Court Opinion

ID: 9716243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:32:01.88177+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:59:05.280810
License: Public Domain

Confokd, P. J. A. D.,
Temporarily Assigned (dissenting). I hold the view that the Appellate Division was correct in reversing the defendant’s conviction on the ground that the attempt of the police to detain defendant for questioning was invalid under the circumstances and that the motion to suppress should therefore have been granted.
A review of the proofs at the suppression hearing culled from the direct and cross-examination of Detective El, the sole witness for the State, will set the legal questions involved in perspective. El and two other detectives were in plainclothes riding in an unmarked police car when they approached defendant standing on a street corner. On direct examination El testified that “we” had had “several dealings” with defendant who was “a known narcotics pusher in the area”. Pie also later said defendant was a “card carrier”. There is nothing in the record to indicate that El based these characterizations on anything other than the “arrests” to which he alluded in his testimony. El said he had “personally” arrested defendant for possession of narcotics but he could not remember how many times.
El called out to the defendant to come to the car, but defendant walked away rapidly “in the opposite direction”. According to El, defendant knew the officers. Thereupon El got out of the car and called defendant again, but the latter kept going. El proceeded after him and saw, from behind defendant’s back, his “arm go xrp in a gesture * * * in what I should say is at an angle toward the mouth”. When El caught up with defendant the latter pushed him away. “A struggle ensued”, they fell down, and 14 bags of heroin fell from the defendant’s mouth.
On questioning by the motion judge El modified his story as to arrests of defendant to say he had personally *449arrested him once for narcotics but had seen him at police headquarters on three other occasions in the process of arrests by others for the same type of offense, El having been in “on the case” in each instance.
At an adjourned session of the hearing three weeks later, on fixrther cross-examination, El retreated still further on the subject of defendant’s arrests to admit he had never arrested the defendant but had on a single occasion, about a year or eighteen months before the event here in question, been in defendant’s presence while he was being arrested on a narcotics charge. He said, however, he had seen defendant in the area of the instant encounter about 40 times since that arrest, but had on no such occasion seen him in possession of narcotics.
Defendant thereupon produced the custodian of records from Newark Police Headquarters who submitted defendant’s arrest sheet. This showed no arrests of defendant whatever for narcotics offenses but four arrests on other kinds of charges (once only as a material witness), the latest in 1958, for non-support. The State made no effort to impugn the accuracy of this record in any way. It was of course entitled to the presumption of regularity as an official public record. McCormick, Evidence (1954) § 309, p. 641.
The trial court found the officer’s actions justified by reason of defendant’s refusal to submit to questioning and his “gesture” toward his mouth which “alerted” the officer in view of the “highly narcotic area”.
In assaying the legality of the intrusion of the police upon defendant, we begin with the assurance of the Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889 (1968), that the Fourth Amendment right of “personal security” applies to a person on the street as well as to people in their homes (p. 9, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1873); that every individual is entitled “to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and un*450questionable authority of law”. Ibid. “It must be recognized that whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has 'seized’ that person”, in a Fourth Amendment sense (p. 16, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1877).
However, it has justifiably been assumed, long before Terry, that circumstances of reasonable suspicion of criminal involvement, short of a situation amounting to probable cause to arrest, warrant a brief investigatory detention of a person abroad on the streets, even against his will. (If the individual is willing to be questioned, it is appropriate for the officer to do so regardless of whether there are suspicious circumstances.) See the authorities collected in Commentary to § 110.2 of the American Law Institute’s Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure (Proposed Official Draft No. 1, April 10, 1972; approved by the Institute in Majr 1972), p. 106, n. 6 (hereinafter referred to as “Pre-Arraignment Code”); and see State v. Dilley, 49 N. J. 460, 464 (1967); State v. Taylor, 81 N. J. Super. 296, 313 (App. Div. 1963). The critical question is as to the degree of suspiciousness of the activity justifying such detention. The closest the Supreme Court has yet come to a definition of the standard is the criterion expressed in Terry, where the court had to deal with both the right to stop and the right to pat down for weapons (“frisk”). The second exigency was described as being “where [the officer] has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual”, regardless of probable cause (392 U. S. at 27, 88 S. Ct. at 1883). The first was described as where “a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in the light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot” (392 U. S. at 30, 88 S. Ct. at 1884). Speaking in the context of a more general situation, however, the court said that “* * * in justifjdng the particular intrusion the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken *451together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion” (Id., at 21, 88 S. Ct. at 1880). Detention based upon “nothing more substantial than inarticulate hunches” is impermissible (Id., at 22, 88 S. Ct. at 1880).
