Court Opinion

ID: 9451537
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:19:18.68805+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:47.536960
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(dissenting):
I think appellant’s conviction for unlawful possession of narcotics must ¥e reversed because the trial court erred in admitting evidence of narcotics seized from appellant incident to an unlawful arrest. I agree with the majority that the validity of an arrest should be evaluated upon the collective information of the narcotics agents, but I think the combined knowledge of both narcotics agents is insufficient for a valid arrest.
Agent Lozowicki testified that on July 31, 1964, he received a telephone call in Baltimore from an unidentified informant in New York. The informant told him that “Alias Smitty” and Ollie Jones had just boarded a Trailways bus en route from New York to Washington, and that “Smitty” possessed one ounce of heroin, and Jones some cocaine. The informant described “Smitty” as a Negro, approximately six' feet tall, about thirty years old, wearing a checkered maroon sports shirt and eyeglasses. Lo-zowicki knew several men called “Smitty” in the Washington area, but he did not know which one the informant had in mind. Lozowicki further testified that, although the informant had given him reliable information in Baltimore in the past, no arrests had ever been made thereon; that previous correspondence in the files showed, however, that arrests had been made in Europe on information given by the informant seven or eight years ago. There is no evidence that Lozowicki knew any of the underlying circumstances which led the informant to believe that “Smitty” carried narcotics. Lozowicki testified that he had no idea what the informant “was doing in New York.”
After ascertaining from the bus company that the bus in question would not stop before reaching Washington, Agent Lozowicki telephoned Agent Thompson in Washington, telling him he had just received a call from “an informant of his” in New York and relaying to him the information he had received. Thompson testified, like Lozowicki, that “he knew several suspected violators in Washington by the name of ‘Smitty’,” but did not know whether this suspect was one of them. Without making any attempt to obtain warrants for the arrest of “Smitty” or Jones, Thompson proceeded to the Trailways bus terminal in Washington with several agents. At about 4:40 a. m., two men meeting the descriptions given by the informant got off the New York bus. One of them was appellant Smith, alias “Smitty.” Agent Thompson stated that he then recognized appellant as a person who had once been pointed out to him as a narcotics suspect by an informant of unspecified reliability. Appellant and Jones were promptly arrested and searched, and narcotics recovered from appellant’s pants pocket.
The government has the burden of showing that a warrantless arrest was valid.1 To obtain a search warrant based on hearsay information:
[T]he magistrate must be informed of [1] some of the underlying circumstances from which the inform*839ant concluded that the narcotics were where he claimed they were, and [2] some of the underlying circumstances from which the officer concluded that the informant * * was “credible” or his information “reliable.” [Aguilar v. State of Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 114, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 1514, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964), emphasis supplied.]
The constitutional standards for probable cause apply to arrest as well as search warrants.2 And probable cause must more clearly appear when the determination is made by a policeman rather than by a detached magistrate.3 Probable cause is not shown by a policeman’s “suspicion” or “mere conclusion” that narcotics are in someone’s possession.4 And if such mere surmise is conveyed to another policeman, he cannot rely upon it because the first policeman is a “credible person.”5 Nor can he rely on it, of course, if the “credible person” is not a policeman.6
A description of the suspect’s appearance or whereabouts may support identification, but cannot support a belief that a crime has been or is being committed.7 Nor is the deficiency supplied by the policeman’s recognition of appellant as a “narcotics suspect.” As the Supreme Court stated in Beck v. State of Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 97, 85 S.Ct. 223, 228 (1964):
We do not hold that the officer’s knowledge of the petitioner’s physical appearance and previous record was either inadmissible or entirely irrelevant upon the issue of probable cause. * * * But to hold that knowledge of either or both of these facts constituted probable cause would be to hold that anyone with a previous criminal record could be arrested at will.8
The majority relies primarily on Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327 (1959). But that case is distinguishable. There the facts known to the police might reasonably have indicated that the identified informant had followed the course of the *840suspect’s activities. For six months the informant had been a “special employee” of the Narcotics Bureau in Denver, where the alleged criminal activities occurred; and the informant gave police information on the whereabouts and criminal activities of the suspect four days before the information which led to the arrest. Here Lozowicki testified he had no idea what the informant was “doing in New York,” and the informant gave no description of appellant’s activities over a period of time from which the police could infer a course of surveillance. Moreover, Draper is necessarily modified to the extent that it is inconsistent with the specific requirements for “probable cause” laid down later in Aguilar.
The majority also distinguishes Aguilar from the present case because it involved the search of a dwelling. But this court has applied the Aguilar requirements to a street arrest. Perry v. United States, 118 U.S.App.D.C. 360, 336 F.2d 748 (1946). Although we said in a later case that a warrant need not be obtained for a street arrest, even where practicable, we did not relax the requirements of “probable cause.” Ford & Kimble v. United States, 122 U.S. App.D.C. -, 352 F.2d 927 (1965) (era banc). “In a doubtful or marginal case of probable cause an arrest may be sustainable on a warrant where without one it would fall.” Ford & Kimble, supra 352 F.2d at 933.
Since there is no evidence in the present case that the police knew any of the underlying circumstances for the informant’s belief that the appellant was carrying narcotics,9 his arrest was illegal. It follows that the trial court erred in denying the motion to suppress the narcotics seized incident to that arrest.

. Beck v. State of Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 97, 85 S.Ct. 223, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964); see Wrightson v. United States, 95 U.S. App.D.C. 390, 392, 222 F.2d 556, 558 (1955): “Courts cannot put a stamp of approval upon actions of the police when the officers, challenged by an accused, fail or refuse to demonstrate compliance with the rules which circumscribe their authority.”

. See, e. g., Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 96, 85 S.Ct. 223 (1964); Perry v. United States, 118 U.S.App.D.C. 360, 361, 336 F.2d 748, 749 (1964).

. “An arrest without a warrant bypasses the safeguards provided by an objective predetermination of probable cause, and substitutes instead the far less reliable procedure of an after-the-event justification for the arrest or search, too likely to be subtly influenced by the familiar shortcomings of hindsight judgment.” Beck v. State of Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 96, 85 S.Ct. 223, 228 (1964). See also Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 270, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960); Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948).

. Aguilar v. State of Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509 (1964); Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 80 S.Ct. 725 (1959); Giordenello v. United States, 357 U.S. 480, 78 S.Ct. 1245, 2 L.Ed.2d 1503 (1958); Nathanson v. United States, 290 U.S. 41, 54 S.Ct 11, 78 L.Ed. 159 (1933).

. Aguilar v. State of Texas, supra note 4, at 378 U.S. 114 n. 4, 84 S.Ct. 1509.

. Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 269, 80 S.Ct. 725 (1959).

. “Whether [the] arrest was constitutionally valid depends in turn upon whether, at the moment the arrest was made, the officers had probable cause to make it— whether at that moment the facts and circumstances within their knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information were sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the petitioner had committed or was committing an offense.” Beck v. State of Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 225 (1946), emphasis supplied.
See Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98, 102, 80 S.Ct. 168, 4 L.Ed.2d 134 (1959); Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 175-176, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949).

. Recognition of appellant as a “suspect” who was “pointed out” by an unidentified informant of unspecified reliability is even weaker evidence of probable cause than knowledge of a previous criminal record in Beolc, supra note 7.

. “It is possible that an informer did in fact relate information to the police officer in this case which constituted probable cause for the petitioner’s arrest. But when the constitutional validity of that arrest was challenged, it was incumbent upon the prosecution to show with considerably more specificity than was shown in this case what the informer actually said * * Beck v. State of Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 97, 85 S.Ct. 223, 229, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964).