Opinion ID: 2365084
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Immediately Apparent/Probable Cause Determination

Text: A medicine bottle is an object with obvious legitimate use for prescription medication or as a container for small objects, but which can also, to the mind of a trained officer, be put to illicit uses. See ( Bertrand) Dickerson v. United States, 650 A.2d 680, 682 (D.C.1994) (pill bottle containing crack cocaine); United States v. Bellamy, 619 A.2d 515, 517 (D.C.1993) (illegal ammunition in pill bottle); Offutt v. United States, 534 A.2d 936, 937 (D.C. 1987) (plastic vitamin pill bottle containing tinfoils of marijuana-laced PCP). An officer's tactile identification of a pill bottle, standing alone, does not give rise to probable cause to seize the bottle or open it to reveal its contents. See Christmas, 314 A.2d at 479 (Standing alone, the plain view of a simply suspicious-looking or unusual object which itself is not contraband, does not justify its seizure without a warrant. (quoting Thomas v. Superior Court, 22 Cal.App.3d 972, 99 Cal.Rptr. 647, 650 (1972)) (internal quotation omitted)); cf. Speight v. United States, 671 A.2d 442, 449 (D.C.1996) (officer had no reason to believe the keys he felt in [appellant's] pocket were contraband or a weapon). As we expressly noted in (Kenneth) Dickerson, it is only when an officer is presented with an ambiguous object that an officer's training and experience, including knowledge that the environment where the pat down takes place is a high crime area, can inform the officer's perception. 677 A.2d at 512. Likewise, when presented with a readily recognizable object that has innocent as well as illicit uses, such as the medicine bottle in this case, the officer's training and experience and other attendant circumstances can similarly inform his or her perception. See Christmas, 314 A.2d at 477 n. 8. (In determining the existence of probable cause in warrantless search and seizure cases, the expertise of the officer in narcotics is generally regarded as an important consideration.) Officer Harger testified, and the trial court credited, that he had been involved in numerous narcotics arrests and was familiar with the packaging of narcotics in this type of container, having arrested numerous people who have hidden narcotics in medicine bottles. See In re J.D.R., 637 A.2d at 850 (plain view of tip of ziplock bag together with [the officer's] knowledge, based on personal experience, that such bags were commonly used as drug containers supports probable cause). Although there was no evidence presented that the traffic stop and subsequent pat-down of appellant took place in a high crime area, as is often the situation in the cases cited, more than the mere tactile identification of a pill bottle informed Officer Harger's probable cause determination. Although a `furtive gesture' is not sufficient standing alone to provide probable cause to believe a crime is being or has just been committed, Price, 429 A.2d at 517, appellant's actions were significant as they related to the medicine bottle in his jacket pocket. First, appellant moved a newspaper to cover his abdomen as if attempting to conceal something. On observing this action the officer asked appellant to exit the vehicle to better control the situation, whereupon he immediately put his hands in his jacket pockets as he stepped out of the vehicle. After complying with the officer's order to remove his hands from the pockets and place them on the vehicle, appellant then tried to place his right hand in his right front pocket and was told again to keep his hands out of his pockets. Nevertheless, appellant once again tried to reach into his right front pocket. This conduct was not only simultaneous with appellant's encounter with the police, but on two occasions was in derogation of the officer's specific orders to keep his hand out of the pocket. As the trial court noted, the officers fe[lt] this medicine bottle in exactly the place that the defendant kept going to so that was there was extra suspicions that they reasonably held that there could be contraband or something in that pocket based on the defendant's actions. See Price, 429 A.2d at 517 (as a result of appellant's movements, the officer was reasonably justified in suspecting that appellant was attempting to conceal contraband or the instrumentality of a crime (quoting McGee v. United States, 270 A.2d 348 (D.C.1970))). We recognize that there are fewer circumstances attendant to the officer's tactile identification of the medicine bottle in this case than in some of the cited cases which concluded there was probable cause. Those cases generally have had multiple attendant facts in addition to the tactile identification of an object that is not contraband and the officer's knowledge that the object might be used to transport and conceal contraband. See, e.g., Rushing, 935 S.W.2d at 31-32 (prior observation of appellant in illicit activity, high crime area, and officer's experience); Champion, 549 N.W.2d at 859 (object being detected in an unusual location, officer recognized appellant and aware of prior drug convictions, high drug area, appellant's attempt to evade police, and officer's experience). Such attendant facts are necessary to meet the caution we expressed in ( Kenneth) Dickerson that [t]rial courts must be careful to assure that a police officer's `immediately apparent' recognition of a concealed drug package ... is not too casually claimed or accepted, 677 A.2d at 512, as the plain feel of objects legitimate in themselves traverses a fine line between reasonable suspicion and probable cause. Nevertheless, although neither the officer's recognition of the object in appellant's pocket as a medicine bottle that could be used to conceal drugs nor appellant's conduct independently establish probable cause in this case, the combination of the officer's plain feel of the medicine bottle, the fact that the bottle was a large plastic container, the officer's experience with the packaging of narcotics in this kind of container and, most important, the defendant's numerous attempts to access the pocket where the medicine bottle was detected despite the officer's multiple orders to the contrary, cf. Christmas, supra note 6, satisfy us that the officer could reasonably infer that the medicine bottle contained contraband and was thus authorized to seize the medicine bottle from appellant's jacket pursuant to the plain feel exception to the warrant requirement. It is particularly telling that, even after appellant was being frisked by the officer, he continued to reach for the medicine bottle in his jacket pocket. Although probable cause imposes a stricter requirement than reasonable suspicion, it is not so demanding a standard as to have required more than became available to the officer as he frisked appellant. Viewed against the officer's experience, appellant's conduct added enough information to cross the threshold from reasonable suspicion that appellant might have a weapon in his jacket pocket to probable cause that he had drugs in the medicine bottle felt in the pocket. We reject the argument that it was improper for the officer to open the medicine bottle after removing it from appellant's pocket. As the officer had probable cause to believe that the medicine bottle contained contraband before he removed the bottle from appellant's jacket, it follows thatin the absence of additional information gained after he retrieved the bottle to dissuade him from that beliefhe had probable cause to arrest based on the belief that appellant possessed drugs, perhaps (from the size of the container) with the intent to distribute. That probable cause also justified the officer in opening the container as a search incident to a valid arrest. See Horton, 496 U.S. at 141 & n. 11, 110 S.Ct. 2301 (explaining that reliance on privacy concerns is misplaced when an exception to the search warrant requirement authorizes an officer with a lawful right of access to seize an item without a warrant, even if the item is a container); New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 460-61, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981) (the search incident to lawful arrest exception to the warrant requirement justifies the infringement of any privacy interest the arrestee may have in a container found within the scope of the search authorized by the exception, even if the container is closed); Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 111, 100 S.Ct. 2556, 65 L.Ed.2d 633 (1980) (once probable cause to arrest is established, it is not particularly important that the search preceded the arrest rather than vice versa if the arrest followed quickly on the heels of the challenged search); cf. Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113, 119 S.Ct. 484, 142 L.Ed.2d 492 (1998) (where officer chose not to arrest, but instead issued a citation for a traffic violation, there was no officer safety justification for search incident to arrest, nor was there concern about securing evidence of crime). Affirmed.