Court Opinion

ID: 9793018
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:40:52.559963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:02:45.283869
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Erickson
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
In my opinion, the defendant was placed under arrest without probable cause. The threshold question in every case is whether probable cause exists to make an arrest. We may have camouflaged this important consideration in Stone v. People, 174 Colo. 504, 485 P.2d 495 (1971). The three-fold test enunciated by the Court in the Stone case does not grant the police a carte blanche right to arrest without probable cause.
Although the majority opinion characterizes the police action in this case as a stop, rather than an arrest, the well-reasoned decision in McGee v. United States, 270 A.2d 348 (D.C.App. 1970), clearly indicates that the defendant in this case had been placed under arrest. In the McGee case, a police officer stopped the defendant and, after obtaining his driver’s license, asked him to step out of the car and into the custody of a fellow officer. In holding that McGee had been placed under arrest, the court said:
“An arrest occurs at the point in time when the officer has effectively restrained the defendant and he is cognizant of that restraint, not necessarily that point in time when the officer formally declares that the accused is under arrest. ...”
*517Even though the mere stopping of a motorist may not constitute an arrest, an arrest occurs when a police officer causes a person to be deprived of his liberty and confined to a police car until an identification check can be made. Accord, State v. Goodman, 449 S.W.2d 656 (Mo.Sup.Ct. 1970); Clements v. State, 226 Ga. 66, 172 S.E.2d 600 (1970).
Likewise, there can be no question that the defendant in this case was arrested without probable cause. C.R.S. 1963, 39-2-20 provides that:
“An arrest may be made by an officer . . . without warrant, for a criminal offense committed in his presence; and by an officer when a criminal offense has in fact been committed and he has reasonable ground for believing that the person to be arrested has committed it.” At the hearing on the motion to suppress, no evidence was presented to show that a criminal offense had been committed by the defendant in the officers’ presence; nor was any evidence presented which showed that a criminal offense had in fact been committed at some other time and that the police officers had reasonable grounds for believing that the defendant had committed it. In fact, after a full hearing, the trial court concluded: (1) That there is no right to search unless there is probable cause to arrest and the only probable cause present herein was that two months prior to the event in question police officers had seen on a bulletin that defendant was wanted but there was no explanation as to how these bulletins work or whether they were changed from time to time; (2) There was no evidence that at the time defendant was stopped he was wanted by the police; (3) There was no evidence that at the time defendant was stopped he was asked for his identification but the evidence is clear from Frazzini’s testimony that he asked defendant to alight from the car and step to the police car while an I.D. check was run; (4) At the time defendant was asked to alight from the car he was under arrest at a time in which there was no probable grounds *518-to arrest; (5) It was only upon defendant’s removal from his automobile and being taken back to the police car that the greenish-brown substance was observed; (-6) The court could only conclude-that the search was not incident to a lawful arrest and that this was not a case of abandonment; (7) There was insufficient information to establish that defendant was either a burglary suspect or that he was a recent narcotics possessor.
In reversing the trial court, the majority opinion relies on Stone v. People, supra, after conceding that probable cause did not exist for an arrest. If Stone permits an arrest to be made without probable cause under the guise of interrogation, then I would conclude that we went too far when we created the Stone area.