{"id":350833,"date":"2025-12-19T06:09:46","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T06:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/legal\/defining-a-high-crime-area-in-mayo-v-united-states\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T06:09:46","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T06:09:46","slug":"defining-a-high-crime-area-in-mayo-v-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=350833","title":{"rendered":"Defining a &#8220;high crime area&#8221; in Mayo v. United States"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cHigh crime area.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Police officers invoke this phrase all the time.\u00a0 Like \u201cfurtive movements, \u201csuspicious bulge\u201d or \u201cexcited utterance, it is a legal sounding phrase they use to justify what might otherwise be an illegal detention. \u00a0Police include it in their toolkit of phrases to throw out when drafting a police report or testifying on the stand.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The phrase was used most significantly in the U.S. Supreme Court case of <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/528\/119\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><em>Illinois v. Wardlow<\/em><\/a>, 528 U.S. 119 (2000).\u00a0 In that case, the Court ruled that a suspect\u2019s \u201cunprovoked flight\u201d from police in a high <a href=\"https:\/\/koehlerlaw.net\/criminal-defense-dc\/\">crime<\/a> area provided the necessary legal basis for an investigatory stop under the Fourth Amendment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ever since that time, it seems as if every area in which police make a stop has experienced high levels of crime.\u00a0 This is probably not surprising in an urban area such as D.C.\u00a0 But do city-dwellers forfeit their constitutional protections?<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The D.C. Court of Appeals decided, among other things, to qualify the \u201chigh crime area\u201d phrase in its recent <em>en banc<\/em> decision in <a href=\"https:\/\/case-law.vlex.com\/vid\/mayo-v-u-s-1050046017\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><em>Mayo v. United States<\/em><\/a>, 315 A.3d 606 (D.C. 2024).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For one thing, the court changed the phrase to \u201cgeneral locational crime evidence.\u201d\u00a0 (Just imagine police officers struggling with that mouthful on the witness stand.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More importantly, the court made clear that simple invocation of the phrase will no longer suffice.\u00a0 Instead, \u201cgeneral locational crime evidence, if relevant and nonconclusory, may provide context for police observations of ambiguous conduct, but its appropriate weight will turn on its quantity and specificity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, evidence that the area has experienced a number of carjacking will not have much relevance in a drug case.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That is because, going back to <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/392\/1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><em>Terry v. Ohio<\/em><\/a>, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), \u201c[t]he facts contributing to reasonable suspicion must be specific and provide a \u2018particularized and objective basis\u201d to suspect that \u2018the particular individual being stopped is engaged in wrongdoing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thousands of people, the court held, \u201clive and go about their legitimate day-to-day activities in areas\u201d that might be labeled as having high crime rates:\u00a0 \u201c[O]ur court has long warned against reliance on the \u2018high crime area\u2019 phrase as a \u2018talismanic litany\u2019 to justify Terry stops . . .Our abiding concern is that \u2018residents of certain neighborhoods . . . may be more likely to be suspected of engaging in criminal activity simply because of where they live and frequent.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 People should not be \u201ctarred with the sins of their neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe thus hold that courts should no longer give weight to a bare \u2018high-crime area\u201d label in assessing the validity of a <em>Terry<\/em> stop.\u201d\u00a0 Instead, the court should conduct a \u201cfact-intensive inquiry\u201d that turns on the \u201cquantity and specificity of the information, with particular focus on the recency, frequency, and geographic proximity of the relevant criminal activity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In fact, \u201chigh crime area\u201d could be used by the defense to counter the government\u2019s arguments that a suspect\u2019s flight from police contributes to reasonable suspicion or probable cause:\u00a0 \u201cThere are myriad reasons an innocent person might run away from the police.\u201d\u00a0 That a person is much more likely to be accused of a crime in a high crime area is one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cHigh crime area.\u201d\u00a0 Police officers invoke this phrase all the time.\u00a0 Like \u201cfurtive movements, \u201csuspicious bulge\u201d or \u201cexcited utterance, it is a legal sounding phrase they use to justify what might otherwise be an illegal detention. \u00a0Police include it in their toolkit of phrases to throw out when drafting a police report or testifying on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[12850,5422,20338,1521,8253,9149,9148],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-350833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal","tag-area","tag-crime","tag-defining","tag-high","tag-mayo","tag-states","tag-united"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Defining a &quot;high crime area&quot; in Mayo v. 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