Topic Library — Presumption of Innocence and Racial Profiling (Year 1 Foundations)

School: Minister Destiny Testimony Schools Track: Adult Class: Topic Library — Year 1 (Foundations) Founded and presented by: Muslim Ordained Minister Destiny Marie Morgan

This lesson is educational information, Massachusetts-first, and is not legal advice. Laws and procedures vary by state and by case. If you are in danger right now, call 911. If you have a real case, talk to a lawyer — legal aid organizations help many people for free.

Before you start

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This unit teaches two things side by side: what the presumption of innocence actually guarantees in doctrine, and what stop-and-search data and one landmark case show about the street encounters that happen long before any trial. Every statistic is credited to the study that produced it, and each side's strongest argument is stated in the words of the people who make it.

The lesson

Part 1. The promise — a trial right, stated at full strength

The presumption of innocence came to American law through the English common-law tradition: an accused person enters the courtroom legally innocent, and stays that way unless the government proves otherwise. The Supreme Court gave the principle its classic statement in Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432 (1895), a bank-fraud case in which the trial judge had refused to instruct the jury on the presumption at all: "The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law." The Court reversed the conviction. Seventy-five years later, In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970), made the companion rule constitutional bedrock: the Due Process Clause requires the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt — there, for a twelve-year-old in juvenile court, and by its reasoning in criminal cases generally.

Operationally, the presumption does three things. It places the burden of proof entirely on the prosecution; the defense is required to prove nothing. It fixes the height of that burden at proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the highest standard in the law. And it is spoken to the jury: judges instruct jurors that the defendant is presumed innocent and must be acquitted if the proof falls short. Hold those three operations in mind, because the limit this whole topic turns on is plain once you see them: in formal doctrine, the presumption of innocence is a trial right. It governs the courtroom. The parts that follow are about everywhere it does not reach.

Part 2. Legally innocent, locked up — bail and the road to a plea

Between arrest and trial sits pretrial detention, and here the doctrine itself supplies the standard. In Stack v. Boyle, 342 U.S. 1 (1951), the Supreme Court held that bail's purpose is to assure the accused appears at trial, and that "bail set at a figure higher than an amount reasonably calculated to fulfill this purpose is 'excessive' under the Eighth Amendment." The same opinion ties bail to Part 1: the traditional right to freedom before conviction "serves to prevent the infliction of punishment prior to conviction," and without it "the presumption of innocence … would lose its meaning."

Measured against that standard, the numbers are large. Bureau of Justice Statistics data for midyear 2023, as analyzed by the Prison Policy Initiative, count about 664,200 people in local jails, of whom about 467,600 — roughly 70 percent — had not been convicted of a crime; most were held pretrial. Vera Institute research, as reported by the Prison Policy Initiative, puts the median felony bail amount at $10,000 — about eight months of income for the typical person held in jail. Studies of pretrial detention, including work by the Vera Institute and academic researchers, find that detained people plead guilty more often and receive longer sentences than similarly situated people who were released. Plea bargaining is where most cases end, and scholars describe a "trial penalty" — the gap between a plea offer and the sentence risked at trial. Prosecutors and judges answer, also on the record, that pleas are voluntary, that they spare victims the ordeal of testifying, and that the system could not try every case. Both accounts are presented here because both are part of how the system explains itself.

Part 3. The encounter doctrines — where suspicion is built

Most state power over a legally innocent person is exercised in encounters, under rules built for the street rather than the courtroom. Precision starts with a definition. Racial profiling means using race or ethnicity as a factor in deciding whom to stop, search, or investigate, where it substitutes for individualized, behavior-based suspicion. It is not profiling when an officer uses a specific suspect description from a particular crime report — where race appears as one descriptor among others, alongside clothing, direction, and timing, tied to that reported crime. That line — group membership as the reason, versus one descriptor in a specific description — is the definitional core of this topic.

