NOTICE: This opinion is subject to
formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the
United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter
of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington,
D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in
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															SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

															_________________

															No. 18–556

															_________________

															KANSAS, PETITIONER v. CHARLES
GLOVER

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
kansas

															[April 6, 2020]

															Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the
Court.

															This case presents the question whether a police
officer violates the Fourth Amendment by initiating an
investigative traffic stop after running a vehicle’s license plate
and learning that the registered owner has a revoked driver’s
license. We hold that when the officer lacks information negating
an inference that the owner is the driver of the vehicle, the stop
is reasonable.

															I

															Kansas charged respondent Charles Glover, Jr.,
with driving as a habitual violator after a traffic stop revealed
that he was driving with a revoked license. See Kan. Stat. Ann.
§8–285(a)(3) (2001). Glover filed a motion to suppress all evidence
seized during the stop, claiming that the officer lacked reasonable
suspicion. Neither Glover nor the police officer testified at the
suppression hearing. Instead, the parties stipulated to the
following facts:

															“1. Deputy Mark Mehrer is a certified law
enforcement officer employed by the Douglas County Kansas
Sheriff ’s Office.

															2. On April 28, 2016, Deputy Mehrer was on
routine patrol in Douglas County when he observed a 1995 Chevrolet
1500 pickup truck with Kansas plate 295ATJ.

															3. Deputy Mehrer ran Kansas plate 295ATJ
through the Kansas Department of Revenue’s file service. The
registration came back to a 1995 Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck.

															4. Kansas Department of Revenue files indicated
the truck was registered to Charles Glover Jr. The files also
indicated that Mr. Glover had a revoked driver’s license in the
State of Kansas.

															5. Deputy Mehrer assumed the registered owner
of the truck was also the driver, Charles Glover Jr.

															6. Deputy Mehrer did not observe any traffic
infractions, and did not attempt to identify the driver [of] the
truck. Based solely on the information that the registered owner of
the truck was revoked, Deputy Mehrer initiated a traffic stop.

															7. The driver of the truck was identified as the
defendant, Charles Glover Jr.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 60–61.

															The District Court granted Glover’s motion to
suppress. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that “it was
reasonable for [Deputy] Mehrer to infer that the driver was the
owner of the vehicle” because “there were specific and articulable
facts from which the officer’s common-sense inference gave rise to
a reasonable suspicion.” 54 Kan. App. 2d 377, 385, 400 P.3d 182,
188 (2017).

															The Kansas Supreme Court reversed. According to
the court, Deputy Mehrer did not have reasonable suspicion because
his inference that Glover was behind the wheel amounted to “only a
hunch” that Glover was engaging in criminal activity. 308 Kan. 590,
591, 422 P.3d 64, 66 (2018). The court further explained that
Deputy Mehrer’s “hunch” involved “applying and stacking unstated
assumptions that are unreasonable without further factual basis,”
namely, that “the registered owner was likely the primary driver of
the vehicle” and that “the owner will likely disregard the
suspension or revocation order and continue to drive.” Id., at 595–597, 422 P. 3d, at 68–70. We granted Kansas’ petition
for a writ of certiorari, 587 U. S. ___ (2019), and now
reverse.

															II

															Under this Court’s precedents, the Fourth
Amendment permits an officer to initiate a brief investigative
traffic stop when he has “a particularized and objective basis for
suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity.” United States v. Cortez , 449
U.S. 411 , 417–418 (1981); see also Terry v. Ohio , 392 U.S.
1 , 21–22 (1968). “Although a mere ‘hunch’ does not create
reasonable suspicion, the level of suspicion the standard requires
is considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of
the evidence, and obviously less than is necessary for probable
cause.” Prado Navarette v. California , 572 U.S.
393 , 397 (2014) (quotation altered); United States v. Sokolow , 490 U.S.
1 , 7 (1989).

															Because it is a “less demanding” standard,
“reasonable suspicion can be established with information that is
different in quantity or content than that required to establish
probable cause.” Alabama v. White , 496 U.S.
325 , 330 (1990). The standard “depends on the factual and
practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable
and prudent men , not legal technicians, act.” Navarette , supra , at 402 (quoting Ornelas v. United
States , 517 U.S.
690 , 695 (1996) (emphasis added; internal quotation marks
omitted)). Courts “cannot reasonably demand scientific certainty
. . . where none exists.” Illinois v. Wardlow , 528 U.S.
119 , 125 (2000). Rather, they must permit officers to make
“commonsense judgments and inferences about human behavior.” Ibid. ; see also Navarette , supra , at 403
(noting that an officer “ ‘need not rule out the possibility
of innocent conduct’ ”).

															III

															We have previously recognized that States have
a “vital interest in ensuring that only those qualified to do so
are permitted to operate motor vehicles [and] that licensing,
registration, and vehicle inspection requirements are being
observed.” Delaware v. Prouse , 440 U.S.
648 , 658 (1979). With this in mind, we turn to whether the
facts known to Deputy Mehrer at the time of the stop gave rise to
reason- able suspicion. We conclude that they did.

															Before initiating the stop, Deputy Mehrer
observed an individual operating a 1995 Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck
with Kansas plate 295ATJ. He also knew that the registered owner of
the truck had a revoked license and that the model of the truck
matched the observed vehicle. From these three facts, Deputy Mehrer
drew the commonsense inference that Glover was likely the driver of
the vehicle, which provided more than reasonable suspicion to
initiate the stop.

															The fact that the registered owner of a vehicle
is not always the driver of the vehicle does not negate the reason-
ableness of Deputy Mehrer’s inference. Such is the case with all
reasonable inferences. The reasonable suspicion inquiry “falls
considerably short” of 51% accuracy, see United States v. Arvizu , 534 U.S.
266 , 274 (2002), for, as we have explained, “[t]o be reasonable
is not to be perfect,” Heien v. North Carolina , 574 U.S.
54 , 60 (2014).

															Glover’s revoked license does not render Deputy
Mehrer’s inference unreasonable either. Empirical studies
demonstrate what common experience readily reveals: Drivers with
revoked licenses frequently continue to drive and therefore to pose
safety risks to other motorists and pedestrians. See, e.g. ,
2 T. Neuman et al., National Coop. Hwy. Research Program
Report 500: A Guide for Addressing Collisions Involving Unlicensed
Drivers and Drivers With Suspended or Revoked Licenses,
p. III–1 (2003) (noting that 75% of drivers with suspended or
revoked licenses continue to drive); National Hwy. and Traffic
Safety Admin., Research Note: Driver License Compliance Status in
Fatal Crashes 2 (Oct. 2014) (noting that approximately 19% of motor
vehicle fatalities from 2008–2012 “involved drivers with invalid
licenses”).

															Although common sense suffices to justify this
inference, Kansas law reinforces that it is reasonable to infer
that an individual with a revoked license may continue driving. The
State’s license-revocation scheme covers drivers who have already
demonstrated a disregard for the law or are categorically unfit to
drive. The Division of Vehicles of the Kansas Department of Revenue
(Division) “shall” revoke a driver’s license upon certain
convictions for involuntary manslaughter, vehicular homicide,
battery, reckless driving, fleeing or attempting to elude a police
officer, or conviction of a felony in which a motor vehicle is
used. Kan. Stat. Ann. §§8–254(a), 8–252. Reckless driving is
defined as “driv[ing] any vehicle in willful or wanton disregard
for the safety of persons or property.” §8–1566(a). The Division
also has discretion to revoke a license if a driver “[h]as been
convicted with such frequency of serious offenses against traffic
regulations governing the movement of vehicles as to indicate a
disrespect for traffic laws and a disregard for the safety of other
persons on the highways,” “has been convicted of three or more
moving traffic violations committed on separate occasions within a
12-month period,” “is incompetent to drive a motor vehicle,” or
“has been convicted of a moving traffic violation, committed at a
time when the person’s driving privileges were restricted,
suspended[,] or revoked.” §§8–255(a)(1)–(4). Other reasons include
violating license restrictions, §8–245(c), being under house
arrest, §21–6609(c), and being a habitual violator, §8–286, which
Kansas defines as a resident or nonresident who has been convicted
three or more times within the past five years of certain
enumerated driving offenses, §8–285. The concerns motivating the
State’s various grounds for revocation lend further credence to the
inference that a registered owner with a revoked Kansas driver’s
license might be the one driving the vehicle.

															IV

															Glover and the dissent respond with two
arguments as to why Deputy Mehrer lacked reasonable suspicion.
Neither is persuasive.

															A

															First, Glover and the dissent argue that
Deputy Mehrer’s inference was unreasonable because it was not
grounded in his law enforcement training or experience. Nothing in
our Fourth Amendment precedent supports the notion that, in
determining whether reasonable suspicion exists, an officer can
draw inferences based on knowledge gained only through law
enforcement training and experience. We have repeatedly recognized
the opposite. In Navarette , we noted a number of
behaviors—including driving in the median, crossing the center line
on a highway, and swerving—that as a matter of common sense provide
“sound indicia of drunk driving.” 572 U. S., at 402. In Wardlow , we made the unremarkable observation that
“[h]eadlong flight—wherever it occurs—is the consummate act of
evasion” and therefore could factor into a police officer’s
reasonable suspicion determination. 528 U. S., at 124. And in Sokolow , we recognized that the defendant’s method of
payment for an airplane ticket contributed to the agents’
reasonable suspicion of drug trafficking because we “fe[lt]
confident” that “[m]ost business travelers . . . purchase
airline tickets by credit card or check” rather than cash. 490
U. S., at 8–9. So too here. The inference that the driver of a
car is its registered owner does not require any specialized
training; rather, it is a reasonable inference made by ordinary
people on a daily basis.

															The dissent reads our cases differently,
contending that they permit an officer to use only the common sense
derived from his “experiences in law enforcement.” Post , at
5 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.). Such a standard defies the “common
sense” understanding of common sense, i.e. , information that
is accessible to people generally, not just some specialized subset
of society. More importantly, this standard appears nowhere in our
precedent. In fact, we have stated that reasonable suspicion is an
“abstract” concept that cannot be reduced to “a neat set of legal
rules,” Arvizu , 534 U. S., at 274 (internal quotation
marks omitted), and we have repeatedly rejected courts’ efforts to
impose a rigid structure on the concept of reasonableness, ibid. ; Sokolow , 490 U. S., at 7–8. This is
precisely what the dissent’s rule would do by insisting that
officers must be treated as bifurcated persons, completely
precluded from drawing factual inferences based on the commonly
held knowledge they have acquired in their everyday lives.

