State v. Icard

EDMUNDS, Justice.

This case presents the question whether a police encounter with defendant triggered defendant’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable seizure. We conclude that a reasonable person in defendant’s position would not have felt free to refuse an officer’s request to search her purse or otherwise terminate the encounter under the totality of circumstances that here included the officer’s initiation of the encounter, his declaration to defendant and her companion that he was investigating drug crimes and prostitution, his call for a backup officer, his persistence when…