Two decisions frame encounter law. In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), the Court allowed a brief investigative stop on reasonable suspicion — specific, articulable facts suggesting crime is afoot — and a pat-down frisk where the officer reasonably believes the person is armed and dangerous. Reasonable suspicion is a lower threshold than the probable cause needed for an arrest. In Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996), the Court held — stated exactly — that where an officer has probable cause for a traffic stop, the stop is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment regardless of the officer's actual motive, and that claims of selective enforcement based on race belong to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, not the Fourth. Consent searches complete the outline: an officer may search without suspicion if a person voluntarily consents, and voluntariness is judged on all the circumstances. Because consent searches rest on no suspicion at all, they are one of the places researchers look first for racial disparities — which is Part 4.

Part 4. What the data show — and how to read them honestly

The largest evidence base is the Stanford Open Policing Project (Stanford University), whose peer-reviewed analysis by Pierson and colleagues (Nature Human Behaviour, 2020) examined roughly 100 million stops from 21 state patrol agencies and 29 municipal departments. Its findings, stated with its methods: black drivers were stopped at higher rates than white drivers relative to population — the project's news release puts it at about 20 percent more likely, a pattern persisting after controlling for age and gender — while Hispanic drivers were stopped at similar or slightly lower rates. Once stopped, black and Hispanic drivers were searched more often; the project reports black drivers searched about 1.5 to 2 times as often as white drivers.

The honest lesson is in the project's two search tests, which point in different directions and must be taught together. Its outcome test — how often searches find contraband — is nuanced: hit rates were generally lower for Hispanic drivers and typically in line for black drivers. Its threshold test, which combines search rates and hit rates to estimate the suspicion officers require before searching, finds officers require less suspicion to search black and Hispanic drivers than white drivers — in the project's words, a double standard that is evidence of discrimination; the project itself states the limits of statistical tests, and this school repeats them. Its veil-of-darkness test compares the same clock times across the year: the black share of stops drops about 5–10 percent after sunset, when a driver's race is harder to see (in Texas, about 25 percent of drivers stopped just before sunset were black, versus about 20 percent just after dusk).

None of this evidence exists without data mandates. California's Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015 (AB 953) requires agencies to report stop data annually to the Attorney General. Illinois has run a traffic-stop statistical study under 625 ILCS 5/11-212, collecting stop data since 2004. Massachusetts is taught concretely in Cases & Codes below. The point is structural: data mandates are the precondition of proof — without them, profiling claims and denials alike run on anecdote.

Part 5. Floyd — the case where the pattern itself went to trial

Floyd v. City of New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 540 (S.D.N.Y. 2013), was a federal class action challenging the New York City Police Department's stop-and-frisk practices. After a nine-week trial, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin issued the liability opinion on August 12, 2013, working from the department's own paperwork — the UF-250 forms officers completed after stops. The opinion records 4.4 million NYPD stops between January 2004 and June 2012; about 83 percent were of Black and Hispanic people, and 88 percent resulted in no further law enforcement action — no arrest and no summons.

The court held the City liable on two grounds. Under the Fourth Amendment, the City was deliberately indifferent toward a practice of unconstitutional stops and frisks so widespread it had the force of law. Under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, the City had adopted a policy of indirect racial profiling — targeting racially defined groups for stops based on local crime suspect data. The remedies opinion (959 F. Supp. 2d 668) ordered an independent federal monitor, immediate changes to stop-and-frisk policies, training, and supervision, a joint remedial process with community input, and a body-worn-camera pilot. The City's defense, fairly stated: Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Commissioner Raymond Kelly argued publicly that the stops policy had driven crime down and saved lives, and that stops tracked suspect descriptions rather than bias — an argument the Brennan Center's published account records them making as the program's champions. What followed is also a matter of record: New York Civil Liberties Union counts show recorded stops fell from 685,724 in 2011 to 191,851 in 2013, and the city's reported murders fell in 2013 to the lowest level ever recorded; crime continued to fall as stops declined, on the city's own reported statistics and published analyses. The court itself stressed it was ruling on constitutionality, not on policing effectiveness.