															The dissent’s rule would also impose on police
the burden of pointing to specific training materials or field
experiences justifying reasonable suspicion for the myriad
infractions in municipal criminal codes. And by removing common
sense as a source of evidence, the dissent would considerably
narrow the daylight between the showing required for probable cause
and the “less stringent” showing required for reasonable suspicion. Prouse , 440 U. S., at 654; see White , 496
U. S., at 330. Finally, it would impermissibly tie a traffic
stop’s validity to the officer’s length of service. See Devenpeck v. Alford , 543 U.S.
146 , 154 (2004). Such requirements are inconsistent with our
Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, and we decline to adopt them
here.

															In reaching this conclusion, we in no way
minimize the significant role that specialized training and
experience routinely play in law enforcement investigations. See, e.g. , Arvizu , 534 U. S., at 273–274. We simply
hold that such experience is not required in every
instance.

															B

															Glover and the dissent also contend that
adopting Kansas’ view would eviscerate the need for officers to
base reasonable suspicion on “specific and articulable facts”
particularized to the individual, see Terry , 392 U. S.,
at 21, because police could instead rely exclusively on
probabilities. Their argument carries little force.

															As an initial matter, we have previously stated
that officers, like jurors, may rely on probabilities in the
reasonable suspicion context. See Sokolow , 490 U. S.,
at 8–9; Cortez , 449 U. S., at 418. Moreover, as
explained above, Deputy Mehrer did not rely exclusively on
probabilities. He knew that the license plate was linked to a truck
matching the observed vehicle and that the registered owner of the
vehicle had a revoked license. Based on these minimal facts, he
used common sense to form a reasonable suspicion that a specific
individual was potentially engaged in specific criminal
activity—driving with a revoked license. Traffic stops of this
nature do not delegate to officers “broad and unlimited discretion”
to stop drivers at random. United States v. Brignoni-Ponce , 422 U.S.
873 , 882 (1975). Nor do they allow officers to stop drivers
whose conduct is no different from any other driver’s. See Brown v. Texas , 443 U.S.
47 , 52 (1979). Accordingly, combining database information and
commonsense judgments in this context is fully consonant with this
Court’s Fourth Amendment precedents.[ 1 ]

															V

															This Court’s precedents have repeatedly
affirmed that “ ‘the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth
Amendment is “reasonableness.” ’ ” Heien , 574
U. S., at 60 (quoting Riley v. California , 573 U.S.
373 , 381 (2014)). Under the totality of the circumstances of
this case, Deputy Mehrer drew an entirely reasonable inference that
Glover was driving while his license was revoked.

															We emphasize the narrow scope of our holding.
Like all seizures, “[t]he officer’s action must be ‘justified at
its inception.’ ” Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist.
Court of Nev. , Humboldt Cty. , 542
U.S. 177 , 185 (2004) (quoting United States v. Sharpe , 470 U.S.
675 , 682 (1985)). “The standard takes into account the totality
of the circumstances—the whole picture.” Navarette , 572
U. S., at 397 (internal quotation marks omitted). As a result,
the presence of additional facts might dispel reasonable suspicion.
See Terry , supra , at 28. For example, if an officer
knows that the registered owner of the vehicle is in his
mid-sixties but observes that the driver is in her mid-twenties,
then the totality of the circumstances would not “raise a suspicion
that the particular individual being stopped is engaged in
wrongdoing.” Cortez , 449 U. S., at 418; Ornelas ,
517 U. S., at 696 (“ ‘[e]ach case is to be decided on its
own facts and circumstances’ ” (quoting Ker v. California , 374 U.S.
23 , 33 (1963))). Here, Deputy Mehrer possessed no exculpatory
information—let alone sufficient information to rebut the
reasonable inference that Glover was driving his own truck—and thus
the stop was justified.[ 2 ]

															*  *  *

															For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the
judgment of the Kansas Supreme Court, and we remand the case for
further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

															It is so ordered. Notes 1 The dissent contends that
this approach “pave[s] the road to finding reasonable suspicion
based on nothing more than a demographic profile.” Post , at
6–7 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.). To alleviate any doubt, we
reiterate that the Fourth Amendment requires, and Deputy Mehrer
had, an individualized suspicion that a particular citizen was
engaged in a particular crime. Such a particularized suspicion
would be lacking in the dissent’s hypothetical scenario, which, in
any event, is already prohibited by our precedents. See United
States v. Brignoni-Ponce , 422 U.S.
873 , 876 (1975) (holding that it violated the Fourth Amendment
to stop and “question [a vehicle’s] occupants [about their
immigration status] when the only ground for suspicion [was] that
the occupants appear[ed] to be of Mexican ancestry”). 2 The dissent argues that
this approach impermissibly places the burden of proof on the
individual to negate the inference of reasonable suspicion. Post , at 3. Not so. As the above analysis makes clear, it is
the information possessed by the officer at the time of the
stop, not any information offered by the individual after the fact,
that can negate the inference. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

															_________________

															No. 18–556

															_________________

															KANSAS, PETITIONER v. CHARLES
GLOVER

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
kansas

															[April 6, 2020]

															Justice Kagan, with whom Justice Ginsburg
joins, concurring.

															When you see a car coming down the street, your
common sense tells you that the registered owner may well be behind
the wheel. See ante, at 4, 9. Not always, of course.
Families share cars; friends borrow them. Still, a person often
buys a vehicle to drive it himself. So your suspicion that the
owner is driving would be perfectly reasonable. See ibid. Now, though, consider a wrinkle: Suppose you
knew that the registered owner of the vehicle no longer had a valid
driver’s license. That added fact raises a new question. What are
the odds that someone who has lost his license would continue to
drive? The answer is by no means obvious. You might think that a
person told not to drive on pain of criminal penalty would obey the
order—so that if his car was on the road, someone else (a family
member, a friend) must be doing the driving. Or you might have the
opposite intuition—that a person’s reasons for driving would
overcome his worries about violating the law, no matter the
possible punishment. But most likely (let’s be honest), you just
wouldn’t know. Especially if you’ve not had your own license taken
away, your everyday experience has given you little basis to assess
the probabilities. Your common sense can therefore no longer guide
you.

															Even so, Deputy Mark Mehrer had reasonable
suspicion to stop the truck in this case, and I join the Court’s
opinion holding as much. Crucially for me, Mehrer knew yet one more
thing about the vehicle’s registered owner, and it related to his
proclivity for breaking driving laws. As the Court recounts, Mehrer
learned from a state database that Charles Glover, the truck’s
owner, had had his license revoked under Kansas law. See ante, at 2. And Kansas almost never revokes a license except
for serious or repeated driving offenses. See Kan. Stat. Ann.
§8–254 (2001); ante, at 5. Crimes like vehicular homicide
and manslaughter, or vehicular flight from a police officer,
provoke a license revocation; so too do multiple convictions for
moving traffic violations within a short time. See ante, at
5. In other words, a person with a revoked license has already
shown a willingness to flout driving restrictions. That fact, as
the Court states, provides a “reason[ ] to infer” that such a
person will drive without a license—at least often enough to
warrant an investigatory stop. Ibid. And there is nothing
else here to call that inference into question. That is because the
parties’ unusually austere stipulation confined the case to the
facts stated above— i.e., that Mehrer stopped Glover’s truck
because he knew that Kansas had revoked Glover’s license.

															But as already suggested, I would find this a
different case if Kansas had barred Glover from driving on a ground
that provided no similar evidence of his penchant for ignoring
driving laws. Consider, for example, if Kansas had suspended rather
than revoked Glover’s license. Along with many other States, Kansas
suspends licenses for matters having nothing to do with road
safety, such as failing to pay parking tickets, court fees, or
child support. See Kan. Stat. Ann. §8–2110(b) (2018 Cum. Supp.);
see also, e.g. , N. J. Stat. Ann. §39:4–139.10 (West
Supp. 2019); Ark. Code Ann. §9–14–239 (Supp. 2019). Indeed, several
studies have found that most license suspensions do not relate to
driving at all; what they most relate to is being poor. See Brief
for Fines and Fees Justice Center et al. as Amici
Curiae 7. So the good reason the Court gives for thinking that
someone with a revoked license will keep driving—that he has a
history of disregarding driving rules—would no longer apply. And
without that, the case for assuming that an unlicensed driver is at
the wheel is hardly self-evident. It would have to rest on an idea
about the frequency with which even those who had previously
complied with driving laws would defy a State’s penalty-backed
command to stay off the roads. But where would that idea come from?
As discussed above, I doubt whether our collective common sense
could do the necessary work. See supra, at 1. Or otherwise
said, I suspect that any common sense invoked in this altered
context would not much differ from a “mere ‘hunch’ ”—and so
“not create reasonable suspicion.” Prado Navarette v. California , 572 U.S.
393 , 397 (2014) (quoting Terry v. Ohio , 392 U.S.
1 , 27 (1968)).

															And even when, as under the revocation scheme
here, a starting presumption of reasonable suspicion makes sense,
the defendant may show that in his case additional information
dictates the opposite result. The Court is clear on this point,
emphasizing that under the applicable totality-of-the-circumstances
test, “the presence of additional facts might dispel reasonable
suspicion” even though an officer knows that a car on the road
belongs to a person with a revoked license. Ante, at 9; see ante, at 1 (stating that further information may “negat[e]
an inference that the owner is the driver of the vehicle”). Just as
the Court once said of a trained drug-detection dog’s “alert,” the
license-revocation signal is always subject to a defendant’s
challenge, whether through cross-examination of the officer or
introduction of his own fact or expert witnesses. Florida v. Harris , 568 U.S.
237 , 247 (2013).

															That challenge may take any number of forms. The
Court offers a clear example of observational evidence dispelling
reasonable suspicion: if the officer knows the registered owner of
a vehicle is an elderly man, but can see the driver is a young
woman. See ante, at 9. Similarly (if not as cut-and-dry),
when the officer learns a car has two or more registered owners,
the balance of circumstances may tip away from reasonable suspicion
that the one with the revoked license is driving. And so too, the
attributes of the car may be relevant. Consider if a car bears the
markings of a peer-to-peer carsharing service; or compare the
likelihoods that someone other than the registered owner is driving
(1) a family minivan and (2) a Ferrari. The officer himself may
have a wealth of accumulated information about such matters, and
the defendant may probe what that knowledge suggests about the stop
at issue.

