Opinion ID: 2390645
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: probable cause, articulable suspicion, and totality of the circumstances

Text: An officer has probable cause to arrest an individual when he or she has reasonably trustworthy information at the moment of arrest sufficient to warrant a reasonably prudent [person] in believing that the [suspect has] committed or [is] committing an offense. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 96, 85 S.Ct. 223, 225, 228, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1979); see also Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 111, 95 S.Ct. 854, 861, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975). This standard ... represents a necessary accommodation between the individual's right to liberty and the State's duty to control crime. Gerstein, supra, 420 U.S. at 112, 95 S.Ct. at 862. As the Supreme Court stated in Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 1311, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949), [t]he rule of probable cause is a practical, nontechnical conception affording the best compromise that has been found for accommodating these often opposing interests. Requiring more would unduly hamper law enforcement. To allow less would be to leave law-abiding citizens at the mercy of the officers' whim or caprice. The requirement of probable cause has roots that are deep in our history, for arrest on mere suspicion collides violently with the basic human right of liberty. Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98, 100, 101, 80 S.Ct. 168, 170, 4 L.Ed.2d 134 (1959). Thirteen years before the Declaration of Independence, Lord Chief Justice Pratt termed arrests on suspicion totally subversive of the liberty of the subject. Wilkes v. Wood, 19 How.St.Trials 1153, 1167, 98 Eng.Rep. 489, ___ (K.B. 1763). The forefathers who wrote our Bill of Rights agreed; searches and seizures without probable cause are the embryo of tyranny, and they well knew it. Wrightson v. United States, 95 U.S.App. D.C. 390, 393, 222 F.2d 556, 559 (1955). The concept of probable cause is recognized as central to the protection of the right to be left alonethe most comprehensive of rights and the most valued by civilized [people]. 1 W. LAFAVE, SEARCH AND SEIZURE, § 3.1, at 540 (2d ed. 1987), quoting Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478, 48 S.Ct. 564, 572, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). It is the chief bulwark against investigative arrests proscribed by the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Short, 187 U.S.App.D.C. 142, 145, 570 F.2d 1051, 1054 (1978). Good faith on the part of the arresting officer is not enough, Henry supra, 361 U.S. at 102, 80 S.Ct. at 171, nor may probable cause be predicated on a hunch. Lathers v. United States, 396 F.2d 524, 531 (5th Cir.1968). A search is not to be made legal by what it turns up; it is good or bad when it starts and does not change character from its success, United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 595, 68 S.Ct. 222, 228, 92 L.Ed. 210 (1948), or from evidence discovered subsequent to the arrest. Smith v. United States, 122 U.S.App.D.C. 300, 302 n. 1, 353 F.2d 838, 840 n. 1 (1965), cert. denied, 384 U.S. 910, 86 S.Ct. 1350, 16 L.Ed.2d 362 and cert. denied, 384 U.S. 974, 86 S.Ct. 1867, 16 L.Ed.2d 684 (1966). In sum, the probable cause requirement protects fundamental liberty interests which must be jealously guarded, lest their erosion bring a tear to the eye of the lady who stands guard in New York Harbor. These considerations apply with particular force where, as here, the arrest was made without a warrant. The informed and deliberate determinations of magistrates empowered to issue warrants as to what searches and seizures are permissible under the Constitution are to be preferred over the hurried action of officers and others who may happen to make arrests. United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U.S. 452, 464, 52 S.Ct. 420, 423, 76 L.Ed. 877 (1932). Absent a warrant, the burden of establishing probable cause is on the prosecution, for otherwise there would be little incentive for law enforcement agencies to bother with the formality of a warrant; moreover, the evidence comprising probable cause is peculiarly within the knowledge and control of the police. Malcolm v. United States, 332 A.2d 917, 918 (D.C.1975). The Constitution, however, proscribes unreasonable searches and seizures. The italicized adjective imports a command of proportionality to Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. An arrest constitutes a substantial intrusion upon an individual's liberty, and may not be lawfully effected unless the police can meet the comparatively exacting standard of probable cause. A lesser intrusion, on the other hand, requires a correspondingly lesser showing. At least since Terry, supra, it has been settled law that police may briefly detain or stop an individual and, if circumstances warrant, frisk him or her, even in the absence of probable cause, provided that they have an articulable suspicion of criminal conduct on the part of the individual sought to be detained. As the Court remarked in Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 145, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 1923, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972), [t]he Fourth Amendment does not require a [police officer] who lacks the precise level of information necessary for probable cause to arrest to simply shrug his shoulders and allow a crime to occur or a criminal to escape. Although the term eludes precise definition, articulable suspicion is and was intended to be substantially less than probable cause. As the Supreme Court recently reiterated in Alabama v. White, ___ U.S. ___, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 2416, 110 L.Ed.2d 301 (1990), quoting United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7, 109 S.Ct. 1581, 1585, 104 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989): [t]he Fourth Amendment requires some minimal level of objective justification for making the stop.... That level of suspicion is considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of the evidence. Id. 110 S.Ct. at 2416. (Citations and internal quotation marks omitted). The predicate for the stop must be objective, so that a gut feeling or hunch will not do. If objective justification exists, however, the threshold is not set unreasonably high. In the present case, the prosecution predicated its claim of probable cause and articulable suspicion primarily on information provided to the police by an anonymous tipster. Since Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 230, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2328, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983), the ordained methodology for determining probable cause in cases of this kind has been to assess the totality of the circumstances. More recently, in White, the Supreme Court, applying the approach which it adopted in Gates, stated that the existence of reasonable suspicion [7] in anonymous informant cases likewise depends on the quantity and quality of the information available to the officer, and that these circumstances must be considered in the totality of the circumstancesthe whole picture. 110 S.Ct. at 2416. In light of White, we cannot agree with the trial judge's apparent conception that, in deciding the question of articulable suspicion, he was restricted to a consideration of those of Brown's activities which Officer Walker had personally observed, to the exclusion of the information contained in the radio communication which he had monitored. In Adams, supra, 407 U.S. at 147, 92 S.Ct. at 1924, the Court expressly reject[ed] respondent's contention that reasonable cause for a stop and frisk can only be based on the officer's personal observation, rather than on information supplied by another person. This court has previously upheld stops and frisks on the basis of informants' tips, without requiring, as the judge evidently did here, that the arresting officer personally observe suspicious conduct. Allen v. United States, 496 A.2d 1046, 1048 (D.C.1985) (citing cases); see also United States v. Johnson, 540 A.2d 1090, 1092 (D.C.1988). Accordingly, we look to the same totality of the circumstances in assessing both the government's claim that Officer Walker had probable cause to arrest Brown and its alternative contention that the facts before the officer warranted an articulable suspicion of unlawful conduct which justified an initial detention, and which ripened into probable cause as a result of events occurring after the stop.