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Authors ›› Rehnquist
An individual's presence in an area of expected criminal activity, standing alone, is not enough to support a reasonable, particularized suspicion that the person is committing a crime. Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 61 L. Ed. 2d 357, 99 S. Ct. 2637 (1979). But officers are not required to ignore the relevant characteristics of a location in determining whether the circumstances are sufficiently suspicious to warrant further investigation. Accordingly, we have previously noted the fact that the stop occurred in a "high crime area" among the relevant contextual considerations in a Terry analysis.
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Where the same conduct violates two statutory provisions, the first step in the double jeopardy analysis is to determine whether the legislature -- in this case Congress -- intended that each violation be a separate offense. If Congress intended that there be only one offense -- that is, a defendant could be convicted under either statutory provision for a single act, but not under both -- there would be no statutory authorization for a subsequent prosecution after conviction of one of the two provisions, and that would end the double jeopardy analysis.
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Congress was seeking to add a new enforcement tool to the substantive drug offenses already available to prosecutors. During the debate on the Poff amendment [for the Comprehensive Drug Abuse, Prevention and Control Act of 1970], for example, Representative Fascell stated: "I see no reason to treat a drug trafficker any less harshly than an organized crime racketeer. Their acts are equally heinous, the consequences equally severe, and their punishment equally justified." Representative Weicker stated: "The penalty structure has been designed to accommodate all types of drug offenders, from the casual drug user and experimenter to the organized crime syndicates engaged in unlawful transportation and distribution of illicit drugs."
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Since the statute refers to a "mixture or substance containing a detectable amount," the entire mixture or substance is to be weighed when calculating the sentence. [...] The blotter paper used here, and blotter paper customarily used to distribute LSD, is a "mixture or substance containing a detectable amount" of LSD. Since neither the statute nor the Sentencing Guidelines define "mixture," and it has no established common-law meaning, it must be given its ordinary meaning, see Moskal v. United States, 498 U.S. 103, 108, which is "a portion of matter consisting of two or more components . . . that however thoroughly commingled are regarded as retaining a separate existence," Webster's Third New International Dictionary. The LSD crystals left behind when the solvent evaporates are inside of the paper, so they are commingled with it, but the LSD does not chemically combine with the paper and, thus, retains a separate existence. Using the dictionary definition would not allow the clause to be interpreted to include LSD in a bottle or in a car, since, unlike blotter paper, those containers are easily distinguished and separated from LSD.
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[Petitioners] argue that including the weight of the carrier leads to anomalous results, viz: a major wholesaler caught with 19,999 doses of pure LSD would not be subject to the 5-year mandatory minimum sentence, while a minor pusher with 200 doses on blotter paper, or even one dose on a sugar cube, would be subject to the mandatory minimum sentence.
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