															Such a challenge may also use statistical
evidence, which is almost daily expanding in sophistication and
scope. States or municipalities often keep information about “hit
rates” in stops like this one—in other words, the frequency with
which those stops discover unlicensed drivers behind the wheel. See
generally Brief for Andrew Manuel Crespo as Amicus Curiae 23–27. Somewhat less direct but also useful are state and local
data (collected by governments, insurance companies, and academics
alike) about the average number of drivers for each registered
automobile and the extent to which unlicensed persons continue to
drive. See id., at 13–18. (If, to use an extreme example,
every car had 10 associated drivers, and losing a license reduced
driving time by 90%, an officer would not have reasonable suspicion
for a stop.) Here too, defendants may question testifying officers
about such information. Indeed, an officer may have his own hit
rate, which if low enough could itself negate reasonable suspicion.
See, e.g. , United States v. Cortez-Galaviz ,
495 F.3d 1203, 1208–1209 (CA10 2007) (Gorsuch, J.) (considering, as
part of the reasonable suspicion inquiry, the frequency of an
officer’s misses and the accuracy of the database on which he
relied).[ 1 ]

															In this strange case, contested on a barebones
stipulation, the record contains no evidence of these kinds. There
is but a single, simple fact: A police officer learned from a state
database that a car on the road belonged to a person with a revoked
license. Given that revocations in Kansas nearly always stem from
serious or repeated driving violations, I agree with the Court
about the reasonableness of the officer’s inference that the owner,
“Glover[,] was driving while his license was revoked.” Ante, at 9. And because Glover offered no rebuttal, there the matter
stands. But that does not mean cases with more complete records
will all wind up in the same place. A defendant like Glover may
still be able to show that his case is different—that the “presence
of additional facts” and circumstances “dispel[s] reasonable
suspicion.” Ibid . Which is to say that in more fully
litigated cases, the license-revocation alert does not (as it did
here) end the inquiry. It is but the first, though no doubt an
important, step in assessing the reasonableness of the officer’s
suspicion. Notes 1 Of course, aggregate
statistics of this kind cannot substitute for the individualized
suspicion that the Fourth Amendment requires. See, e.g., Terry v. Ohio , 392 U.S.
1 , 21, n. 18 (1968) (“Th[e] demand for specificity
. . . is the central teaching of this Court’s Fourth
Amendment jurisprudence”). But in a case like this one, the
officer’s suspicion is individualized: It arises from the
license status of the known owner of a specific car. The only
question is whether that suspicion is reasonable—whether, in other
words, there is enough to back up the officer’s belief that the
owner is driving the vehicle. As to that matter, statistics may be
highly relevant, either to support or to cast doubt on the
officer’s judgment. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

															_________________

															No. 18–556

															_________________

															KANSAS, PETITIONER v. CHARLES
GLOVER

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
kansas

															[April 6, 2020]

															Justice Sotomayor, dissenting.

															In upholding routine stops of vehicles whose
owners have revoked licenses, the Court ignores key foundations of
our reasonable-suspicion jurisprudence and impermissibly and
unnecessarily reduces the State’s burden of proof. I therefore
dissent.

															I

															I begin with common ground. The Fourth
Amendment permits “brief investigatory” vehicle stops, United
States v. Cortez , 449 U.S.
411 , 417 (1981), on “facts that do not constitute probable
cause,” United States v. Brignoni-Ponce , 422 U.S.
873 , 881 (1975). To assess whether an officer had the requisite
suspicion to seize a driver, past cases have considered the
“totality of the circumstances—the whole picture,” Cortez ,
449 U. S., at 417, and analyzed whether the officer assembled
“fact on fact and clue on clue,” id. , at 419.

															The stop at issue here, however, rests on just
one key fact: that the vehicle was owned by someone with a revoked
license. The majority concludes—erroneously, in my view—that
seizing this vehicle was constitutional on the record below because
drivers with revoked licenses (as opposed to suspended licenses) in
Kansas “have already demonstrated a disregard for the law or are
categorically unfit to drive.” Ante , at 5. This analysis
breaks from settled doctrine and dramatically alters both the
quantum and nature of evidence a State may rely on to prove
suspicion.

															A

															The State bears the burden of justifying a
seizure. Florida v. Royer , 460
U.S. 491 , 500 (1983) (plurality opinion); Brown v. Texas , 443 U.S.
47 , 51–52 (1979). This requires the government to articulate
factors supporting its reasonable suspicion, usually through a
trained agent. See Ornelas v. United States , 517 U.S.
690 , 696 (1996); see also United States v. Sokolow , 490 U.S.
1 , 10 (1989). While the Court has not dictated precisely what
evidence a government must produce, it has stressed that an officer
must at least “articulate more than an ‘inchoate and
unparticularized suspicion or “hunch” ’ of criminal activity.” Illinois v. Wardlow , 528 U.S.
119 , 123–124 (2000) (quoting Terry v. Ohio , 392 U.S.
1 , 27 (1968)). That articulation must include both facts and an
officer’s “rational inferences from those facts.” Brignoni-Ponce , 422 U. S., at 880, 884. A logical “gap
as to any one matter” in this analysis may be overcome by “ ‘a
strong showing’ ” regarding “ ‘other indicia of
reliability.’ ” Florida v. Harris , 568 U.S.
237 , 245 (2013). But gaps may not go unfilled.

															Additionally, reasonable suspicion eschews
judicial common sense, ante , at 5, in favor of the
perspectives and inferences of a reasonable officer viewing “the
facts through the lens of his police experience and expertise.” Ornelas , 517 U. S., at 699; Cortez , 449
U. S., at 416–418 (explaining that the facts and inferences
giving rise to a stop “must be seen and weighed . . . as
understood by those versed in the field of law enforcement”); Heien v. North Carolina , 574 U.S.
54 , 73 (2014) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (“[O]ur enunciation
of the reasonableness inquiry and our justification for it
. . . have always turned on an officer’s factual
conclusions and an officer’s expertise with respect to those
factual conclusions”). It is the reasonable officer’s assessment,
not the ordinary person’s—or judge’s—judgment, that
matters.[ 1 ]

															Finally, a stop must be individualized—that is,
based on “a suspicion that the particular [subject] being stopped
is engaged in wrongdoing.” Cortez , 449 U. S., at 418; Prado Navarette v. California , 572 U.S.
393 , 396–397 (2014). This does not mean that the officer must
know the driver’s identity. But a seizure must rest on more than
the “likelihood that [a] given person” or particular vehicle is
engaged in wrongdoing. Brignoni-Ponce , 422 U. S., at
886–887. The inquiry ordinarily involves some observation or report
about the target’s behavior—not merely the class to which he
belongs. See, e.g. , Navarette , 572 U. S., at
398, 402 (upholding vehicle stop based on an anonymous tip about
driver conduct, interpreted in light of the “accumulated experience
of thousands of officers”); Sokolow , 490 U. S., at 10
(evaluating the collective facts giving rise to suspicion that an
individual was transporting narcotics instead of relying on law
enforcement’s simplified drug courier “ ‘profile’ ”).

															B

															Faithful adherence to these precepts would
yield a significantly different analysis and outcome than that
offered by the majority.

															For starters, the majority flips the burden of
proof. It permits Kansas police officers to effectuate roadside
stops whenever they lack “information negating an inference” that a
vehicle’s unlicensed owner is its driver. Ante , at 1. This
has it backwards: The State shoulders the burden to supply the key
inference that tethers observation to suspicion. The majority
repeatedly attributes such an inference to Deputy Mehrer. Ante , at 4, 6, 9. But that is an after-the-fact gloss on a
seven-paragraph stipulation. Nowhere in his terse submission did
Deputy Mehrer indicate that he had any informed belief about the
propensity of unlicensed drivers to operate motor vehicles in the
area—let alone that he relied on such a belief in seizing Glover. Ante , at 1–2.

															The consequence of the majority’s approach is to
absolve officers from any responsibility to investigate the
identity of a driver where feasible. But that is precisely what
officers ought to do—and are more than capable of doing. Of course,
some circumstances may not warrant an officer approaching a car to
take a closer look at its occupants. But there are countless other
instances where officers have been able to ascertain the identity
of a driver from a distance and make out their approximate age and
gender. Indeed, our cases are rife with examples of officers who
have perceived more than just basic driver demographics. See, e.g. , Heien , 574 U. S., at 57 (officer thought
that motorist was “ ‘very stiff and nervous’ ”); United States v. Arvizu , 534
U.S. 266 , 270 (2002) (officer observed an “adult man” driving
who “appeared stiff”); United States v. Ross , 456
U. S 798, 801 (1982) (officer pulled alongside car and noticed
that the driver matched a description from an informant); Brignoni-Ponce , 422 U. S., at 875 (officers stopped a
vehicle whose occupants “appeared to be of Mexican descent”). The
majority underestimates officers’ capabilities and instead gives
them free rein to stop a vehicle involved in no suspicious activity
simply because it is registered to an unlicensed person. That stop
is based merely on a guess or a “hunch” about the driver’s
identity. Wardlow , 528 U. S., at 124 (internal
quotation marks omitted).

															With no basis in the record to presume that
unlicensed drivers routinely continue driving, the majority
endeavors to fill the gap with its own “common sense.” Ante ,
at 5. But simply labeling an inference “common sense” does not make
it so, no matter how many times the majority repeats it. Cf. ante , at 5, 6, 7, 8. Whether the driver of a vehicle is
likely to be its unlicensed owner is “by no means obvious.” Ante , at 1 (Kagan, J., concurring). And like the
concurrence, I “doubt” that our collective judicial common sense
could answer that question, even if our Fourth Amendment
jurisprudence allowed us to do so. Ante , at 3.

															Contrary to the majority’s claims, ante ,
at 3–5, 7, the reasonable-suspicion inquiry does not accommodate
the average person’s intuition. Rather, it permits reliance on a
particular type of common sense—that of the reasonable officer,
developed through her experiences in law enforcement. Cortez , 449 U. S., at 418. This approach acknowledges
that what may be “common sense” to a layperson may not be relevant
(or correct) in a law enforcement context. Indeed, this case
presents the type of geographically localized inquiry where an
officer’s “inferences and deductions that might well elude an
untrained person” would come in handy. Ibid. ; see also Arvizu , 534 U. S., at 276 (prizing an officer’s
“specialized training and familiarity with the customs of the
area’s inhabitants”). By relying on judicial inferences instead,
the majority promotes broad, inflexible rules that overlook
regional differences.

