Court Opinion

ID: 9721430
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:59:13.098823+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:25.804316
License: Public Domain

Levin, P. J.
(concurring). When a person is arrested and jailed it is a customary procedure to require him to remove and deposit his personal belongings with the jailer.
Information obtained by a police officer through the exercise of his senses as he observes articles being removed by a prisoner from his pockets and transferred to a receptacle for safekeeping is not information obtained as a result of a search.
In People v. Trudeau (1971), 385 Mich 276, 281, the Michigan Supreme Court carefully noted that its holding in that case was “not to be construed as in any way affecting essential steps which must be taken by the police in processing a prisoner as outlined in United States v. Wade (1967), 388 US 218 (87 S Ct 1926, 18 L Ed 2d 1149), and to assure the protection of the police and of other prisoners”.
The record in this case would not support a finding that the lighter the defendant purloined from *120Jessie Tate was discovered in a search of the defendant’s belongings. For all that appears on this record,1 the lighter bearing the initials “J T” was observed by a police officer as the defendant removed articles from his pockets shortly after his arrest.
A different question would be presented if the record showed that the information which led the police to connect the defendant with the unsolved robbery was only discovered when an officer closely examined the article and was not discovered during a casual observation of an article in plain view.
Once the police learned that the defendant had in his possession a lighter bearing the initials “J T” seizure of the lighter added nothing to the information at their disposal.2 Even if further investigation was required to ascertain whether there was any connection between the lighter and another reported unsolved crime, the seizure of the lighter was not the source of a clue leading to the defendant. The source of the chain of evidence which led the police to connect the defendant with the Tate robbery was the sighting of the initials “J T” on the lighter and that, so far as this record shows, occurred when the lighter was first seen without an *121unjustified invasion of the defendant’s right of privacy.
There being nothing in the record to show that the police learned of the initials “J T” as a result of a search, the derivative evidence, i.e., the knowledge that the defendant robbed Jessie Tate, need not he suppressed.3 Moreover, it does not appear that it was reasonably foreseeable by the police when the defendant was required to empty his pockets that they might obtain evidence of the kind they obtained. See People v. Roderick Walker (1970), 27 Mich App 609, 617.

 “A convicted person who attacks the adequacy of the representation he received at his trial must prove his claim. To the extent his claim depends on facts not of record, it is incumbent on him to make a testimonial record at the trial court level in connection with a motion for a new trial which evidentially supports his claim and which excludes reasonable hypotheses consistent with the view that his trial lawyer represented him adequately.” People v Jelks (1971), 33 Mich App 425, 431.

 It appears that both offenses, the Tate robbery and the offense for which the defendant was originally arrested, occurred in the same precinct. The lighter may have been sighted by an officer who was aware of the robbery of Jessie Tate and made the connection without further investigation. In all events, there was not here the kind of further investigation of physical evidence taken from a defendant’s possession before the “vital link” was established that was conducted by the police in the Trudeau case.

 Cf. People v Weaver (1971), 35 Mich App 504.