Court Opinion

ID: 9736375
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:54:12.255648+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:06.287810
License: Public Domain

PAIR, Associate Judge:
This is an appeal by the Government from an order suppressing as evidence1 an operable pistol seized from appellee following a brief confrontation on a public street. The sole question is whether the arresting officer (Officer Flournoy) intruded upon appellee’s fourth amendment rights by placing his hand on appellee’s elbow and saying, “Hold it, sir, could I speak with you a second?” Finding no violation of any of appellee’s constitutionally protected rights, we reverse.
At the hearing on the motion to suppress, there was uncontroverted testimony that about 4:00 p. m. on April 4, 1971, the officer was walking on a tour of duty in the downtown shopping district. He observed appellee on the southeast corner of 13th and F Streets, N.W., among a group of *846people waiting at a bus stop. When appel-lee saw the officer, who was in uniform, he nervously withdrew his hand from the pocket of his trench coat and began rubbing his face. The officer stated that while this action, in and of itself, did not appear to be too significant, “[i]t just seemed that something was wrong.”
The officer then walked south on 13th Street toward the corner of 13th and E Streets, periodically looking over his shoulder, and observed that appellee appeared to be watching him as he walked the entire block. The officer then turned and walked back toward the bus stop and, when within approximately 25 feet thereof, appel-lee left the corner, crossed F Street, walked one block north, crossed to the west side of 13th Street, and started back in a southerly direction.
The officer followed him and, approaching from the rear as he walked, placed his hand on appellee’s elbow and said, “Hold it, sir, could I speak with you a second?” Appellee’s instantaneous reply was, “It’s registered, it’s registered.” When asked what was registered, he answered that his pistol was registered. The officer then conducted a search for the pistol which he recovered.
The court ruled that “when the officer put his hands on the [appellee] it was pretty apparent that the [appellee] was not free to go or move or in any way resist” and that the officer “did not have probable cause to do as he did in this case.” The court then granted the motion to suppress.
The hearing judge was apparently of the view that an arrest or seizure of appellee occurred when the officer placed his hand on appellee’s elbow because he applied, at that instant, the standard of probable cause. We think this was error. In United States v. James, D.C.Cir., 452 F.2d 1375 (decided November 19, 1971), it was observed with abundant supporting authority that:
It is well established that “a police officer may in appropriate circumstances and in an appropriate manner approach a person for purposes of investigating possibly criminal behavior even though there is no probable cause to make an arrest.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 22, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). Such investigatory encounters do not constitute “arrests.” Young v. United States, 140 U.S.App.D.C. 333, 336, 435 F.2d 405, 408 (1970). See Allen v. United States, 129 U.S.App.D.C. 61, 64, 390 F.2d 476, 479 (1968); Bailey v. United States, 128 U.S.App.D.C. 354, 364 n.9, 389 F.2d 305, 315 n.9 (1967) (concurring opinion of Leventhal, J.); Brown v. United States, 125 U.S.App.D.C. 43, 46 n.4, 365 F.2d 976, 979 n.4 (1966).
Moreover, in Coates v. United States, 134 U.S.App.D.C. 97, 99, 413 F.2d 371, 373 (1969), the court, quoting with approval from Judge Youngdahl’s opinion in United States v. McKethan, 247 F.Supp. 324 (D.D.C.1965), aff’d by order, No. 20,059 (D.C.Cir. 1966), said:
[T]he test must not be what the defendant himself . . . thought, but what a reasonable man, innocent of any crime, would have thought had he been in the defendant’s shoes.
Thus in the instant case, the conclusion seems compelled that Officer Flournoy’s initial confrontation with appellee did not amount to an arrest nor did it amount to a “seizure”, within the purview of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). He merely touched appellee’s elbow, an action used as a normal means of attracting a person’s attention. He coupled this touching with the simultaneous request to speak with appellee. Although, to a guilty mind, this request might be understood as an expression of intent to effect an arrest, taken as a whole and tested by the normal reaction of a reasonable, innocent person, it should not have been so understood. The request merely communicated a desire to speak with appellee. On these facts, therefore, the finding that an unconstitutional intrusion occurred cannot be *847sustained. See D.C.Code 1967, § 17-305 (a) (Supp. IV, 1971).
The Supreme Court, in Terry v. Ohio, supra, stated that society’s interest in effective crime prevention and detection “underlies the recognition that a police officer may in appropriate circumstances and in an appropriate manner approach a person for purposes of investigating possibly criminal behavior even though there is no probable cause to make an arrest.” 392 U.S. at 22, 88 S.Ct. at 1880.
United States v. Lee, D.C.App., 271 A.2d 566 (1970), was to the same effect. There, a police officer approached a man and asked him for identification, on the basis of a delicatessen patron’s observations that the subject and a partner were acting suspiciously. We observed that this was “the kind of momentary contact which is and must be recognized as necessary to a sound police-community relationship and its commensurate effective law enforcement.” We then quoted and adopted language from Judge Prettyman’s separate opinion in Trilling v. United States, 104 U.S.App.D.C. 159, 183, 260 F.2d 677, 701 (1958), which reads:
. I think the rule of the cases is that the police can question a person not a suspect or one who is a mere suspect, so long as the period of detention and the mode of the questioning are reasonable under the circumstances for the purpose of obtaining information.
Robinson v. United States, D.C.App., 278 A.2d 458 (1971), relied upon so strongly by appellee, is distinguishable on its facts. In that case, two men were observed by police officers walking on the street at 2:00 a. m. and were later seen standing in the garage of an apartment building. The men then left the garage, walked past the two police officers and ignored a request to stop. One officer pursued and stopped the two men while the other inquired of the desk clerk of the apartment building concerning them. After conferring with the desk clerk, the officer joined his partner who was detaining the men. After a brief interrogation and weapons search, the officers requested one of the men to return with them to the desk of the apartment building. They did not, however, advise him that he need not obey or that he was under arrest. As they proceeded, the suspect was observed to place his hand in a small leather pouch he carried on his belt and one of the officers seized his hand, reached into the pouch and discovered narcotics.
We held in that case that the confrontation became an illegal detention when the suspects involuntarily complied with the request that they accompany the police officers to the apartment building.
In Lee, supra, the investigation resulted in an arrest which we held was with probable cause because, during the brief detention and interrogation to determine identity, the officer was given reason to believe that Lee was carrying a pistol. Significantly enough, it was the police activity subsequent to the initial confrontation which led to the opposite result in Robinson, supra.
Here, the officer’s action, prior to the statement by appellee “It’s registered, it’s registered”, cannot under any theory be considered an arrest or seizure of appellee. Since the officer’s action during his observation of appellee did not involve an interference with his liberty, it is unnecessary to test those actions by reasonableness standards. Unlike Terry v. Ohio, supra, the “initiation . of physical contact” (the touching of the elbow) was not “for the purpose of searching” appellee. Id. 392 U.S. at 20 n.16, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Of course, once it became apparent that appellee was probably armed, his arrest and search were proper.
We hold therefore, on the foregoing authority, that the police activity complained of did not under the circumstances disclosed by this record, amount to an intrusion upon appellee’s constitutionally protected rights. Accordingly, the order of suppression is
*848Reversed and the case remanded for trial or other disposition.

. D.C.Code 1967, §23-104 (a) (1) (Supp. IV, 1971).