															Allowing judges to offer their own brand of
common sense where the State’s proffered justifications for a
search come up short also shifts police work to the judiciary. Our
cases—including those the majority cites—have looked to officer
sensibility to establish inferences about human behavior, even
though they just as easily could have relied on the inferences
“made by ordinary people on a daily basis.” Ante , at 6. See, e.g. , Navarette , 572 U. S., at 402 (pointing to
“the accumulated experience of thousands of officers” to identify
certain “erratic” behaviors “as sound indicia of drunk driving”); Wardlow , 528 U. S., at 124 (permitting officers to
account for the relevant characteristics of a location when
interpreting whether flight from police is “evasive”); Sokolow , 490 U. S., at 9–10 (crediting the evidentiary
significance of facts “as seen by a trained agent” to identify a
suspicious traveler). There is no reason to depart from that
practice here.

															Finally, to bolster its conclusion as grounded
in “common experience,” the majority cites “empirical studies.” Ante , at 4. But its use of statistics illustrates the danger
of relying on large-scale data to carry out what is supposed to be
a particularized exercise. Neither of the referenced reports tells
us the percentage of vehicle owners with revoked licenses in Kansas
who continue to drive their cars. Neither report even offers a
useful denominator: One lumps drivers with suspended and revoked
licenses together, while the other examines the license status of
only motorists involved in fatal collisions. The figures say
nothing about how the behavior of revoked drivers measures up
relative to their licensed counterparts—whether one group is more
likely to be involved in accidents, or whether the incidences are
comparable—which would inform a trooper’s inferences about driver
identity.

															As the concurrence recognizes, while statistics
may help a defendant challenge the reasonableness of an officer’s
actions, they “cannot substitute for the individualized suspicion
that the Fourth Amendment requires.” Ante , at 4–5, n. If
courts do not scrutinize officer observation or expertise in the
reasonable-suspicion analysis, then seizures may be made on
large-scale data alone—data that say nothing about the individual
save for the class to which he belongs. That analytical approach
strays far from “acting upon observed violations” of law—which this
Court has said is the “foremost method of enforcing traffic and
vehicle safety regulations.” Delaware v. Prouse , 440 U.S.
648 , 659 (1979).

															The majority today has paved the road to finding
reasonable suspicion based on nothing more than a demographic
profile. Its logic has thus made the State’s task all but
automatic. That has never been the law, and it never should be.

															II

															The majority’s justifications for this new
approach have no foundation in fact or logic. It supposes that
requiring officers to point to “training materials or field
experiences” would demand “ ‘scientific certainty.’ ” Ante , at 3. But that is no truer in this case than in other
circumstances where the reasonable-suspicion inquiry applies.
Indeed, the State here was invited to stipulate to the evidence it
relied on to make the stop. It could have easily described the
individual or “accumulated experience” of officers in the
jurisdiction. Cf. Navarette , 572 U. S., at 402. The
State chose not to present such evidence and has not shown that it
could not have done so. Accordingly, it has proved no harm to
itself.[ 2 ]

															In fact, it is the majority’s approach that
makes scant policy sense. If the State need not set forth all the
information its officers considered before forming suspicion, what
conceivable evidence could be used to mount an effective challenge
to a vehicle stop, as the concurrence imagines? Ante , at 4.
Who could meaningfully interrogate an officer’s action when all the
officer has to say is that the vehicle was registered to an
unlicensed driver? How would a driver counter that evidence—by
stating that they were of a different age or gender than the owner
and insisting that the officer could have easily discerned that?
And where would a defendant bring his arguments if the trial judge
makes the key inference, or by the same token, fails to make an
inference that “might well elude” the untrained? Cortez , 449
U. S., at 418.

															Moreover, the majority’s distinction between
revocation and suspension may not hold up in other jurisdictions.
For one, whether drivers with suspended licenses have “demonstrated
a disregard for the law or are categorically unfit to drive” is
completely unknown. And in several States, the grounds for
revocation include offenses unrelated to driving fitness, such as
using a license to unlawfully buy alcohol. See, e.g. , Ky.
Rev. Stat. Ann. §186.560 (West Cum. Supp. 2019); Mont. Code Ann.
§61–5–206 (2019); R. I. Gen. Laws §31–11–6 (2010). In yet
other jurisdictions, “revocation” is the label assigned to a
temporary sanction, which may be imposed for such infractions as
the failure to comply with child support payments. Okla. Stat.,
Tit. 47, §6–201.1 (2011). Whether the majority’s “common sense”
assumptions apply outside of Kansas is thus open to challenge.

															*  *  *

															Vehicle stops “interfere with freedom of
movement, are inconvenient, and consume time.” Prouse , 440
U. S., at 657. Worse still, they “may create substantial
anxiety” through an “unsettling show of authority.” Ibid. Before subjecting motorists to this type of investigation, the
State must possess articulable facts and officer inferences to form
suspicion. The State below left unexplained key components of the
reasonable-suspicion inquiry. In an effort to uphold the
conviction, the Court destroys Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that
requires individualized suspicion. I respectfully dissent. Notes 1 Cortez explained
why this is so. Law enforcement officers, behaving akin to “jurors
as factfinders,” have “formulated certain commonsense conclusions
about human behavior” as it relates to “the field of law
enforcement.” 449 U. S., at 418. A trained officer thus “draws
inferences and makes deductions—inferences and deductions that
might well elude an untrained person.” Ibid. ; see also United States v. Arvizu , 534
U.S. 266 , 276 (2002) (crediting officer assessment of driver
behavior that was based on “his specialized training and
familiarity with the customs of the area’s
inhabitants”). 2 The majority suggests that
requiring the State to supply the missing link between fact and
suspicion would “considerably narrow the daylight” between the
reasonable-suspicion showing and that required to establish
probable cause. Ante , at 7. But that may simply be a feature
of this unique context, where the difference between a permissible
and impermissible stop turns on a single fact. Given that
reasonable suspicion and probable cause are not “reducible to
‘precise definition or quantification,’ ” Florida v. Harris , 568 U.S.
237 , 243 (2013), the gradation between the two is bound to vary
from case to case.


NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before
publication in the preliminary print of the United States
Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions,
Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543,
of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that
corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to
press.

															SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

															_________________

															No. 14–1373

															_________________

															UTAH, PETITIONER v. EDWARDJOSEPH STRIEFF, JR.

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of utah

															[June 20, 2016]

															Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court.

															To enforce the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against
“unreasonable searches and seizures,” this Court has at times
required courts to exclude evidence obtained by unconstitutional
police conduct. But the Court has also held that, even when there
is a Fourth Amendment violation, this exclusionary rule does not
apply when the costs of exclusion outweigh its deterrent benefits.
In some cases, for example, the link between the unconstitutional
conduct and the discovery of the evidence is too attenuated to
justify suppression. The question in this case is whether this
attenuation doctrine applies when an officer makesan
unconstitutional investigatory stop; learns during that stop that
the suspect is subject to a valid arrest warrant; and proceeds to
arrest the suspect and seize incriminating evidence during a search
incident to that arrest. We hold that the evidence the officer
seized as part of the search incident to arrest is admissible
because the officer’s discovery of the arrest warrant attenuated
the connection between the unlawful stop and the evidence seized
incident to arrest.

															I

															This case began with an anonymous tip. In December 2006, someone
called the South Salt Lake City police’s drug-tip line to report
“narcotics activity” at a particular residence. App. 15. Narcotics
detective Douglas Fackrell investigated the tip. Over the course of
about a week, Officer Fackrell conducted intermittent surveillance
of the home. He observed visitors who left a few minutes after
arriving at the house. These visits were sufficiently frequent to
raise his suspicion that the occupants were dealing drugs.

															One of those visitors was respondent Edward Strieff. Officer
Fackrell observed Strieff exit the house and walk toward a nearby
convenience store. In the store’s parking lot, Officer Fackrell
detained Strieff, identified himself, and asked Strieff what he was
doing at the residence.

															As part of the stop, Officer Fackrell requested Strieff’s
identification, and Strieff produced his Utah identification card.
Officer Fackrell relayed Strieff’s information to a police
dispatcher, who reported that Strieff had an outstanding arrest
warrant for a traffic violation. Officer Fackrell then arrested
Strieff pursuant to that warrant. When Officer Fackrell searched
Strieff incident to the arrest, he discovered a baggie of
methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.

															The State charged Strieff with unlawful possession of
methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia. Strieff moved to suppress
the evidence, arguing that the evidence was inadmissible because it
was derived from an unlawful investigatory stop. At the suppression
hearing, the prosecutor conceded that Officer Fackrell lacked
reasonable suspicion for the stop but argued that the evidence
should not be suppressed because the existence of a valid arrest
warrant attenuated the connection between the unlawful stop and the
discovery of the contraband.

															The trial court agreed with the State and admitted the evidence.
The court found that the short time between the illegal stop and
the search weighed in favor of suppressing the evidence, but that
two countervailing considerations made it admissible. First, the
court considered the presence of a valid arrest warrant to be an
“ ‘extraordinary intervening circumstance.’ ” App. to
Pet. for Cert. 102 (quoting United States v. Simpson ,
439 F. 3d 490, 496 (CA8 2006). Second, the court stressed the
absence of flagrant misconduct by Officer Fackrell, who was
conducting a legitimate investigation of a suspected drug
house.

															Strieff conditionally pleaded guilty to reduced charges of
attempted possession of a controlled substance and possession of
drug paraphernalia, but reserved his right to appeal the trial
court’s denial of the suppression motion. The Utah Court of Appeals
affirmed. 2012 UT App 245, 286 P. 3d 317.

															The Utah Supreme Court reversed. 2015 UT 2, 357 P. 3d 532.
It held that the evidence was inadmissible because only “a
voluntary act of a defendant’s free will (as in a confession or
consent to search)” sufficiently breaks the connection between an
illegal search and the discovery of evidence. Id. , at 536.
Because Officer Fackrell’s discovery of a valid arrest warrant did
not fit this description, the court ordered the evidence
suppressed. Ibid .