Part 6. The repair tools — and the honest synthesis

Three kinds of repair exist, each aimed at a different level. Doctrinal: Equal Protection litigation, the channel Whren itself assigns, and the theory Floyd proved. Institutional: under 34 U.S.C. § 12601, enacted in 1994, it is unlawful for a governmental authority to engage in a pattern or practice of law-enforcement conduct that deprives people of constitutional rights, and the Attorney General may sue for equitable and declaratory relief to eliminate it. That authority typically produces a consent decree: a Justice Department investigation, published findings, a negotiated court-enforceable decree, an independent monitor, and compliance measured over years. Outcomes are reported even-handedly here: the Justice Department has announced completed decrees and returned control to cities including Seattle, Newark, and New Orleans after reforms it credited; critics, including some city officials and officers, cite the cost, the duration, and federal overreach. Both are attributed; neither is this school's verdict. Statistical: state anti-profiling law falls into categories — data-collection mandates, profiling bans, and training requirements — and Massachusetts law, studied below, combines all three. Body-worn cameras belong in one careful paragraph: a Campbell Collaboration systematic review (Lum and colleagues, 2020), covering 30 studies, found complaints against officers fell by about 16.6 percent on average where cameras were used, but that the evidence was insufficient to conclude cameras reduce use of force, with results varying widely across studies; camera footage also creates a record that protects officers when an encounter was lawful.

The synthesis answers this topic's question — why a legally innocent person can be treated as a suspect without any courtroom rule being broken. The presumption of innocence was built for the courtroom and was never, in doctrine, extended to the street encounter. Encounter law developed its own lower-threshold rules (Terry) and motive-blind rules (Whren), so a person can be legally innocent, stopped on thin individualized grounds, and counted in a racially skewed pattern — all at once. Courts have named parts of it (Floyd). The repair is therefore doctrinal, statistical, and institutional — taught as analysis, attributed, without slogans.

Words to know — Presumption of Innocence and Racial Profiling

Presumption of innocence — the rule that an accused person is legally innocent until the prosecution proves guilt; it places the burden of proof on the government.
Burden of proof — the obligation to prove a claim; in a criminal case it rests entirely on the prosecution.
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt — the highest standard of proof in law, required by due process for a criminal conviction.
Bail — money or conditions set to assure a charged person appears at trial; the person is released until then.
Pretrial detention — holding a charged, unconvicted person in jail before trial, most often because bail was not paid.
Plea bargaining — negotiation in which a defendant pleads guilty, usually to reduced charges or a recommended sentence, instead of going to trial.
Reasonable suspicion — specific, articulable facts that would lead an officer to suspect crime is afoot; the standard for a Terry stop.
Probable cause — facts sufficient to lead a reasonable person to believe a crime was committed or evidence will be found; the standard for an arrest and for a traffic stop under Whren.
Racial profiling — using race or ethnicity as a factor in deciding whom to stop, search, or investigate, where it substitutes for individualized, behavior-based suspicion.
Consent decree — a court-enforceable agreement, overseen by a judge and usually a monitor, requiring an agency to make specified reforms.

Myths vs facts — Presumption of Innocence and Racial Profiling

Myth: The presumption of innocence means police may not treat an unconvicted person as a suspect. Fact: In doctrine the presumption is a trial right — it assigns the burden of proof in the courtroom. Street encounters are governed by separate rules (reasonable suspicion, probable cause), which is precisely the gap this unit studies.
Myth: If an officer had probable cause for a traffic stop, nothing about the stop can be challenged. Fact: Whren forecloses the Fourth Amendment motive argument, but the Court itself said selective-enforcement claims based on race belong to the Equal Protection Clause.
Myth: Mentioning race in any stop is racial profiling. Fact: Using a specific suspect description from a particular crime report — race as one descriptor among others — is not profiling. Profiling is race substituting for individualized, behavior-based suspicion.
Myth: Statistics alone prove that profiling happened. Fact: Researchers treat statistics as tests with limits: the Stanford project's outcome test is nuanced, its threshold test finds a double standard, and its authors state the limits of each test themselves.
Myth: The Floyd court banned stop and frisk. Fact: The court held the City's practices unconstitutional and ordered monitoring, policy, training, and supervision reforms. It expressly did not order an end to stop and frisk conducted lawfully.

