Court Opinion

ID: 9450696
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:55:35.281811+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:25.493378
License: Public Domain

WATERMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the affirmance of these convictions, and I would ■remand for a new trial. Although I do :not disagree with the majority opinion in ■all respect, I do with the greater part of it.
Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948) governs here. In that case the police “re■eeived information from a confidential informer, who was also a known narcotic user, that unknown persons were smoking opium in the Europe Hotel.” Four narcotic agents went to the hotel “and recognized at once a strong odor of burning opium which to them was distinctive and unmistakable. The odor led to Room 1. The officers did not know who was occupying that room.” They knocked, identified themselves, were admitted, arrested the room’s lone occupant, searched the room, and seized incriminating evidence. Id. at 12, 68 S.Ct. at 368.
In Johnson the Court held that the search had not been conducted pursuant to a lawful arrest. “[T]he arresting officer did not have probable cause to arrest petitioner until he had entered her room and found her to be the sole occupant.” Id. at 16, 68 S.Ct. at 370. Moreover, there was no element of hot pursuit “in the arrest of one who was not in flight, was completely surrounded by agents before she knew of their presence, who claims without denial that she was in bed at the time, and who made no attempt to escape.” Id. at 16 n. 7, 68 S.Ct. at 370. “Thus the Government is obliged to justify the arrest by the search and at the same time to justify the search by the arrest. This will not do.” Id. at 16-17, 68 S.Ct. at 370.
Here, defendant Riley, a person unknown to the arresting officers, but found in possession of unstamped whiskey, told them that he had obtained the whiskey from a “man” on the second floor of 146-12 106th Avenue. The officers went to that address and recognized the distinctive and unmistakable heat and odor their experience prompted them to believe was characteristic of a kitchen-based distillery. These observations led them to the rear dwelling apartment on the second floor. They entered the dwelling apartment without consent, arrested its only occupant, defendant Price, and seized the still in the apartment kitchen.
At no time until they entered his home and found him did the officers know the name, appearance, or background of the “man” who supposedly furnished the unstamped whiskey to Riley, and who was presumably tending the still which the officers discovered after entry into the apartment. Thus, as in Johnson v. United States, supra, one of the elements of probable cause assumed to be necessary was not determinable until the officers had made their entry. Cf. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 481 n. 9, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). Nor can the precipitous actions of the arresting officers be justified by the need to prevent Price’s escape, for at the time of his arrest he was hiding under a blanket, clad only in his underwear, and smiling.
By use of a jeweler’s scale with the most delicate of balances one might possibly detect in the facts of this case some flyspeck of probable cause absent from *263Johnson v. United States, supra, where the smell was of opium rather than of a brew of com whiskey, but this is not a fitting occasion for such refined perceptions. Price was arrested in his own dwelling, at 10:30 at night, by officers who had gained entry without his consent, without any announcement, and without an arrest warrant. Moreover, despite the contrary admonitions of my colleagues, there was no justification for dispensing with the appropriate warrants. The officers had had the building under surveillance for several days, and they could assuredly have continued their watch on the rear apartment so as to prevent an escape by any occupant of it or a destruction of the still, during the few additional hours necessary to procure any warrants to which they were entitled. We “should not blind [ourselves] to reality,” or worry that, before the officers could obtain warrants, the handcuffed Riley, safely in the physical custody of the officers, would telephone or otherwise warn Price of the impending raid upon the privacy of his home.
Thus the case draws us perilously close to the “grave constitutional question” described by Justice Harlan in Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 499-500, 78 S.Ct. 1253, 1257, 2 L.Ed.2d 1514 (1958) :'
“[N]amely, whether the forceful nighttime entry into a dwelling to arrest a person reasonably believed within, upon probable cause that he had committed a felony, under circumstances where no reason appears why an arrest warrant could not have been sought, is consistent with the Fourth Amendment.”
Furthermore, as I noted in Di Bella v. United States, 284 F.2d 897, 908-909 (2 Cir. 1960) (dissenting opinion), rev’d on other grounds, 369 U.S. 121, 82 S.Ct. 654, 7 L.Ed.2d 614 (1962):
“Rule 41(c) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, 18 U.S.C., provides that a search warrant shall be restricted to daytime execution unless the affidavit indicates positively that the objects to be seized are upon the premises. * * * In Jones v. United States, 1958, 357 U.S. 493, 498-499 [78 S.Ct. 1253, 2 L.Ed.2d 1514], the Supreme Court stated, by Justice Harlan, that the provisions relative to nighttime search in Rule 41(c) are ‘hardly compatible with a principle that a search without a warrant can be based merely upon probable cause.’ To be sure, the probable cause the Court was there discussing was probable cause for the existence of objects of seizure rather than probable cause to justify an arrest. But I see no difference in principle between the two situations.”
While I do not rely squarely on either of these statements from Jones for this dissent, they at least warn me that, particularly in the circumstances of the present case, we should beware of straining to distinguish relevant Supreme Court definitions of probable cause.
Because Price’s arrest was unlawful, the search of his apartment was unlawful as well, and the items such as the corn whiskey malt samples and the remnants of the still (which took an hour for the agents to destroy) seized in the course of that search, as well as the testimony of the agents relative thereto, should not have been admitted as evidence against him. Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914). The statement made by Price just prior to his arrest, which resulted directly from the unlawful search of his apartment, should have been excluded on the same authority, Wong Sun v. United States, supra, 371 U.S. at 484-486, 83 S.Ct. at 415-417, as well as his second statement, made only five and one-half hours later, after he had been held in continuous custody and had been subjected to intermittent interrogation, id. at 487-488, 83 S.Ct. at 417-418.
As for Riley, since he was indicted and tried for possession of the still, he too has standing to object to the admission of the seized items and the officers’ testimony relating thereto as evidence against him. Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. *264257, 261-264, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960). On the other hand, I concur with my colleagues that his statement made the following morning was not improperly admitted against him, for it can plausibly be viewed, not as a consequence of the unlawful arrest and search in Price’s apartment, but as the product of Riley’s own prior arrest for possession of unstamped whiskey, and of the officers’ observations before they entered the apartment, both of which were obtained in an unquestionably valid manner. See Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338, 341, 60 S.Ct. 266, 84 L.Ed. 307 (1939). Furthermore, this statement cannot be excluded on the ground that it was procured in violation of Fed.R. Crim.P. 5(a), for Riley makes no claim that the short period of delay in his presentation, after a commissioner became available, was systematically exploited for the purpose of eliciting a confession from him. Compare United States v. Middleton, 344 F.2d 78 (2 Cir. 1965).