															We granted certiorari to resolve disagreement about how the
attenuation doctrine applies where an unconstitutional detention
leads to the discovery of a valid arrest warrant. 576 U. S.
___ (2015). Compare, e.g., United States v. Green , 111 F. 3d 515, 522–523 (CA7 1997) (holding that
discovery of the warrant is a dispositive intervening circumstance
where police misconduct was not flagrant), with, e.g., State v. Moralez , 297 Kan. 397, 415, 300 P. 3d
1090, 1102 (2013) (assigning little significance to the discovery
of the warrant). We now reverse.

															II

															A

															The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures.” Because officers who violated
the Fourth Amendment were traditionally considered trespassers,
individuals subject to unconstitutional searches or seizures
histori-cally enforced their rights through tort suits or
self-help. Davies, Recovering the Original Fourth Amendment, 98
Mich. L. Rev. 547, 625 (1999). In the 20th century, however,
the exclusionary rule—the rule that often requires trial courts to
exclude unlawfully seized evidence in a criminal trial—became the
principal judicial remedy to deter Fourth Amendment violations.
See, e.g., Mapp v. Ohio ,367 U. S. 643,655
(1961).

															Under the Court’s precedents, the exclusionary rule encompasses
both the “primary evidence obtained as a direct result of an
illegal search or seizure” and, relevant here, “evidence later
discovered and found to be derivative of an illegality,” the
so-called “ ‘fruit of the poisonous tree.’ ” Segura v. United States ,468 U. S. 796,804
(1984). But the significant costs of this rule have led us to deem
it “applicable only . . . where its deterrence benefits
outweigh its substantial social costs.” Hudson v. Michigan ,547 U. S. 586,591 (2006) (internal quotation
marks omitted). “Suppression of evidence . . . has always
been our last resort, not our first impulse.” Ibid. We have accordingly recognized several exceptions to the rule.
Three of these exceptions involve the causal relationship between
the unconstitutional act and the discovery of evidence. First, the
independent source doctrine allows trial courts to admit evidence
obtained in an unlawful search if officers independently acquired
it from a separate, independent source. See Murray v. United States ,487 U. S. 533,537 (1988). Second, the
inevitable discovery doctrine allows for the admission of evidence
that would have been discovered even without the unconstitutional
source. See Nix v. Williams ,467 U. S. 431–444
(1984). Third, and at issue here, is the attenuation doctrine:
Evidence is admissible when the connection between unconstitutional
police conduct and the evidence is remote or has been interrupted
by some intervening circumstance, so that “the interest protected
by the constitutional guarantee that has been violated would not be
served by suppression of the evidence obtained.” Hudson , supra, at 593.

															B

															Turning to the application of the attenuation doctrine to this
case, we first address a threshold question: whether this doctrine
applies at all to a case like this, where the intervening
circumstance that the State relies on is the discovery of a valid,
pre-existing, and untainted arrest warrant. The Utah Supreme Court
declined to apply the attenuation doctrine because it read our
precedents as applying the doctrine only “to circumstances
involving an independent act of a defendant’s ‘free will’ in
confessing to a crime or consenting to a search.” 357 P. 3d,
at 544. In this Court, Strieff has not defended this argument, and
we disagree with it, as well. The attenuation doctrine evaluates
the causal link between the government’s unlawful act and the
discovery of evidence, which often has nothing to do with a
defendant’s actions. And the logic of our prior attenuation cases
is not limited to independent acts by the defendant.

															It remains for us to address whether the discovery of a valid
arrest warrant was a sufficient intervening event to break the
causal chain between the unlawful stop and the discovery of
drug-related evidence on Strieff’s person. The three factors
articulated in Brown v. Illinois ,422 U. S. 590
(1975), guide our analysis. First, we look to the “temporal
proximity” between the unconstitutional conduct and the discovery
of evidence to determine how closely the discovery of evidence
followed the unconstitutional search. Id., at 603. Second,
we consider “the presence of intervening circumstances.” Id., at 603–604. Third, and “particularly” significant, we
examine “the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct.” Id., at 604. In evaluating these factors, we assume without
deciding (because the State conceded the point) that Officer
Fackrell lacked reasonable suspicion to initially stop Strieff.
And, because we ultimately conclude that the warrant breaks the
causal chain, we also have no need to decide whether the warrant’s
existence alone would make the initial stop constitutional even if
Officer Fackrell was unaware of its existence.

															1

															The first factor, temporal proximity between the ini-tially
unlawful stop and the search, favors suppressing the evidence. Our
precedents have declined to find that this factor favors
attenuation unless “substantial time” elapses between an unlawful
act and when the evidence is obtained. Kaupp v. Texas ,538 U. S. 626,633 (2003) ( per curiam ).
Here, however, Officer Fackrell discovered drug contraband on
Strieff’s person only minutes after the illegal stop. See App.
18–19. As the Court explained in Brown , such a short time
interval counsels in favor of suppression; there, we found that the
confession should be suppressed, relying in part on the “less than
two hours” that separated the unconstitutional arrest and the
confession. 422 U. S., at 604.

															In contrast, the second factor, the presence of intervening
circumstances, strongly favors the State. In Segura ,468
U. S. 796, the Court addressed similar facts to those here and
found sufficient intervening circumstances to allow the admission
of evidence. There, agents had probable cause to believe that
apartment occupants were dealing cocaine. Id., at 799–800.
They sought a warrant. In the meantime, they entered the apartment,
arrested an occupant, and discovered evidence of drug activity
during a limited search for security reasons. Id., at
800–801. The next evening, the Magistrate Judge issued the search
warrant. Ibid. This Court deemed the evidence admissible
notwithstanding the illegal search because the information
supporting the warrant was “wholly unconnected with the [arguably
illegal] entry and was known to the agents well before the initial
entry.” Id., at 814. Segura , of course, applied the independent source
doctrine because the unlawful entry “did not contribute in any way
to discovery of the evidence seized under the warrant.” Id., at 815. But the Segura Court suggested that the existence of
a valid warrant favors finding that the connection between unlawful
conduct and the discovery of evidence is “sufficiently attenuated
to dissipate the taint.” Ibid. That principle applies
here.

															In this case, the warrant was valid, it predated Officer
Fackrell’s investigation, and it was entirely unconnected with the
stop. And once Officer Fackrell discovered the warrant, he had an
obligation to arrest Strieff. “A warrant is a judicial mandate to
an officer to conduct a search or make an arrest, and the officer
has a sworn duty to carry out its provisions.” United States v. Leon ,468 U. S. 897,920, n.21 (1984) (internal
quotation marks omitted). Officer Fackrell’s arrest of Strieff thus
was a ministerial act that was independently compelled by the
pre-existing warrant. And once Officer Fackrell was authorized to
arrest Strieff, it was undisputedly lawful to search Strieff as an
incident of his arrest to protect Officer Fackrell’s safety. See Arizona v. Gant ,556 U. S. 332,339 (2009)
(explaining the permissible scope of searches incident to
arrest).

															Finally, the third factor, “the purpose and flagrancy of the
official misconduct,” Brown, supra, at 604, also strongly
favors the State. The exclusionary rule exists to deter police
misconduct. Davis v. United States ,564 U. S.
229–237 (2011). The third factor of the attenuation doctrine
reflects that rationale by favoring exclusion only when the police
misconduct is most in need of deterrence—that is, when it is
purposeful or flagrant.

															Officer Fackrell was at most negligent. In stopping Strieff,
Officer Fackrell made two good-faith mistakes. First, he had not
observed what time Strieff entered the suspected drug house, so he
did not know how long Strieff had been there. Officer Fackrell thus
lacked a sufficient basis to conclude that Strieff was a short-term
visitor who may have been consummating a drug transaction. Second,
because he lacked confirmation that Strieff was a short-term
visitor, Officer Fackrell should have asked Strieff whether he
would speak with him, instead of demanding that Strieff do so.
Officer Fackrell’s stated purpose was to “find out what was going
on [in] the house.” App. 17. Nothing prevented him from approaching
Strieff simply to ask. See Florida v. Bostick ,501
U. S. 429,434 (1991) (“[A] seizure does not occur simply
because a police officer approaches an individual and asks a few
questions”). But these errors in judgment hardly rise to a
purposeful or flagrant violation of Strieff’s Fourth Amendment
rights.

															While Officer Fackrell’s decision to initiate the stop was
mistaken, his conduct thereafter was lawful. The officer’s decision
to run the warrant check was a “negligibly burdensome precautio[n]”
for officer safety. Rodriguez v. United States , 575
U. S. ___, ___ (2015) (slip op., at 7). And Officer Fackrell’s
actual search of Strieff was a lawful search incident to arrest.
See Gant, supra, at 339.

															Moreover, there is no indication that this unlawful stop was
part of any systemic or recurrent police misconduct. To the
contrary, all the evidence suggests that the stop was an isolated
instance of negligence that occurred in connection with a bona fide
investigation of a suspected drug house. Officer Fackrell saw
Strieff leave a suspected drug house. And his suspicion about the
house was based on an anonymous tip and his personal
observations.

															Applying these factors, we hold that the evidence discovered on
Strieff’s person was admissible because the unlawful stop was
sufficiently attenuated by the pre-existing arrest warrant.
Although the illegal stop was close in time to Strieff’s arrest,
that consideration is outweighed by two factors supporting the
State. The outstanding arrest warrant for Strieff’s arrest is a
critical intervening circumstance that is wholly independent of the
illegal stop. The discovery of that warrant broke the causal chain
between the unconstitutional stop and the discovery of evidence by
compelling Officer Fackrell to arrest Strieff. And, it is
especially significant that there is no evidence that Officer
Fackrell’s illegal stop reflected flagrantly unlawful police
misconduct.

															2

															We find Strieff’s counterarguments unpersuasive.

															First, he argues that the attenuation doctrine should not apply
because the officer’s stop was purposeful and flagrant. He asserts
that Officer Fackrell stopped him solely to fish for evidence of
suspected wrongdoing. But Officer Fackrell sought information from
Strieff to find out what was happening inside a house whose
occupants were legitimately suspected of dealing drugs. This was
not a suspicionless fishing expedition “in the hope that something
would turn up.” Taylor v. Alabama ,457 U. S.
687,691 (1982).