Think it through — Presumption of Innocence and Racial Profiling

The situation: A city releases five years of stop data. Drivers from one racial group are stopped at twice their share of the population and searched three times as often as another group, yet searches of the first group find contraband less often. The police chief answers: "Every one of those stops had a legal basis — a violation any officer could cite. Case closed." A resident answers: "The numbers are the whole story — every stop was racism." Your study group asks you to evaluate both claims using this unit.

Walk it through: (1) The chief's legal point is partly right and partly beside the point — Part 3: under Whren, a stop supported by probable cause is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment whatever the officer's motive, so a lawful basis for each stop does not answer a pattern claim, which Whren assigns to the Equal Protection Clause. (2) The resident's claim overstates what the numbers alone do — Part 4: researchers ask what benchmark stops are compared against and run separate tests; a lower hit rate in the searched group is the pattern the Stanford threshold test reads as a double standard, but the project's own stated limits apply, and its outcome test was nuanced rather than one-directional. (3) The doctrinally complete claim is Floyd's — Part 5: a pattern can be unconstitutional two ways at once — stops below Terry's floor (Fourth Amendment) and a policy of targeting racially defined groups (Equal Protection) — proven from the agency's own records. (4) What a fair evaluator asks for next is Part 6's toolkit: the stop-level records, the agency's supervision and training files, and whether a data mandate produced the numbers at all — without Part 4's mandates, neither claim could be tested.

Cases & codes to study — Presumption of Innocence and Racial Profiling

Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432 (U.S. Supreme Court, 1895)

The facts: Men charged with aiding a national bank president's misapplications of bank funds were convicted after the trial judge instructed the jury on reasonable doubt but refused to instruct on the presumption of innocence.
The question: Is a reasonable-doubt instruction enough, or must the jury also be instructed on the presumption of innocence when the defense asks?
The ruling and the outcome: The Supreme Court reversed. The presumption is "the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary," distinct from reasonable doubt, and refusing the instruction was reversible error.
Why it matters to you: Coffin is the source courts still quote for what the presumption is — and its setting is a courtroom, the boundary Part 1 teaches.
📄 Court document: https://static.case.law/us/156/case-pdfs/0432-01.pdf (the opinion in the United States Reports, via the Caselaw Access Project)

In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (U.S. Supreme Court, 1970)

The facts: A New York family court found twelve-year-old Samuel Winship delinquent for an act that would be larceny if done by an adult, applying a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard while acknowledging the proof might not reach reasonable doubt.
The question: Does due process require proof beyond a reasonable doubt when a juvenile is charged with an act that would be a crime if committed by an adult?
The ruling and the outcome: Yes. The Supreme Court reversed: proof beyond a reasonable doubt is required by the Due Process Clause in criminal trials and in juvenile adjudications of that kind.
Why it matters to you: Winship is why the burden in Part 1 is a constitutional command, not a courtesy a court may lower.
📄 Court document: https://chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/397/358/index.php (the full opinion)
🎥 Watch / listen: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1969/778 — the Oyez case page, with the actual oral argument audio of January 20, 1970 (Oyez)

Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (U.S. Supreme Court, 1968)

The facts: A Cleveland detective watched two men pace the same route past a store window roughly a dozen times each, pausing and conferring; suspecting they were casing the store for a robbery, he stopped them and patted down their outer clothing, finding pistols on two of the three men.
The question: May an officer who lacks probable cause for an arrest briefly stop a person on reasonable suspicion, and frisk for weapons on a reasonable belief the person is armed and dangerous, without violating the Fourth Amendment?
The ruling and the outcome: Yes, within those limits. The Court affirmed the conviction: a stop requires reasonable suspicion of crime afoot, and a frisk requires a reasonable belief the person is armed and dangerous — specific facts, not a hunch.
Why it matters to you: Terry sets the floor every street stop must clear. Floyd, below, is what happened when a department's paperwork showed stops made below that floor at scale.
📄 Court document: https://chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/392/1/case.php (the full opinion)
🎥 Watch / listen: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1967/67 — the Oyez case page, with the oral argument audio (Oyez)

Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (U.S. Supreme Court, 1996)

The facts: Plainclothes officers patrolling an area known for drug activity watched a truck wait unusually long at a stop sign, then turn without signaling and speed off. They stopped it for the traffic violations and saw bags of crack cocaine in the passenger's hands; the men argued the stop was a pretext to investigate drugs.
The question: Does a traffic stop supported by probable cause violate the Fourth Amendment because the officers' real motive was investigating another crime?
The ruling and the outcome: No — a unanimous Court affirmed the convictions. Where probable cause supports a traffic stop, the stop is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment regardless of motive; claims of selective enforcement based on race are the concern of the Equal Protection Clause.
Why it matters to you: Whren marks the exact boundary of the Fourth Amendment in encounter law — and points pattern claims toward the Fourteenth Amendment, where Floyd was litigated.
📄 Court document: https://pdfs.floridacourtrules.com/whren-v-united-states-1996.pdf (the opinion in the United States Reports)
🎥 Watch / listen: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1995/95-5841 — the Oyez case page, with the oral argument audio (Oyez)

Floyd v. City of New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 540 (U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, 2013)

The facts: A federal class action challenged the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices. The court examined the department's UF-250 stop forms: 4.4 million stops from January 2004 to June 2012, about 83 percent of them of Black and Hispanic people, with 88 percent resulting in no arrest or summons.
The question: Were the City's practices unconstitutional — under the Fourth Amendment for stops without reasonable suspicion, and under the Equal Protection Clause as a policy aimed at racially defined groups?
The ruling and the outcome: The City was liable under both: deliberate indifference toward widespread unconstitutional stops and frisks (Fourth Amendment), and a policy of indirect racial profiling based on local crime suspect data (Fourteenth Amendment). The companion remedies opinion, 959 F. Supp. 2d 668, ordered a federal monitor, policy, training, and supervision reforms, a joint remedial process with community input, and a body-worn-camera pilot.
Why it matters to you: Floyd is this unit's proof of concept: a racially skewed pattern, established from the government's own data, held unconstitutional without any single trial right being the issue.
📄 Court document: https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca2/13-3088/1/0.pdf (the August 12, 2013 liability and remedies opinions as filed, via Justia)

The law itself — read the real words

U.S. Const. amend. IV — protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and requires warrants on probable cause; the text every stop in this unit is measured against. Read it: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript
U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1 — forbids any state to deny a person equal protection of the laws; the clause Whren assigns racial-profiling claims to and Floyd was decided under. Read it: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/amendments-11-27
34 U.S.C. § 12601 (U.S. Code) — makes a pattern or practice of unconstitutional policing unlawful and authorizes the Attorney General to sue to eliminate it. Read it: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2023-title34/pdf/USCODE-2023-title34-subtitleI-chap121-subchapVIII-partB-sec12601.pdf
Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 90, § 63 — requires the Registry of Motor Vehicles to collect age, race, and gender data from every Massachusetts Uniform Citation, with an independent annual public analysis; if the analysis suggests an agency appears to have engaged in racial or gender profiling, the agency must record the reason for all its traffic stops for a year and undergo implicit-bias training. Read it: https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXIV/Chapter90/Section63

Where to read the real thing, free: the opinions and statutes above are the primary sources. Hear Supreme Court arguments at Oyez (https://www.oyez.org/cases/1995/95-5841), search opinions free at CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com), and read Massachusetts law at the Massachusetts Legislature (https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXIV/Chapter90/Section63).

