The police had obtained a search warrant for an apartment where they expected to find a gun and drugs. While the search team was making preparations, a couple of detectives in an unmarked car conducted surveillance. They saw Bailey and another guy leave the apartment and drive away. The detectives followed the suspects for about five minutes and stopped them a mile away while the search team hit the residence.
The detectives stopped Bailey and his friend incident to the search warrant, based on the Summers rule. I'll talk more about that in a second. They were searched and handcuffed, and the officers took a set of keys from Bailey. Both guys initially said they were coming from Bailey's house, but when they found out it was being searched Bailey changed his mind and said he didn't live there. The detectives called for a marked car to transport Bailey and his friend back to the apartment (for some reason, one of the detectives drove Bailey's car back to the scene).
When they got there, they learned that a gun and drugs had, in fact, been found. Bailey was arrested, and now his keys were seized incident to arrest, and the detectives found that one of the keys fit the front door (I think the keys had already been seized and the cops were just trying to justify the seizure after the fact, but that issue wasn't before the court; the Justices wanted to talk about something else that went wrong in this case).
Going back to Summers for a second... in that case, the Supreme Court ruled that when the police execute a search warrant, they can detain anybody who is in the immediate vicinity, even if they don't have a specific reason to suspect that person of involvement in a crime. The three justifications for this rule are: 1- Officer Safety (the police can exercise control over the scene to prevent the occupants from being dangerous, disruptive, going for help, etc..), 2- Facilitation of the search (the police can detain people so that they don't just sneak away with whatever contraband the police are looking for, or otherwise interfere with the search), and 3- Preventing flight (the police can detain people during the search so that they don't take off once they see that incriminating evidence is found). The Summers decision also pointed out that if someone's house is already being searched, then the additional intrusion of detaining that person there is minimal.
The trouble with this case is that none of those rationales apply to detaining someone a mile away from the scene of the search. Bailey, who didn't even know about the search, didn't pose any immediate danger to the search or to the officers conducting it. And although allowing him to leave could potentially mean that the officers wouldn't have found him later, the court pointed out that you could use that kind of reasoning to detain anyone with any connection to the house, no matter where they happened to be at the time. That isn't what the Summers rule was intended for.
So the court held that the Summers rule is constrained by location: a person who is in the immediate vicinity of the premises being searched pursuant to a warrant may be detained, one who is not in the immediate vicinity may not be detained unless there's another justification. Also, while being detained in your already-being-searched home isn't all that intrusive, being pulled over a mile away, searched, handcuffed, and transported against your will is pretty damn intrusive. The Summers rule did not apply here.
Since Bailey was well outside of any reasonable understanding of "immediate vicinity," the court didn't narrow down exactly what they mean by that. They did say that the factors to consider include the limits of the premises, whether or not the person is in line of sight of the dwelling, and how easy it would be for the person to re-enter the premises. But Bailey was too far away for any of that to be a consideration. This case was sent back to the court of appeals for a ruling on whether or not Bailey's initial detention was justified under Terry.
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