															Strieff argues, moreover, that Officer Fackrell’s conduct was
flagrant because he detained Strieff without the necessary level of
cause (here, reasonable suspicion). But that conflates the standard
for an illegal stop with the standard for flagrancy. For the
violation to be flagrant, more severe police misconduct is required
than the mere absence of proper cause for the seizure. See, e.g., Kaupp , 538 U. S., at 628, 633 (finding
flagrant violation where a warrantless arrest was made in the
arrestee’s home after police were denied a warrant and at least
some officers knew they lacked probable cause). Neither the
officer’s alleged purpose nor the flagrancy of the violation rise
to a level of misconduct to warrant suppression.

															Second, Strieff argues that, because of the prevalence of
outstanding arrest warrants in many jurisdictions, police will
engage in dragnet searches if the exclusionary rule is not applied.
We think that this outcome is unlikely. Such wanton conduct would
expose police to civil liability. See42 U. S. C. §1983; Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs. ,436
U. S. 658,690 (1978); see also Segura , 468 U. S.,
at 812. And in any event, the Brown factors take account of
the purpose and flagrancy of police misconduct. Were evidence of a
dragnet search presented here, the application of the Brown factors could be different. But there is no evidence that the
concerns that Strieff raises with the criminal justice system are
present in South Salt Lake City, Utah.

															*  *  *

															We hold that the evidence Officer Fackrell seized as part of his
search incident to arrest is admissible because his discovery of
the arrest warrant attenuated the connection between the unlawful
stop and the evidence seized from Strieff incident to arrest. The
judgment of the Utah Supreme Court, accordingly, is reversed.

															It is so ordered. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

															_________________

															No. 14–1373

															_________________

															UTAH, PETITIONER v. EDWARDJOSEPH
STRIEFF, JR.

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
utah

															[June 20, 2016]

															Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Ginsburg
joins as to Parts I, II, and III, dissenting.

															The Court today holds that the discovery of a
warrant for an unpaid parking ticket will forgive a police
officer’s violation of your Fourth Amendment rights. Do not be
soothed by the opinion’s technical language: This case allows the
police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and
check it for outstanding traffic warrants—even if you are doing
nothing wrong. If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine you
forgot to pay, courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will
admit into evidence anything he happens to find by searching you
after arresting you on the warrant. Because the Fourth Amendment
should prohibit, not permit, such misconduct, I dissent.

															I

															Minutes after Edward Strieff walked out of a
South Salt Lake City home, an officer stopped him, questioned him,
and took his identification to run it through a police database.
The officer did not suspect that Strieff had done anything wrong.
Strieff just happened to be the first person to leave a house that
the officer thought might contain “drug activity.” App. 16–19.

															As the State of Utah concedes, this stop was
illegal. App. 24. The Fourth Amendment protects people from
“unreasonable searches and seizures.” An officer breaches that
protection when he detains a pedestrian to check his license
without any evidence that the person is engaged in a crime. Delaware v. Prouse , 440 U. S. 648, 663 (1979) ; Terry v. Ohio , 392 U. S. 1, 21 (1968) . The
officer deepens the breach when he prolongs the detention just to
fish further for evidence of wrongdoing. Rodriguez v. United States , 575 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2015) (slip op.,
at 6–7). In his search for lawbreaking, the officer in this case
himself broke the law.

															The officer learned that Strieff had a “small
traffic warrant.” App. 19. Pursuant to that warrant, he arrested
Strieff and, conducting a search incident to the arrest, discovered
methamphetamine in Strieff’s pockets.

															Utah charged Strieff with illegal drug
possession. Before trial, Strieff argued that admitting the drugs
into evidence would condone the officer’s misbehavior. The
methamphetamine, he reasoned, was the product of the officer’s
illegal stop. Admitting it would tell officers that unlawfully
discovering even a “small traffic warrant” would give them license
to search for evidence of unrelated offenses. The Utah Supreme
Court unanimously agreed with Strieff. A majority of this Court now
reverses.

															II

															It is tempting in a case like this, where
illegal conduct by an officer uncovers illegal conduct by a
civilian, to forgive the officer. After all, his instincts,
although unconstitutional, were correct. But a basic principle lies
at the heart of the Fourth Amendment: Two wrongs don’t make a
right. See Weeks v. United States , 232 U. S.
383, 392 (1914) . When “lawless police conduct” uncovers evidence
of lawless civilian conduct, this Court has long required later
criminal trials to exclude the illegally obtained evidence. Terry , 392 U. S., at 12; Mapp v. Ohio ,
367 U. S. 643, 655 (1961) . For example, if an officer breaks
into a home and finds a forged check lying around, that check may
not be used to prosecute the homeowner for bank fraud. We would
describe the check as “ ‘fruit of the poisonous tree.’ ” Wong Sun v. United States , 371 U. S. 471, 488
(1963) . Fruit that must be cast aside includes not only evidence
directly found by an illegal search but also evidence “come at by
exploitation of that illegality.” Ibid .

															This “exclusionary rule” removes an incentive
for officers to search us without proper justification. Terry , 392 U. S. , at 12 . It also keeps
courts from being “made party to lawless invasions of the
constitutional rights of citizens by permitting unhindered
governmental use of the fruits of such invasions.” Id., at
13. When courts admit only lawfully obtained evidence, they
encourage “those who formulate law enforcement polices, and the
officers who implement them, to incorporate Fourth Amendment ideals
into their value system.” Stone v. Powell , 428
U. S. 465, 492 (1976) . But when courts admit illegally
obtained evidence as well, they reward “manifest neglect if not an
open defiance of the prohibitions of the Constitution.” Weeks , 232 U. S., at 394.

															Applying the exclusionary rule, the Utah Supreme
Court correctly decided that Strieff’s drugs must be excluded
because the officer exploited his illegal stop to discover them.
The officer found the drugs only after learning of Strieff’s
traffic violation; and he learned of Strieff’s traffic violation
only because he unlawfully stopped Strieff to check his driver’s
license.

															The court also correctly rejected the State’s
argument that the officer’s discovery of a traffic warrant
unspoiled the poisonous fruit. The State analogizes finding the
warrant to one of our earlier decisions, Wong Sun v. United States . There, an officer illegally arrested a person
who, days later, voluntarily returned to the station to confess to
committing a crime. 371 U. S., at 491. Even though the person
would not have confessed “but for the illegal actions of the
police,” id., at 488, we noted that the police did not
exploit their illegal arrest to obtain the confession, id., at 491 . Because the confession was obtained by “means
sufficiently distinguishable” from the constitutional violation, we
held that it could be admitted into evidence. Id., at 488,
491 . The State contends that the search incident to the
warrant-arrest here is similarly distinguishable from the illegal
stop.

															But Wong Sun explains why Strieff’s drugs
must be excluded. We reasoned that a Fourth Amendment violation may
not color every investigation that follows but it certainly stains
the actions of officers who exploit the infraction. We
distinguished evidence obtained by innocuous means from evidence
obtained by exploiting misconduct after considering a variety of
factors: whether a long time passed, whether there were
“intervening circumstances,” and whether the purpose or flagrancy
of the misconduct was “calculated” to procure the evidence. Brown v. Illinois , 422 U. S. 590 –604
(1975).

															These factors confirm that the officer in this
case discovered Strieff’s drugs by exploiting his own illegal
conduct. The officer did not ask Strieff to volunteer his name only
to find out, days later, that Strieff had a warrant against him.
The officer illegally stopped Strieff and immediately ran a warrant
check. The officer’s discovery of a warrant was not some
intervening surprise that he could not have anticipated. Utah lists
over 180,000 misdemeanor warrants in its database, and at the time
of the arrest, Salt Lake County had a “backlog of outstanding
warrants” so large that it faced the “potential for civil
liability.” See Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics,Survey of State Criminal History Information Systems,
2014 (2015) (Systems Survey) (Table 5a), online at
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/249799.pdf (all Internet
materials as last visited June 16, 2016); Inst. for Law and Policy
Planning, Salt Lake County Crim-inal Justice System Assessment 6.7
(2004), online at
http://www. slco.org / cjac / resources / SaltLakeCJSAfinal.pdf.
The officer’s violation was also calculated to procure evidence.
His sole reason for stopping Strieff, he acknowledged, was
investigative—he wanted to discover whether drug activity was going
on in the house Strieff had just exited. App. 17.

															The warrant check, in other words, was not an
“intervening circumstance” separating the stop from the search for
drugs. It was part and parcel of the officer’s illegal “expedition
for evidence in the hope that something might turn up.” Brown , 422 U. S., at 605. Under our precedents, because
the officer found Strieff’s drugs by exploiting his own
constitutional violation, the drugs should be excluded.

															III

															A

															The Court sees things differently. To the
Court, the fact that a warrant gives an officer cause to arrest a
person severs the connection between illegal policing and the
resulting discovery of evidence. Ante, at 7. This is a
remarkable proposition: The mere existence of a warrant not only
gives an officer legal cause to arrest and search a person, it also
forgives an officer who, with no knowledge of the warrant at all,
unlawfully stops that person on a whim or hunch.

															To explain its reasoning, the Court relies on Segura v. United States , 468 U. S. 796 (1984) .
There, federal agents applied for a warrant to search an apartment
but illegally entered the apartment to secure it before the judge
issued the warrant. Id., at 800–801. After receiving the
warrant, the agents then searched the apartment for drugs. Id., at 801. The question before us was what to do with the
evidence the agents then discovered. We declined to suppress it
because “[t]he illegal entry into petitioners’ apartment did not
contribute in any way to discovery of the evidence seized under the
warrant.” Id., at 815.

															According to the majority, Segura involves facts “similar” to this case and “suggest[s]” that a valid
warrant will clean up whatever illegal conduct uncovered it. Ante, at 6–7. It is difficult to understand this
interpretation. In Segura , the agents’ illegal conduct in
entering the apartment had nothing to do with their procurement of
a search warrant. Here, the officer’s illegal conduct in stopping
Strieff was essential to his discovery of an arrest warrant. Segura would be similar only if the agents used information
they illegally obtained from the apartment to procure a search
warrant or discover an arrest warrant. Precisely because that was
not the case, the Court admitted the untainted evidence. 468
U. S., at 814.

