to believe that the suspect is armed and dangerous, he may conduct a weapons search limited in scope to this protective purpose.
How often courts cite the case defining “protective search”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “protective search” — 9,325 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.