The quotation in the instant majority opinion from the concurring opinion of Justice White in Terry must be read in the context of that judge’s additional comment, in the same quoted passage: “Absent special circumstances the person approached [by the police] may not be detained or frisked, but may refuse to cooperate and go on his way”. (392 TJ. S. at 34, 88 S. Ct. at 1886) (Emphasis added). This is, of course, consistent with the view implicit in the opinion of the Chief Justice in Terry that the “special circumstances” adverted to by Justice White as a condition for involuntary detention be such as to raise at least reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
In Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143, 92 S. Ct. 1921, 32 L. Ed. 2d 612 (1972), cited by the majority, the court cited Terry with approval, and held justified an intrusion (frisk) on an individual who a police officer was reliably informed was sitting in a car at 2:30 a.m. with narcotics and a gun on his person. Those circumstances are plainly not comparable with those here.
In the comprehensive treatment of this entire subject by Justice Jacobs in State v. Dilley, supra, the reference to “highly suspicious circumstances” was made twice, each time in reference to the question whether the officer there involved was justified in stopping the suspect in that case for summary inquiry (49 N. J., at 464, 468); not, as the majority opinion implies, in reference to those justifying a frisk. The subject of frisk was treated separately (pp. 468-470), the court specifying the criterion therefor as being “when the situation urgently points to the need of such action for the officer’s self-protection”. (Id. at 468).
After an intensive six-year study of the entire subject of pre-arraignment procedure the American Law Institute *452in 1972 proposed in its Pre-Arraignment Code, op. cit. supra, as the appropriate criterion for an involuntary investigatory stop that the suspect "is observed in circumstances such that the officer reasonably suspects that he has just committed, is committing, or is about to commit a misdemeanor or felony, involving danger of forcible injury to persons or of appropriation of or damage to property; * * Code § 110.2(1) (a) (i).1 Statutes calling for the same criterion of reasonable suspicion or the like as the basis for an involuntary investigatory "stop” have recently been adopted in a number of states. Examples are: N. Y. Crim. Proc. Law 140.50 (1971) McKinney’s Consol. Laws, c. 11-A; 111. Ann. Stat. ch. 38, §§ 107-14 and 108-1.01 (1968). Others are cited in Appendix I of Pre-Arraignment Code, op. cit. supra at 231-33. In similar tenor is the Uniform Arrest Act, § 2(1); see Warner, “The Uniform Arrest Act”, 28 Va. L. Rev. 315, 344 (1942).
It seems to me that the Pre-Arraignment Code formulation of reasonable suspicion of criminal activity is fairly declaratory of existing constitutional law on the question under consideration (excluding the Code limitation to crimes against person or property), and I would apply it here. That approach is entirely consistent with State v. Dilley, supra, as I read it.
Reading the instant transcript, as is absolutely necessary on judicial review of a search or seizure question, with dis*453regard for the hindsight knowledge that defendant was in fact a narcotics handler, and giving Officer El’s testimony as much credibility as it deserves in the light of its impairment on cross-examination and rebuttal on the issue of prior alleged arrests of defendant by El (or anyone else), I find no credible basis in the proofs for reasonable suspicion by the police of any narcotics activity on the part of defendant when he was approached by the officers. On a record which, in my view, compels the finding that defendant was never before arrested (much less convicted) for narcotics activity or ever found with narcotics on him by El, who had seen him on the street in the area forty times in a year and a half, defendant was not a person who, at the time of the inception of the encounter, the police were entitled to detain for questioning against his will. There was no reasonable basis for suspicion of his then implication in any kind of narcotics activity. On what can here be believed, the police had no more than an “inarticulate hunch” {Terry, supra, 392 U. S. at 22, 88 S. Ct. 1868) that defendant was in some possible way involved in narcotics activity. This was insufficient for an involuntary detention under United States Supreme Court standards, which control us.