															The majority likewise misses the point when it
calls the warrant check here a “ ‘negligibly burdensome
precautio[n]’ ” taken for the officer’s “safety.” Ante, at 8 (quoting Rodriguez , 575 U. S., at ___ (slip op.,
at 7)). Remember, the officer stopped Strieff without suspecting
him of committing any crime. By his own account, the officer did
not fear Strieff. Moreover, the safety rationale we discussed in Rodriguez , an opinion about highway patrols, is
conspicuously absent here. A warrant check on a highway “ensur[es]
that vehicles on the road are operated safely and responsibly.” Id. , at ___ (slip op., at 6). We allow such checks during
legal traffic stops because the legitimacy of a person’s driver’s
license has a “close connection to roadway safety.” Id., at
___ (slip op., at 7). A warrant check of a pedestrian on a
sidewalk, “by contrast, is a measure aimed at ‘detect[ing] evidence
of ordinary criminal wrongdoing.’ ” Ibid. (quoting Indianapolis v. Edmond , 531 U. S. 32 –41
(2000)). Surely we would not allow officers to warrant-check random
joggers, dog walkers, and lemonade vendors just to ensure they pose
no threat to anyone else.

															The majority also posits that the officer could
not have exploited his illegal conduct because he did not violate
the Fourth Amendment on purpose. Rather, he made “good-faith
mistakes.” Ante, at 8. Never mind that the officer’s sole
purpose was to fish for evidence. The majority casts his
unconstitutional actions as “negligent” and therefore incapable of
being deterred by the exclusionary rule. Ibid. But the Fourth Amendment does not tolerate an
officer’s unreasonable searches and seizures just because he did
not know any better. Even officers prone to negligence can learn
from courts that exclude illegally obtained evidence. Stone ,
428 U. S., at 492. Indeed, they are perhaps the most in need
of the education, whether by the judge’s opinion, the prosecutor’s
future guidance, or an updated manual on criminal procedure. If the
officers are in doubt about what the law requires, exclusion gives
them an “incentive to err on the side of constitutional behavior.” United States v. Johnson , 457 U. S. 537, 561
(1982) .

															B

															Most striking about the Court’s opinion is its
insistence that the event here was “isolated,” with “no indication
that this unlawful stop was part of any systemic or recurrent
police misconduct.” Ante , at 8–9. Respectfully, nothing
about this case is isolated.

															Outstanding warrants are surprisingly common.
When a person with a traffic ticket misses a fine payment or court
appearance, a court will issue a warrant. See, e.g., Brennan
Center for Justice, Criminal Justice Debt 23 (2010), online at
https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/Fees%20and%20Fines%20FINAL.pdf.
When a person on probation drinks alcohol or breaks curfew, a court
will issue a warrant. See, e.g., Human Rights Watch,
Profiting from Probation 1, 51 (2014), online at
https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/02/05/profiting-probation/ americas - offender - funded - probation-industry.
The States and Federal Government maintain databases with over 7.8
million outstanding warrants, the vast majority of which appear to
be for minor offenses. See Systems Survey (Table 5a). Even these
sources may not track the “staggering” numbers of warrants,
“ ‘drawers and drawers’ ” full, that many cities issue
for traffic violations and ordinance infractions. Dept. of Justice,
Civil Rights Div., Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department
47, 55 (2015) (Ferguson Report), online at https://www.justice.gov/
sites / default / files / opa / press - releases / attachments / 2015 / 03 /
04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf. The county in this case
has had a “backlog” of such warrants. See supra, at 4. The
Department of Justice recently reported that in the town of
Ferguson, Missouri, with a population of 21,000, 16,000 people had
outstanding warrants against them. Ferguson Report, at 6, 55.

															Justice Department investigations across the
country have illustrated how these astounding numbers of warrants
can be used by police to stop people without cause. In a single
year in New Orleans, officers “made nearly 60,000 arrests, of which
about 20,000 were of people with outstanding traffic or misdemeanor
warrants from neighboring parishes for such infractions as unpaid
tickets.” Dept. of Justice, Civil Rights Div., Investigation of the
New Orleans Police Department 29 (2011), online at
https://www.justice.gov / sites / default / files / crt / legacy/2011/03/17/nopd_report.pdf.
In the St. Louis metropolitan area, officers “routinely” stop
people—on the street, at bus stops, or even in court—for no reason
other than “an officer’s desire to check whether the subject had a
municipal arrest warrant pending.” Ferguson Report, at 49,
57 . In Newark, New Jersey, officers stopped 52,235
pedestrians within a 4-year period and ran warrant checks on 39,308
of them. Dept. of Justice, Civil Rights Div., Investigation of the
Newark Police Department 8, 19, n. 15 (2014), online at
https://www.justice.gov/sites  /default  /  files  / crt   /legacy  /  2014  /  07 /  22  /  newark  _  findings  _7-22-14.pdf.
The Justice Department analyzed these warrant-checked stops and
reported that “approximately 93% of the stops would have been
considered unsupported by articulated reason-able suspicion.” Id., at 9, n. 7.

															I do not doubt that most officers act in “good
faith” and do not set out to break the law. That does not mean
these stops are “isolated instance[s] of negligence,” however. Ante, at 8. Many are the product of institutionalized
training procedures. The New York City Police Department long
trained officers to, in the words of a District Judge, “stop and
question first, develop reasonable suspicion later.” Ligon v. New York , 925 F. Supp. 2d 478, 537–538 (SDNY), stay
granted on other grounds, 736 F. 3d 118 (CA2 2013). The Utah
Supreme Court described as “ ‘routine procedure’ or ‘common
practice’ ” the decision of Salt Lake City police officers to
run warrant checks on pedestrians they detained without reasonable
suspicion. State v. Topanotes , 2003 UT 30, ¶2, 76
P. 3d 1159, 1160. In the related context of traffic stops, one
widely followed police manual instructs officers looking for drugs
to “run at least a warrants check on all drivers you stop.
Statistically, narcotics offenders are . . . more likely
to fail to appear on simple citations, such as traffic or trespass
violations, leading to the issuance of bench warrants. Discovery of
an outstanding warrant gives you cause for an immediate custodial
arrest and search of the suspect.” C. Remsberg, Tactics for
Criminal Patrol 205–206 (1995); C. Epp et al., Pulled Over 23,
33–36 (2014).

															The majority does not suggest what makes this
case “isolated” from these and countless other examples. Nor does
it offer guidance for how a defendant can prove that his arrest was
the result of “widespread” misconduct. Surely it should not take a
federal investigation of Salt Lake County before the Court would
protect someone in Strieff’s position.

															IV

															Writing only for myself, and drawing on my
professional experiences, I would add that unlawful “stops” have
severe consequences much greater than the inconvenience suggested
by the name. This Court has given officers an array of instruments
to probe and examine you. When we condone officers’ use of these
devices without adequate cause, we give them reason to target
pedestrians in an arbitrary manner. We also risk treating members
of our communities as second-class citizens.

															Although many Americans have been stopped for
speeding or jaywalking, few may realize how degrading a stop can be
when the officer is looking for more. This Court has allowed an
officer to stop you for whatever reason he wants—so long as he can
point to a pretextual justification after the fact. Whren v. United States , 517 U. S. 806, 813 (1996) . That
justification must provide specific reasons why the officer
suspected you were breaking the law, Terry , 392 U. S.,
at 21, but it may factor in your ethnicity, United States v. Brignoni-Ponce , 422 U. S. 873 –887 (1975), where you
live, Adams v. Williams , 407 U. S. 143, 147
(1972) , what you were wearing, United States v. Sokolow , 490 U. S. 1 –5 (1989), and how you behaved, Illinois v. Wardlow , 528 U. S. 119 –125 (2000).
The officer does not even need to know which law you might have
broken so long as he can later point to any possible
infraction—even one that is minor, unrelated, or ambiguous. Devenpeck v. Alford , 543 U. S. 146 –155 (2004); Heien v. North Carolina , 574 U. S. ___
(2014).

															The indignity of the stop is not limited to an
officer telling you that you look like a criminal. See Epp, Pulled
Over, at 5. The officer may next ask for your “consent” to inspect
your bag or purse without telling you that you can decline. See Florida v. Bostick , 501 U. S. 429, 438 (1991) .
Regardless of your answer, he may order you to stand “helpless,
perhaps facing a wall with [your] hands raised.” Terry , 392
U. S., at 17. If the officer thinks you might be dangerous, he
may then “frisk” you for weapons. This involves more than just a
pat down. As onlookers pass by, the officer may “ ‘feel with
sensitive fingers every portion of [your] body. A thorough search
[may] be made of [your] arms and armpits, waistline and back, the
groin and area about the testicles, and entire surface of the legs
down to the feet.’ ” Id., at 17, n. 13.

															The officer’s control over you does not end with
the stop. If the officer chooses, he may handcuff you and take you
to jail for doing nothing more than speeding, jaywalking, or
“driving [your] pickup truck . . . with [your] 3-year-old
son and 5-year-old daughter . . . without [your] seatbelt
fastened.” Atwater v. Lago Vista , 532 U. S. 318
–324 (2001). At the jail, he can fingerprint you, swab DNA from the
inside of your mouth, and force you to “shower with a delousing
agent” while you “lift [your] tongue, hold out [your] arms, turn
around, and lift [your] genitals.” Florence v. Board of
Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington , 566 U. S. ___,
___–___ (2012) (slip op., at 2–3); Maryland v. King ,
569 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 28). Even if you are
innocent, you will now join the 65 million Americans with an arrest
record and experience the “civil death” of discrimination by
employers, landlords, and whoever else conducts a background check.
Chin, The New Civil Death, 160 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1789, 1805
(2012); see J. Jacobs, The Eternal Criminal Record 33–51 (2015);
Young & Petersilia, Keeping Track, 129 Harv. L. Rev. 1318,
1341–1357 (2016). And, of course, if you fail to pay bail or appear
for court, a judge will issue a warrant to render you “arrestable
on sight” in the future. A. Goffman, On the Run 196 (2014).

															This case involves a suspicionless stop,
one in which the officer initiated this chain of events without
justification. As the Justice Department notes, supra , at 8,
many innocent people are subjected to the humiliations of these
unconstitutional searches. The white defendant in this case shows
that anyone’s dignity can be violated in this manner. See M.
Gottschalk, Caught 119–138 (2015). But it is no secret that people
of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny. See
M. Alexander, The New Jim Crow 95–136 (2010). For generations,
black and brown parents have given their children “the
talk”—instructing them never to run down the street; always keep
your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking
back to a stranger—all out of fear of how an officer with a gun
will react to them. See, e.g., W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls
of Black Folk (1903); J. Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963); T.
Coates, Between the World and Me (2015).

															By legitimizing the conduct that produces this
double consciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black,
guilty and innocent, that an officer can verify your legal status
at any time. It says that your body is subject to invasion while
courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are
not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state,
just waiting to be cataloged.

