Opinion ID: 159242
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Mr. Pearson's statements to the police after his arrest

Text: 133 Mr. Pearson unsuccessfully moved the trial court to suppress the statements he made to the FBI after his arrest. On appeal, Mr. Pearson argues that his confession was fruit of the poisonous tree of his arrest, which he claims was unlawful because the FBI did not have probable cause and did not obtain an arrest warrant from a neutral and detached magistrate, despite the fact that the agents had time to do so. 134 On appeal from a denial of a motion to suppress, we view the evidence in a light most favorable to the government and accept the district court's findings of historical fact unless clearly erroneous. United States v. Lewis, 71 F.3d 358, 360 (10th Cir. 1995). A court will find probable cause to arrest when facts and circumstances from a reasonably trustworthy source are within the officer's knowledge and sufficiently warrant a person of reasonable caution to believe a crime has been or is being committed by the person to be arrested. See United States v. Morgan, 936 F.2d 1561, 1568 (10th Cir. 1991). 135 The agents had probable cause to arrest Mr. Pearson. As the trial court noted, before the FBI arrested Mr. Pearson, it heard statements from four people who independently, and without knowledge of each others' statements, implicated Mr. Pearson in planning the robbery. Mr. Pearson's attempts to belittle the significance of these statements is not convincing and not completely forthright: 136 [The witnesses] simply [gave] statements informing the F.B.I. that during the month preceding the robbery, [Mr.] Pearson had tried to obtain the restaurant's deposits without force, but with the help of Deborah Meyer and Gracie Ginyard, both employees of Mr. Goodcent's. . . . Based upon this information of a possible conspiracy to embezzle monies from the Mr. Goodcent's restaurant [the FBI arrested Mr. Pearson]. 137 Aplt's Opening Br. at 25-26 (citations omitted). 138 The witnesses' statements did not simply concern a plan to obtain the restaurant's deposits without force or to embezzle monies. According to Special Agent Daniel Jablonski, Wandra Ginyard (Gracie Ginyard's sister) told the FBI that she had heard Mr. Pearson at a party discuss[ing] robbing the Mr. Goodcents restaurant. Rec. vol. V, at 5. Monique Gasper corroborated her statements when she informed the agents that at a party Mr. Pearson joined in or was leading the discussions about . . . how easy it would be to rob Mr. Goodcents. Id. at 8. Gracie Ginyard further corroborated Wanda's and Ms. Gasper's statements when [s]he advised that she was present during that gathering in which . . . the robbery of the Mr. Goodcents store was talked about. Id. at 9. Additionally, Gracie Ginyard told the agents that she agreed and then declined to accompany Ms. Meyer when Mr. Pearson was going to take the deposits. Finally, Ms. Meyer told the FBI that Mr. Pearson had not only asked her to allow him to take Mr. Goodcents deposits from her, with and without Gracie Ginyard's help, but also discussed with her plans to rob Mr. Goodcents, including telling her that he was going to rob the store on the night of the sixteenth and seventeenth. These four independent statements amounted to probable cause to arrest Mr. Pearson in connection with the Mr. Goodcents robbery, and Mr. Pearson's statements to the FBI should not have been suppressed on the grounds that they were the fruit of an arrest made without probable cause. 139 Nor can Mr. Pearson's statements be suppressed because his arrest was warrantless. His argument that the FBI was required to obtain a magistrate- approved arrest warrant because the agents had time to do so ignores long-standing and unequivocal Supreme Court precedent: 140 Law enforcement officers may find it wise to seek arrest warrants where practicable to do so, and their judgments about probable cause may be more readily accepted where backed by a warrant issued by a magistrate. But we decline to transform this judicial preference into a constitutional rule when the judgment of the Nation and Congress has for so long been to authorize warrantless public arrests on probable cause rather than to encumber criminal prosecutions with endless litigation with respect to the existence of exigent circumstances, whether it was practicable to get a warrant, whether the suspect was about to flee, and the like. 141 United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411, 423-24 (1976) (citations omitted). 142 Having already determined that there was probable cause to support Mr. Pearson's arrest, we reaffirm that the agents were not required to obtain an arrest warrant before taking Mr. Pearson into custody, even though they had time to do so. The district court did not err in refusing to suppress Mr. Pearson's comments to the FBI. 143