Opinion ID: 1611386
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: was the arrest of cole illegal?

Text: Cole claims that he was illegally arrested and that any evidence taken from him is inadmissible against him at trial. Cole was put in the police car while the officers were talking to him and he claims that was an effective arrest since the police door cannot be opened from the inside. He cites the case of Reed v. State, 199 So.2d 803, 808 (Miss. 1967), which says that, [i]t is not necessary for formal or particular words to be used when the fact of arrest may be shown by surrounding circumstances. When we look at the surrounding circumstances we determine that Cole was not under arrest when he was placed in the police car. While being questioned the officer asked Cole to get into the car, he was not ordered to do so and he voluntarily complied. Also we have stated many times that, given reasonable circumstances an officer may stop and detain a person to resolve an ambiguous situation without having sufficient knowledge to justify an arrest. Griffin v. State, 339 So.2d 550, 553 (Miss. 1976). After the police obtained permission to search his house and found the pistol, they properly placed Cole under arrest. Assuming arguendo that Cole was arrested when being placed in the car the arrest was based on probable cause and was therefore proper under § 99-3-7, Mississippi Code Annotated (1972), as Amended which states, ... [a]n officer may arrest any person without warrant ... when a felony has been committed, and he has reasonable ground to suspect and believe the person proposed to be arrested to have committed it; ... When they approached the house where Cole was spotted the police knew the following facts: (1) They had encountered Cole only an hour after the robbery was reported; (2) Cole was in the vicinity of the robbery; (3) The victim had said that the robber with Estes wore white shoes with bows on them and Cole was wearing white shoes with tassels; (4) When Cole saw the officers he made a suspicious movement back into the house as if he were throwing something; (5) The victim, Mr. Hull, identified Estes as one of the robbers and the officers knew that Cole and Estes were friends; (6) Cole had turned up the previous night in a house where Estes, an escapee, had been seen; (7) Also, Cole told the police he had been at that house for three hours contradicting the statements of other people at the house who had said he had only been there for thirty minutes. These facts are sufficient to create probable cause to meet the test as prescribed by Mississippi case law. Murphy v. State, 426 So.2d 786, 789 (Miss. 1983). The evidence was admissible. There is no merit to this assignment by Cole.