															We must not pretend that the countless people
who are routinely targeted by police are “isolated.” They are the
canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us
that no one can breathe in this atmosphere. See L. Guinier & G.
Torres, The Miner’s Canary 274–283 (2002). They are the ones who
recognize that unlawful police stops corrode all our civil
liberties and threaten all our lives. Until their voices matter
too, our justice system will continue to be anything but.

															*  *  *

															I dissent. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

															_________________

															No. 14–1373

															_________________

															UTAH, PETITIONER v. EDWARDJOSEPH
STRIEFF, JR.

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
utah

															[June 20, 2016]

															Justice Kagan, with whom Justice Ginsburg
joins, dissenting.

															If a police officer stops a person on the street
without reasonable suspicion, that seizure violates the Fourth
Amendment. And if the officer pats down the unlawfully detained
individual and finds drugs in his pocket, the State may not use the
contraband as evidence in a criminal prosecution. That much is
beyond dispute. The question here is whether the prohibition on
admitting evidence dissolves if the officer discovers, after making
the stop but before finding the drugs, that the person has an
outstanding arrest warrant. Because that added wrinkle makes no
difference under the Constitution, I respectfully dissent.

															This Court has established a simple framework
for determining whether to exclude evidence obtained through a
Fourth Amendment violation: Suppression is necessary when, but only
when, its societal benefits outweigh its costs. See ante, at
4; Davis v. United States , 564 U. S. 229, 237
(2011) . The exclusionary rule serves a crucial function—to deter
unconstitutional police conduct. By barring the use of illegally
obtained evidence, courts reduce the temptation for police officers
to skirt the Fourth Amendment’s requirements. See James v. Illinois , 493 U. S. 307, 319 (1990) . But suppression
of evidence also “exacts a heavy toll”: Its consequence in many
cases is to release a criminal without just punishment. Davis, 564 U. S., at 237. Our decisions have thus
endeavored to strike a sound balance between those two competing
considerations—rejecting the “reflexive” impulse to exclude
evidence every time an officer runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment, id., at 238, but insisting on suppression when it will lead
to “appreciable deterrence” of police misconduct, Herring v. United States , 555 U. S. 135, 141 (2009) .

															This case thus requires the Court to determine
whether excluding the fruits of Officer Douglas Fackrell’s
unjustified stop of Edward Strieff would significantly deter police
from committing similar constitutional violations in the future.
And as the Court states, that inquiry turns on application of the
“attenuation doctrine,” ante, at 5—our effort to “mark the
point” at which the discovery of evidence “become[s] so attenuated”
from the police misconduct that the deterrent benefit of exclusion
drops below its cost. United States v. Leon , 468
U. S. 897, 911 (1984) . Since Brown v. Illinois ,
422 U. S. 590 –605 (1975), three factors have guided that
analysis. First, the closer the “temporal proximity” between the
unlawful act and the discovery of evidence, the greater the
deterrent value of suppression. Id., at 603. Second, the
more “purpose[ful]” or “flagran[t]” the police illegality, the
clearer the necessity, and better the chance, of preventing similar
misbehavior. Id., at 604. And third, the presence (or
absence) of “intervening circumstances” makes a difference: The
stronger the causal chain between the misconduct and the evidence,
the more exclusion will curb future constitutional violations. Id., at 603–604. Here, as shown below, each of those
considerations points toward suppression: Nothing in Fackrell’s
discovery of an outstanding warrant so attenuated the connection
between his wrongful behavior and his detection of drugs as to
diminish the exclusionary rule’s deterrent benefits.

															Start where the majority does: The temporal
proximity factor, it forthrightly admits, “favors suppressing the
evidence.” Ante, at 6. After all, Fackrell’s discovery of
drugs came just minutes after the unconstitutional stop. And in
prior decisions, this Court has made clear that only the lapse of
“substantial time” between the two could favor admission. Kaupp v. Texas , 538 U. S. 626, 633 (2003)
( per curiam ); see, e.g., Brown , 422
U. S., at 604 (suppressing a confession when “less than two
hours” separated it from an unlawful arrest). So the State, by all
accounts, takes strike one.

															Move on to the purposefulness of Fackrell’s
conduct, where the majority is less willing to see a problem for
what it is. The majority chalks up Fackrell’s Fourth Amendment
violation to a couple of innocent “mistakes.” Ante, at 8.
But far from a Barney Fife-type mishap, Fackrell’s seizure of
Strieff was a calculated decision, taken with so little
justification that the State has never tried to defend its
legality. At the suppression hearing, Fackrell acknowledged that
the stop was designed for investigatory purposes— i.e., to
“find out what was going on [in] the house” he had been watching,
and to figure out “what [Strieff] was doing there.” App. 17–18. And
Fackrell frankly admitted that he had no basis for his action
except that Strieff “was coming out of the house.” Id., at
17 . Plug in Fackrell’s and Strieff’s names, substitute
“stop” for “arrest” and “reasonable suspicion” for “probable
cause,” and this Court’s decision in Brown perfectly
describes this case:

															“[I]t is not disputed that [Fackrell
stopped Strieff] without [reasonable suspicion]. [He] later
testified that [he] made the [stop] for the purpose of questioning
[Strieff] as part of [his] investigation . . . . The
illegality here . . . had a quality of purposefulness.
The impropriety of the [stop] was obvious. [A]wareness of that fact
was virtually conceded by [Fackrell] when [he] repeatedly
acknowledged, in [his] testimony, that the purpose of [his] action
was ‘for investigation’: [Fackrell] embarked upon this expedition
for evidence in the hope that something might turn up.” 422
U. S., at 592, 605 (some internal punctuation altered;
footnote, citation, and paragraph break omitted).

															In Brown , the Court held those facts to
support suppression—and they do here as well. Swing and a miss for
strike two.

															Finally, consider whether any intervening
circumstance “br[oke] the causal chain” between the stop and the
evidence. Ante, at 6. The notion of such a disrupting event
comes from the tort law doctrine of proximate causation. See Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co. , 553
U. S. 639 –659 (2008) (explaining that a party cannot
“establish[ ] proximate cause” when “an intervening cause
break[s] the chain of causation between” the act and the injury);
Kerr, Good Faith, New Law, and the Scope of the Exclusionary Rule,
99 Geo. L. J. 1077, 1099 (2011) ( Fourth Amendment attenuation
analysis “looks to whether the constitutional violation was the
proximate cause of the discovery of the evidence”). And as in the
tort context, a circumstance counts as intervening only when it is
unforeseeable—not when it can be seen coming from miles away. See
W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, B. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton
on Law of Torts 312 (5th ed. 1984). For rather than breaking the
causal chain, predictable effects ( e.g., X leads naturally
to Y leads naturally to Z) are its very links.

															And Fackrell’s discovery of an arrest
warrant—the only event the majority thinks intervened—was an
eminently foreseeable consequence of stopping Strieff. As Fackrell
testified, checking for outstanding warrants during a stop is the
“normal” practice of South Salt Lake City police. App. 18; see also State v. Topanotes , 2003 UT 30, ¶2, 76 P. 3d
1159, 1160 (describing a warrant check as “routine procedure” and
“common practice” in Salt Lake City). In other words, the
department’s standard detention procedures—stop, ask for
identification, run a check—are partly designed to find outstanding
warrants. And find them they will, given the staggering number of
such warrants on the books. See generally ante, at 7–8
(Sotomayor, J., dissenting). To take just a few examples: The State
of California has 2.5 million outstanding arrest warrants (a number
corresponding to about 9% of its adult population); Pennsylvania
(with a population of about 12.8 million) contributes 1.4 million
more; and New York City (population 8.4 million) adds another 1.2
million. See Reply Brief 8; Associated Press, Pa. Database, NBC
News (Apr. 8, 2007), online at http://goo.gl/3Yq3Nd (as last
visited June 17, 2016); N. Y. Times, Oct. 8, 2015, p.
A24.[ 1 ] So outstanding warrants
do not appear as bolts from the blue. They are the run-of-the-mill
results of police stops—what officers look for when they run a
routine check of a person’s identification and what they know will
turn up with fair regularity. In short, they are nothing like what
intervening circumstances are supposed to be.[ 2 ] Strike three.

															The majority’s misapplication of Brown ’s
three-part inquiry creates unfortunate incentives for the
police—indeed, practically invites them to do what Fackrell did
here. Consider an officer who, like Fackrell, wishes to stop
someone for investigative reasons, but does not have what a court
would view as reasonable suspicion. If the officer believes that
any evidence he discovers will be inadmissible, he is likely to
think the unlawful stop not worth making—precisely the deterrence
the exclusionary rule is meant to achieve. But when he is told of
today’s decision? Now the officer knows that the stop may well
yield admissible evidence: So long as the target is one of the many
millions of people in this country with an outstanding arrest
warrant, anything the officer finds in a search is fair game for
use in a criminal prosecution. The officer’s incentive to violate
the Constitution thus increases: From here on, he sees potential
advantage in stopping individuals without reasonable
suspicion—exactly the temptation the exclusionary rule is supposed
to remove. Because the majority thus places Fourth Amendment
protections at risk, I respectfully dissent. Notes 1 What is more, outstanding
arrest warrants are not distributed evenly across the population.
To the contrary, they are concentrated incities, towns, and
neighborhoods where stops are most likely to occur—and so the odds
of any given stop revealing a warrant are even higher than the
above numbers indicate. One study found, for example, that
Cincinnati, Ohio had over 100,000 outstanding warrants with only
300,000 residents. See Helland & Tabarrok, The Fugitive:
Evidence on Public Versus Private Law Enforcement from Bail
Jumping, 47 J. Law & Econ. 93, 98 (2004). And as Justice
Sotomayor notes, 16,000 of the 21,000 people residing in the town
of Ferguson, Missouri have outstanding warrants. See ante, at 8. 2 The majority relies on Segura v. United States , 468 U. S. 796 (1984) ,
to reach the opposite conclusion, see ante, at 6–7, but that
decision lacks any relevance to this case. The Court there held
that the Fourth Amendment violation at issue “did not contribute in
any way” to the police’s subsequent procurement of a warrant and
discovery of contraband. 468 U. S., at 815. So the Court had
no occasion to consider the question here: What happens when an
unconstitutional act in fact leads to a warrant which then leads to
evidence?