Court Opinion

ID: 9463914
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:20:09.996783+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:21.688672
License: Public Domain

GIBSON, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the court’s disposition in United States v. Jack Allen Barber. And, with some misgivings, I concur in United States v. Troy Lee Keller as I am persuaded that United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 68 S.Ct. 222, 92 L.Ed. 210 (1947) and United States v. Bazinet, 462 F.2d 982 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 1010, 93 S.Ct. 453, 34 L.Ed.2d 303 (1972), are controlling and that Keller’s arrest was not supported by probable cause. Accordingly, the evidence derived from the arrest should have been suppressed and, because it was not, Keller is entitled to a new trial. This conclusion is mandated, not by an overly technical reading of the Constitution, but by the rashness and overeagerness of the officers arresting Keller.
When confronted with Barber’s obviously illegal passage of a counterfeit bill, the officers could have pursued several courses of action. Keller’s connection with Barber was sufficiently close, in my opinion, to justify a reasonable suspicion that Keller may have been involved in the criminal enterprise. Therefore, the officers could have temporarily detained Keller for investigative purposes, see United States v. Harflinger, 436 F.2d 928 (8th Cir. 1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 973, 91 S.Ct. 1660, 29 L.Ed.2d 137 (1971), and, if the investigation developed facts amounting to probable cause, Keller could have then been arrested.
Alternatively, the officers simply could have requested permission to search the automobile. Or, if the questioning of Barber and Keller provided the officers with probable cause to believe that the automobile was being used to transport counterfeit bills, the automobile could have been seized by the federal officers pursuant to 49 U.S.C. § 782 (1970), see Drummond v. United States, 350 F.2d 983, 988 (8th Cir. 1965), cert. denied, 384 U.S. 944, 86 S.Ct. 1469, 16 L.Ed.2d 542 (1966), and immediately *635searched without a warrant, United States v. LaVeechia, 513 F.2d 1210 (2d Cir. 1975). A search of the automobile would have disclosed the numerous bottles of liquor in the trunk which, when coupled with other facts known to the officers, would have established probable cause for Keller’s arrest.
The officers chose to follow none of these courses of action. Instead, they arrested Keller on a counterfeiting charge merely because he was waiting in the automobile for Barber. This fact, unsupported by other facts evidencing Keller’s knowing participation in the criminal scheme, is insufficient to establish probable cause. The trained law enforcement officers, acting on their instincts and suspicions rather than probable cause, must bear the blame for the reversal of Keller’s conviction. The law has endowed law enforcement officials with effective means of investigating crimes and apprehending suspected criminals. However, in the investigative process constitutional rights must be respected and any arrest must be based on probable cause. The neglect, however inadvertent, of this principle by the arresting officers in this case can not go unremedied, and defendant Keller is entitled to a new trial.