State v. Valentine

In State v. Valentine, 134 N.J. 536, 541, 636 A.2d 505 (1994), the New Jersey Supreme Court reaffirmed the Terry standards governing the propriety of a warrantless "stop and frisk." Our Supreme Court has interpreted the New Jersey Constitution to afford the same, not greater, protection as the Fourth Amendment with respect to investigatory stops and pat-down searches for weapons incident to such stops. See Valentine, 134 N.J. at 543, 636 A.2d 505. The federal and state standards are thus identical. Justice Garibaldi, writing for the Court in Valentine, found that "courts judge the reasonableness of the pat-down within the context of the circumstances confronting the police officer." Ibid. Justice Garibaldi also recognized that the Terry standard is an objective one, but the process does not deal with hard certainties, but with probabilities. Long before the law of probabilities was articulated as such, practical people formulated common-sense conclusions about human behavior; jurors as factfinders are permitted to do the same and so are law enforcement officers. . . .Ibid.