Try this — Presumption of Innocence and Racial Profiling

☐ State the presumption's three operations from Part 1 from memory — who carries the burden, how high it is, and where it operates.
☐ Read Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 90, § 63(d) and write, in your own words, the two consequences that follow if the annual analysis suggests profiling by an agency.
☐ Take one headline about stop data and rewrite it with its attribution attached: whose count, what years, and which test (stop rates, outcome, threshold, or veil of darkness) it reports.
☐ Explain the Part 3 line to someone else: one example of a specific suspect description, and one example of profiling, and what makes them different.
☐ Read the Whren holding and the Floyd Equal Protection holding side by side, and write one sentence on why the second case is the answer the first case points to.

Resources to keep — Presumption of Innocence and Racial Profiling

911 — if you or someone else is in danger right now.
mass.gov — official Massachusetts information, including court and legal-aid information.
United States Courts — uscourts.gov — educational materials on constitutional rights in the criminal process.
Department of Justice — justice.gov — Civil Rights Division information on pattern-or-practice investigations and police reform.
988 (call or text) — if an arrest, a stop, or an investigation has become a personal crisis and you need support now.

What you earned / what's next — Presumption of Innocence and Racial Profiling

✅ Presumption of Innocence and Racial Profiling complete (quiz score 80% or higher): You can state what the presumption of innocence does in doctrine and where it stops, explain bail and pretrial detention under Stack and the verified jail figures, draw the line between profiling and a specific suspect description, state Terry and Whren exactly, read the Stanford findings with their methods and limits, tell the Floyd story from both sides, and name the doctrinal, statistical, and institutional repair tools.

Your certificate

Minister Destiny Testimony Schools Certificate of Completion — Presumption of Innocence and Racial Profiling

This certificate is presented by Muslim Ordained Minister Destiny Marie Morgan

Awarded to: ______________________________ (write your name here after you download — your name is never collected or stored by this school)

Date completed: ______________

Congratulations. You now hold the promise and the evidence in the same hand — what the law guarantees in the courtroom, and what the data require us to face outside it. That is knowledge that protects people. — Minister Destiny Marie Morgan

This is a certificate of educational completion from Minister Destiny Testimony Schools. It is not a state license, a government certification, or legal training for representing anyone.

What's next: Return to the Topic Library for your next Year 1 Foundations unit.

