US Supreme Court Prado Navarette v. California 12-9490

Decision here.

   Lorenzo Prado Navarette & Jose Prado Navarette were driving down the highway when an anonymous RP called and said that they had run her off the road.  She gave their location, vehicle description, direction of travel, and license plate.  15 minutes later, a highway patrolman found them a few miles down the road.  He made a u-turn and pulled them over five minutes after that.  The police never observed any bad driving.

   When the officers approached the truck, they smelled marijuana.  There was 30 lbs in the truck bed.  After being convicted of transporting marijuana, the Prado Navarettes appealed.

   They argued that the stop was made without reasonable suspicion because the RP was anonymous.  The Supreme Court compared this case to Florida v. JL and Alabama v. White, both of which involved anonymous RPs.  In JL, someone called to say that a kid standing at a bus stop had a gun.  JL was contacted and searched, and had a gun.  The court would rule that the stop was made without reasonable suspicion because there was no reason to believe the anonymous tip was reliable.  In White, an anonymous RP called and said that a woman was going to drive a brown Plymouth station wagon with a broken taillight from a particular apartment to a particular motel, and that she would be carrying cocaine.  She was stopped, searched, and had cocaine.  The court would rule that this tip was more reliable because the RP obviously had a special familiarity with the woman's affairs, implying that they had access to information about her illegal activities.

   In this case, the court ruled that because the RP called in and reported something which they had apparently just witnessed, and gave an accurate description of the suspect vehicle which was found just down the road shortly afterwards, and called in on a recorded 911 line (which also means that the police would have had access to her phone number and approximate location), this tip was sufficiently reliable to establish reasonable suspicion.  The court acknowledged that this was a close call (in fact, four out of nine Justices disagreed with it and would have suppressed the evidence), but the stop was held to be valid.  The Prado Navarettes' convictions were affirmed.