Court Opinion

ID: 9637598
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:11:46.450699+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:05.675309
License: Public Domain

KERN, Associate Judge
(concurring):
I reach the same result as the majority but by a different route.
In assessing whether there was probable cause for arrest by the officer I note that prior to effecting that arrest he himself observed only innocent activity on the part of appellant, viz., talking with a woman on a street corner. This observation seems to me to be inadequate corroboration of the informer’s tip that appellant was at that moment in the process of committing a felony — selling narcotics. See Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S. 560, 567, 91 S.Ct. 1031, 28 L.Ed.2d 306 (1971); Garner v. State, Del.Supr., 314 A.2d 908, 911 (1973); Oglesby v. Commonwealth, 213 Va. 247, 191 S.E.2d 216 (1972).1 Hence, the informer’s prior reliability2 was indeed crucial to establishing probable cause for appellant’s arrest.
However, the material appellant sought at the suppression hearing to enable appellant to cross-examine the officer concerning the informer’s prior reliability about which the officer had testified on direct examination consisted of affidavits previously filed with the United States Magistrate in order to obtain search warrants. Since the documents sought were presumably on file with a federal judicial officer and thus a matter of public record I do not understand upon the record we have before us how such documents were statements “in the possession of the United States” and how they can be within the ambit of the Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3500 (1970). Accordingly, I agree the order of suppression by the trial court must be reversed.

. Draper v. Ignited States, 358 U.S. 307, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327 (1959), is distinguishable in my view. Preliminarily, there is some question of its applicability to facts other than its own. See Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 426-429, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969) (concurring opinion). In any event, the Court noted in Draper (358 U.S. at 313, 79 S.Ct. at 333) that the arresting officer “would have been derelict in his duties” had he not effected the arrest because the information given by Hereford [the informantl “had always been found accurate and reliable”. Moreover, as the Court recognized in Spinelli (393 U.S. at 417-418, 89 S.Ct. 584) the tip in Draper accurately predicted the defendant’s future activities in such detail as to show on the informer’s part an intimate knowledge of defendant’s illegal activities. Here, in my view, such detail was lacking.

. It is clear that the particular informant here was a “professional” in former rather than a casual eyewitness to or victim of crime whose reliability need not be so strictly established.