Sources

National Archives (archives.gov) — "The Bill of Rights: A Transcription" (https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript) — text of the Fourth and Eighth Amendments.
National Archives (archives.gov) — "The Constitution: Amendments 11–27" (https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/amendments-11-27) — text of the Fourteenth Amendment, § 1.
OpenStax, American Government 3e, § 4.3 "The Rights of Suspects" (openstax.org) (http://openstax.org/books/american-government-3e/pages/4-3-the-rights-of-suspects?message=retired) — open-courseware check of this unit's due process coverage.
Stanford Open Policing Project (openpolicing.stanford.edu) (https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/tutorials/) — project data and methods, including the veil-of-darkness analysis; findings as published in Pierson et al., Nature Human Behaviour (2020), and summarized in Stanford News (https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2017/06/database-reveals-disparities-officers-treatment-minority-motorists).
Prison Policy Initiative (prisonpolicy.org) — analysis of Bureau of Justice Statistics midyear 2023 jail data (about 467,600 of about 664,200 people in local jails unconvicted) and of Vera Institute research (median felony bail $10,000).
New York Civil Liberties Union (nyclu.org) — stop-and-frisk data briefer, August 2014 (https://www.nyclu.org/uploads/2019/02/stopandfrisk_briefer_2002-2013_final.pdf) — recorded stops of 685,724 in 2011 and 191,851 in 2013; murders at their lowest recorded level in 2013.
Brennan Center for Justice (brennancenter.org) — "Ending New York's Stop-and-Frisk Did Not Increase Crime" (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/ending-new-yorks-stop-and-frisk-did-not-increase-crime) — Mayor Bloomberg's and Commissioner Kelly's defense of the policy, and the post-ruling crime record.
California Department of Justice (oag.ca.gov) — Racial and Identity Profiling Act (AB 953) regulations, Initial Statement of Reasons (https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/ripa/isor-11292016.pdf) — annual stop-data reporting to the Attorney General.
Illinois General Assembly / Department of Transportation (ilga.gov) — Traffic and Pedestrian Stop Statistical Study under 625 ILCS 5/11-212; statute text via Justia (https://law.justia.com/codes/illinois/2019/chapter-625/act-625-ilcs-5/chapter-11/).
Lum, C., et al. (2020) — "Body-worn cameras' effects on police officers and citizen behavior: A systematic review," Campbell Systematic Reviews (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8356344/) — complaints fell about 16.6% on average; evidence insufficient on use of force.
U.S. Department of Justice (justice.gov) — 2025 announcements terminating the Newark, New Orleans, and Seattle consent decrees after reforms (e.g., https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-court-terminates-newark-police-departments-consent-decree-after-successful-reforms).
Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432 (U.S. Supreme Court 1895) — the presumption of innocence is "the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary"; a jury must be instructed on it when requested.
In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (U.S. Supreme Court 1970) — due process requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases and in juvenile adjudications of acts that would be crimes if done by an adult.
Stack v. Boyle, 342 U.S. 1 (U.S. Supreme Court 1951) — bail's purpose is assuring appearance at trial; bail above an amount reasonably calculated for that purpose is excessive under the Eighth Amendment.
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (U.S. Supreme Court 1968) — a brief stop on reasonable suspicion, and a frisk on reasonable belief the person is armed and dangerous, do not violate the Fourth Amendment.
Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (U.S. Supreme Court 1996) — a traffic stop supported by probable cause is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment regardless of motive; racial selective-enforcement claims belong to the Equal Protection Clause.
Floyd v. City of New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 540 (S.D.N.Y. 2013) — City liable under the Fourth Amendment (deliberate indifference to widespread unconstitutional stops and frisks) and the Fourteenth (a policy of indirect racial profiling); remedies at 959 F. Supp. 2d 668.
U.S. Const. amend. IV (U.S. Constitution) — protection against unreasonable searches and seizures; warrants only on probable cause.
U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1 (U.S. Constitution) — no state may deny any person equal protection of the laws.
34 U.S.C. § 12601 (U.S. Code) — pattern-or-practice conduct depriving persons of constitutional rights is unlawful; the Attorney General may sue for equitable and declaratory relief.
Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 90, § 63 (Mass. Gen. Laws) — citation data collection and independent annual analysis; profiling consequences (all-stops reason recording for one year; implicit-bias training); § 63(h) prohibits racial or other profiling, with a specific-suspect-description exception.

Your Progress — On Your Device Only — Presumption of Innocence and Racial Profiling

Learning outcomes: On completing this unit, the student can:

state the presumption of innocence's three operations and its limit as a trial right, citing Coffin and Winship;
explain bail's purpose under Stack v. Boyle and describe pretrial detention using the attributed Bureau of Justice Statistics and Vera Institute figures;
distinguish racial profiling from the use of a specific suspect description, and state the holdings of Terry and Whren exactly;
summarize the Stanford Open Policing Project's stop, outcome, threshold, and veil-of-darkness findings with their stated limits;
recount Floyd's facts, both holdings, and remedies, and state the City's defense as its makers made it;
describe the repair tools — Equal Protection litigation, 34 U.S.C. § 12601 and consent decrees, state data mandates including Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 90, § 63 — and the evidence on body-worn cameras.

Study time: Approximately 1.5 hours — an estimate covering reading, activities, and the test. Students move at their own pace.
Assessment: A 10-question test drawn only from this unit's lesson. 80% or higher passes and earns the unit certificate. Answers are not shown; your score is saved only in your own browser on this device, and retakes are allowed.
Level: Topic Library — Year 1 (Foundations) · Adult school · working rank on completion path: Freshman → Sophomore.
Version: Version 1.0 — October 2026.

Minister Destiny Testimony Schools — Adult. Educational information only, not legal advice. Help lines: 911 for emergencies · 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call/text 988).

Ready to test? This course's test is given at the Testing Center. Answers are never shown; score at least 80% to earn your certificate of completion. You may retake the test as many times as you need — each retake presents the questions in a different order, with the answer choices in a different order too.