Opinion ID: 1909774
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: MACK, Senior Judge.

Text: Appellant challenges his conviction, after a stipulated bench trial, for possession with intent to distribute dilaudid in violation of D.C.Code § 33-541(a)(1) (1988 Repl.). He contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress based upon allegations that the police lacked probable cause to effect his warrantless arrest. Finding that his position is supported by, and that our holding is compelled by our en banc decision in Smith v. United States, 558 A.2d 312 (D.C.1989), we reverse. [1] Briefly, evidence developed at the hearing on the motion to suppress shows that appellant Haywood was arrested on January 23, 1984, (at approximately the same location that the appellant in Smith, supra, 558 A.2d at 313, was arrested on March 22, 1984) when a jump-out squad of four undercover agents appeared on the scene. Sergeant Miller, the only officer to testify at the hearing, described the circumstances thusly: in response to a lookout flashed by Officer Romano of the Narcotics Task Force that a black male dressed in a tan and brown hat, a tan jacket and black pants, was holding narcotics for distribution near a trash barrel at 12th and U Streets, N.W., he (Miller), Sergeant Szewczyk, and Officers Franck and Markovich arrived at the scene in an unmarked police cruiser at 1:50 p.m. Miller saw the described individual, later identified as Irving Tate, standing some twenty-five feet south of the trash barrel. Tate had his hands in front of him and appellant Haywood was standing within reaching distance of Tate. There were three other people in the area. Sergeant Miller testified that from a distance of twenty-two feet, he saw appellant hand green folding money but no coins to Tate; he did not see Tate hand anything to appellant. He and the other officers exited the vehicle. Tate observed the police approach, and thereafter appellant kind of pushed-off from Tate and began to walk in the direction of the trash barrel. Tate walked in the opposite direction. Miller approached Tate, and in searching him, found no narcotics, only an undetermined amount of money in his pockets and coins clenched in his hand. [2] Simultaneously Officer Franck stopped appellant, searched him and discovered the sixty-six dilaudid tablets which became the subject matter of the motion to suppress. Sergeant Miller further testified that he had been a police officer for thirteen years, during which he had made a couple of thousand arrests, three to four hundred of those being drug arrests. He had made twenty such arrests in the area where appellant was arrested and was familiar with the trash barrel where drug sellers congregated during the winter months. He had learned, subsequent to appellant's arrest, that Officer Romano, who broadcast the lookout for Tate, had personal knowledge that the informant was very reliable, was responsible for the seizure of $7,000 worth of narcotics and two motor vehicles, and had provided information leading to twenty narcotics arrests and the capture of two fugitives. Miller further testified that Officer Romano had informed him that the informant had personally observed the man bearing the description of Tate distributing narcotics in the area of the trash barrel on the day in question. The trial court rejected appellant's claims that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest him under the total circumstances and that in particular they lacked knowledge of the informant's reliability. Relying upon the informant's past history culled subsequent to appellant's arrest, the court found that the informant was reliable and that the arresting officer was entitled to rely upon the information relayed in the broadcast. The court indicated that there would be a different situation if the information were bad. It also reasoned that it might agree with the defense that there would be no probable cause if two people in a high narcotics area had been seen exchanging money, but that when a person in a high narcotics area gives money to an identified drug dealer, and then walks away when the police arrive, the totality of circumstances gives the police probable cause to arrest. Subsequent to the trial court's denial of the motion to suppress, appellant gave up his right to a jury trial in return for an agreement by the government not to file life papers with respect to prior convictions. The facts as to the arrest and seizure were stipulated to by the parties, and the trial court denied a motion for judgment of acquittal. Appellant, who was sixty-six years old at the time of trial, testified that he was enrolled in an alcoholic drug abuse program at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, that at the time of his arrest he possessed the dilaudid for his own use to alleviate a painful and debilitating foot condition, and that he did not know Tate. Conviction followed.