Defendant unequivocally manifested his unwillingness to be detained for questioning when he walked away from the police notwithstanding being called after by them twice. I would find, were the issue of timing critical, that before defendant made the alleged arm movement toward his mouth Detective El had embarked, to defendant’s reasonable apprehension, on an effort to detain him for questioning, even if only briefly. The physical encounter corroborates such objectively manifested intent on El’s part and defendant’s unwillingness to be detained for questioning. I conclude, for the reasons already stated, that El had no legal right to make that attempt, as against defendant’s right of freedom from unreasonable intrusion on his person, and that the subsequent train of events was a prox*454imate result of El’s initiative. The discovery of the narcotics having resulted therefrom, it was excludable from evidence as its “fruit” under Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471, 83 S. Ct. 407, 9 L. Ed. 2d 441 (1963).
Even assuming, however, that El’s manifested intent to detain defendant for questioning did not arise until after the alleged arm movement toward defendant’s mouth, there still was no reasonable basis to suspect him of ongoing narcotics activity. The significance of that gesture has to be adjudged against a compelled fact-finding on this record of no past “articulable” narcotics activity by defendant of any nature. Also, of course, the actual later discovery of narcotics is to be disregarded for purposes of the appraisal a priori. So viewed, the gesture was quite innocuous, and it did not become per se sinister because the area was one of high narcotics activity. It did not make for a case of “reasonable suspicion” where such did not exist before.
Out of a perhaps unnecessary excess of caution, I state my joinder in the general sense of Justice Jacobs’ remarks in State v. Dilley, supra, concerning the judicial necessitjr, in these police-citizen street encounter eases, of striking “a balance between the interests of the individual in being free from police interference and the interests of society in effective law enforcement”. (49 N. J. at 468). I would, however., supplement the Dilley observations to add that not only the individual but society itself has an “interest” in freedom of individuals, generally, from unreasonable police intrusions, paralleling its interest in effective law enforcement.2 We are, after all, dealing with the viability of a valued provision of the Bill of Rights.
*455The occasion for appellate judicial assessment of parameters of reasonableness is unfortunately confined, as in the present instance, practically exclusively to situations of after-the-fact known guilty persons already convicted as such. Cases involving unreasonable police intrusion on the innocent almost never get to court. These circumstances place the courts under the sensitive obligation of appraisal of the cases which do come before them in such a way as to furnish guidelines to police officers in the field which will assure a minimum of unreasonable interference with the privacy of the guiltless public while at the same time allowing for the reasonable latitude necessary for criminal law enforcement. However, as pointed out by Justice Jacobs in State v. Macri, 39 N. J. 250, 266 (1963), the inevitable price of that approach is that “the guilty occasionally go unpunished”. This is tolerated “as the incidental cost of insuring the continued effectiveness of the guaranties afforded by the Constitution to all of us as free men”. (Ibid.)
For reversal — Chief Justice Weinteaub, Justices Jacobs, Peoctoe, Hall, Mountain and Sullivan — 6.
For affirmance — -Judge Confobd — 1.

 There follows in the Code section cited the conjunctive requirement of reasonable necessity to obtain or verify the identification of the person or an account of his conduct or to determine whether to arrest him. Stopping is also authorized, under (b), of potential witnesses of such offenses; and, under (e), of suspects sought for certain previously committed crimes.
The limitation in the Code of suspect crimes to those of injury to persons or appropriation of or injury to property was decided upon for several reasons, one of which was to exclude narcotics offenses. One reason advanced for the latter decision was the risk, in a stop and frisk of narcotics suspects, of abusing the occasion by “searching for contraband”. (Frisk for weapons is allowed under § 110.2(4)). Commentary, op. eit. supra, p. 118.

The Commentary to § 110.2 of the Pre-Arraignment Code, op. cit. supra, observes (pp. 113-14) : “* * * there is the danger that the stop is susceptible of abuse. It may be used not for its authorized purpose but to harass persons to whom the police may be hostile or about whom they feel a generalized suspicion or apprehension— *455e. g., youths, unconventionally attired persons, Negroes in white areas, whites in Negro areas”, citing “The Police and the Community, A Report of a Research Study Submitted to the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1966).”