Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000) is one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s leading Fourth Amendment decisions on when police may stop someone who runs from them. Gardiner Koch Weisberg & Wrona represented the respondent, Sam Wardlow, before the Court.

At a glance

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States, No. 98-1036
• Argued: November 2, 1999
• Decided: January 12, 2000, 5–4
• Majority opinion: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, joined by Justices O’Connor, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas
• Separate opinion: Justice John Paul Stevens, concurring in part and dissenting in part, joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer
• For the respondent: James B. Koch argued the case. Lynn N. Weisberg and Thomas G. Gardiner were with him on the brief.
• For the State of Illinois: Cook County State’s Attorney Richard A. Devine, with the U.S. Solicitor General’s office arguing as amicus curiae in support of Illinois

What happened

On September 9, 1995, uniformed Chicago police officers in a four-car caravan converged on an area on the city’s West Side known for heavy narcotics trafficking. One officer saw Sam Wardlow standing next to a building holding an opaque bag. Wardlow looked toward the officers and ran. The officers caught up with him, and a pat-down of the bag turned up a handgun.

The trial court refused to suppress the gun, and Wardlow was convicted. The Illinois Appellate Court reversed, and the Illinois Supreme Court agreed that his flight did not give police reasonable suspicion to stop him. Illinois took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The question

Under Terry v. Ohio (1968), police may briefly stop a person only if they have a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity. The question in Wardlow was whether a person’s unprovoked flight from police in a high-crime area is enough.

The decision

A divided Court held that it was. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote that presence in a high-crime area alone is not enough, but that nervous, evasive behavior is a relevant factor, and that “headlong flight” is “the consummate act of evasion.” Taken together, the Court said, those facts gave the officer reasonable suspicion for a brief investigative stop.

The Court did not adopt a bright-line rule that flight always justifies a stop. Justice Stevens, writing for four Justices, pointed out that people may run from police for many innocent reasons, and that each case has to be judged on all of its circumstances.

Why it still matters

Wardlow set the national framework for how courts weigh flight from police, and it is still cited in courts and taught in law schools across the country. For GKWW, it is a reminder of the firm’s reach: a case that began in a Chicago courtroom and ended with a national precedent.

Read and listen

• Full opinion (Justia)
• Full opinion (Cornell Legal Information Institute)
• Oral argument audio and case summary (Oyez)
• Oral argument transcript (Supreme Court of the United States)

More of the firm’s reported cases are on GKWW Greatest Hits and on Tom Gardiner’s page. GKWW handles appeals in state and federal courts; see Appellate Law.