Opinion ID: 246074
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Validity of the Arrest

Text: 47 Possessing the loot from a housebreaking and attempting to sell it justify arrest. Conduct which gives a reasonable, cautious and prudent police officer probable cause to believe that the defendant possesses and is attempting to sell the loot justifies arrest. But perfectly normal, unsuspicious conduct cannot give an officer probable cause to believe that the individual is guilty of the crime and therefore cannot justify arrest. 48 From nothing observed by the officer in the instant case could there arise probable cause to believe that appellant had committed the housebreaking. The officer did not see the stolen property. He did not see appellant 'peddling' it. He could not hear the conversations between appellant and the other men at the bar. Surely, talking to acquaintances at a bar and holding a small paper bag-- all that the officer did observe-- are not such conduct as to arouse suspicion, let alone furnish probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed. 16 49 Some crimes involve a characteristic pattern of conduct 17 which may be meaningful to a 'trained, experienced observer,' while seeming perfectly innocent to the untrained layman. In Mills v. United States, 1952, 90 U.S.App.D.C. 365, 367, 196 F.2d 600, 602, for example, this court said that the officers observed events constituting what they 'doubtless knew was the requisite procedure in the picking up of numbers slips.' And in Bell v. United States, 1958, 102 U.S.App.D.C. 383, 254 F.2d 82, 86, the court said: 'An officer experienced in the narcotics traffic may find probable cause in the smell of drugs and the appearance of paraphernalia which to the lay eye is without significance.' But it cannot be suggested that there is anything about the crime of housebreaking by reason of which appellant's conduct could have had any more significance for an experienced police officer than for the ordinary lay observer. Indeed, the Government does not contend that anything the officer observed gave him probable cause to make the arrest. It concedes, moreover, that the information the officer received from the informer did not justify the arrest. The Government argues, however, that the observations and the information together did justify the arrest. 50 But what was there in what the officer learned from the informer which, added to what he saw, could convert apparently innocent behavior into behavior justifying arrest? The information was that the bag contained the loot and that the conversations were attempts to sell it. This information, if the record shows a reasonable basis for relying on it, would have significantly supplemented the officer's own observations. But without some showing that the information was reliable, the officer's mere testimony that he had received it does not help to justify the arrest. Wrightson v. United States, 1955, 95 U.S.App.D.C. 390, 394, note 12, 222 F.2d 556, 560, note 12; Contee v. United States, 1954, 94 U.S.App.D.C. 297, 299, 215 F.2d 324, 327. The information that an officer may rely on as justifying an arrest, as we said in the second Wrightson appeal, is information that is shown to have come from 'an informer whom he knew, and in whom he had confidence.' Wrightson v. United States, 1956, 98 U.S.App.D.C. 377, 378, 236 F.2d 672, 673; see also Husty v. United States, 1931, 282 U.S. 694, 700, 51 S.Ct. 240, 75 L.Ed. 629. Whether the informer in this case was anonymous as in Contee, supra, and in Worthington v. United States, 6 Cir., 1948, 166 F.2d 557, or was known to the officer does not appear from the record. It appears, however, that the officer did not vouch for the informer as reliable on the basis of past performance or on any other basis. We said in Coupe v. United States, 72 App.D.C. 86, 88-89, 113 F.2d 145, 147-148, certiorari denied, 1940, 310 U.S. 651, 60 S.Ct. 1105, 84 L.Ed. 1417: 'Discovery of the automobile and persons described in a 'tip' from a source known to be reliable, at the place indicated by the informant, is at least significant, if not sufficient.' But, absent any showing of the informer's reliability, his tip is not even significant, let alone sufficient, as a basis for arrest. Without such a showing, the arrest rests upon the accusation of an unrevealed informer, motivated by we know not what personal spite, rather than upon the belief of a reasonable, cautious and prudent police officer. The right to be let alone by the police, which is enjoyed by every American and which distinguishes him from the inhabitant of a police state, 18 may not be so easily set aside. 51 I conclude that appellant was arrested without probable cause. The incidental seizure of the bag was therefore unreasonable.