Minnesota v. Dickerson
Case Date: 07/09/1993
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Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366 (1993),[1] was a 1993 Supreme Court of the United States case. Decided June 7, 1993, the Court unanimously held that, when a police officer who is conducting a lawful patdown search for weapons feels something that plainly is contraband, the object may be seized even though it is not a weapon. By a 6-to-3 vote, however, the court held that the officer in this case had gone beyond the limits of a lawful patdown search before he could determine that the object was contraband, making the search and the subsequent seizure unlawful under the Fourth Amendment.
Associate Justice Byron White gave the opinion of the court.
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