Court Opinion

ID: 9559448
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:29:28.386942+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:11:04.603311
License: Public Domain

SCHAUER, J., Dissenting
On the facts which are shown to have been known to the arresting officers I am of the view that the search was justified. The justifying facts appear to include the following items: (1) the criminal conduct of the petitioner’s companions immediately preceding his arrest; (2) the behavior of petitioner himself at that time and following his arrest; (3) the information which the officers had that petitioner was an established trafficker in illegal narcotics ; (4) the inferences that petitioner had supplied the drug which Spade had injected, and that as a regular supplier petitioner would have cached away a further stock of the contraband. These are inferences which, I think, officers experienced and skilled in detecting and apprehending suppliers of illegal narcotics would properly have drawn from the above related probative facts.
Furthermore, I think it should occur to the officers that this petitioner would probably have an accomplice who, promptly following petitioner’s arrest (and disappearance of the law enforcement officers), would remove and secrete or destroy any contraband which might otherwise be found in petitioner’s home, or in any other place which might be conveniently available to him. Accordingly, such officers would deem it to be only diligent discharge of duty to immediately pursue the clues before them. This they did, expeditiously, intelligently and successfully.
For the reasons indicated I would discharge the alternative, and deny the peremptory, writ of prohibition.
MeComb, J., concurred.