Court Opinion

ID: 9458641
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:57:32.92273+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:50.265368
License: Public Domain

PELL, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
In my opinion, the stolen credit card was taken by the state police officer during the course of a lawful search incident to a lawful arrest based upon probable cause. Since the supposed taint of the initial roadside police activity is, in essence, the basis for the result reached in the majority opinion, I must respectfully dissent from that opinion.
While it is true that the police officer did testify that the original search was for the officer’s own protection, motivating factors do not necessarily lend themselves to neat eompartmentalization. No doubt most police officers, aware that some of their brothers have either been wounded or killed during the course of such roadside encounters, are, at least in part, motivated by a desire not to suffer a similar fate.
However, prior to his stopping Wilson, this particular police officer had become the possessor of specific knowledge to the effect that an individual answering Wilson’s general description and driving the automobile that Wilson was in fact driving had in his possession a stolen credit card.
The officer obviously did not stop Wilson because of any motivation of self-protection. As far as he knew at *1297the time, no specific reason existed for such action. The stop was clearly predicated on the information about the stolen credit card. Wilson was deprived of his freedom of action in a significant way and an arrest was accomplished. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). Chapter 38, subsection 107-2(c), Ill.Rev.Stat., 1969, states that: “A peace officer may arrest a person when: . . (c) He has reasonable grounds to believe that the person . . . has committed an offense.”
The crux of the majority opinion appears to be that the officer did not have reasonable grounds, or, putting it another way, in reliance on Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S. 560, 91 S.Ct. 1031, 28 L.Ed.2d 306 (1971), that the officer having no independent personal knowledge, the information from others was not sufficiently reasonably trustworthy to constitute probable cause. Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969), and Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 169, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949).
Whiteley, however, in my opinion is not applicable here. There was nothing reflected in the record there as to the reliability of the informer who was the fountainhead of the processes leading eventually to the issuance of a warrant and the arrest. The record in the case before us differs from that in Whiteley. A known individual, the assistant manager of a truck stop where Wilson had purchased gasoline, had called the American Express Company and was informed that the card was stolen. Although the identity of the person to whom he talked at American Express is not indicated, it would do violence to reason to assume that upon the assistant manager’s calling the telephone number that he had for this very purpose, some interloper would come on the line and purport to speak on behalf of the credit card issuer.
It is at this point, it seems to me, that we must take cognizance of conditions in the present-day marketplace. We would be closing our eyes to the realities of modern commercial practices relating to the widespread use of credit cards — realities which should properly be judicially cognizable — if we were to ignore the extent of thievery and consequent abuse of credit cards. We are all familiar with the store clerk who checks a credit card number against a list prepared by a nameless clerk or an equally anonymous computer showing credit cards that are not to be honored.
For many years we have recognized the reliability of records made in the regular course of business and have accepted such records into evidence for their truth. 28 U.S.C. § 1732. I find this no far-fetched analogy to the present situation. The assistant manager was using the established procedures for the detection of nonviable credit cards, and, as a result of the use of those procedures in the regular course of his business, he learned that the particular card had been stolen. This information was communicated through police channels with specificity regarding the possessor. Reasonable cause existed for the arrest which occurred, and the incidental search was made in part for the very purpose of locating the stolen credit card.
Any more cumbersome procedure when coupled with the mobility of individuals misusing credit cards would mean that, for all practical purposes, the chances of apprehending the misuser would be so minimal as to be virtually nonexistent. An insistence that the “unidentified person” at the American Express Company or any other issuing company have personal knowledge of the theft would impose a condition impossible to meet.
Following the arrest, Wilson continued in custody. Thereafter, pursuant to a search warrant, the sawed-off shotgun was discovered. Although it is true that the shotgun was not specified in the warrant, it is clear that contraband (defined as an item the possession of which in itself is a crime) may be seized in the *1298course of a legal search. Cf. Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145, 67 S.Ct. 1098, 91 L.Ed. 1399 (1947). The sawed-off shotgun which formed the basis of the offense in the instant ease is contraband. See 26 U.S.C. §§ 5841, 5861(d), and 5871. In United States v. Dickey, 428 F.2d 381 (9th Cir. 1970), the defendant’s conviction for possessing an unregistered firearm was affirmed, where the gun had been seized during the execution of a search based upon a search warrant issued for the discovery of marijuana.
For the reasons herein set forth, I would affirm the judgment of conviction of Wilson, who obviously was guilty of the crime charged, possession of an unregistered firearm, obviously not a sporting weapon but one primarily associated with lethal purposes. I must also observe that the present factual situation is one of those which is particularly frustrating to law enforcement officials. Here, the police very carefully refrained from searching the automobile, although it was easily accessible at the police station, until a judicial warrant could be obtained.