Court Opinion

ID: 9459827
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:32:46.821811+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:21.250766
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
In finding probable cause to stop Adams under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), the majority relies on several facts known to the arresting officers before the car actually came to a halt: “the atmosphere of the school disturbance, a moving vehicle, . . . the informer’s direct observation of an armed person previously entering the vehicle, the suspicious behavior of the two passengers staring at the patrolling police officer and then lowering themselves in their seats as though to conceal something.” With due deference to my Brothers, I am wholly unpersuaded that these factors, apart or in combination, justified the police stop at issue.
It is manifest that the gas station attendant’s observations, as conveyed by him to the police prior to the arrest, did not describe conduct which is illegal under the laws of the State of Indiana.* *363The Government has cited no statute or municipal ordinance which makes mere public display of a rifle a criminal offense. It is apparently for this reason that the majority relies on circumstances known to the police which were extrinsic to the informant’s communication, particularly the occurrence of a high school “race riot” near in time and place to the arrest of Adams.
One of the circumstances noted by the majority is that Adams and his companions were travelling in a moving vehicle. This, we are told, has been held by the United States Supreme Court in Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970), and Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925), to authorize a vehicle stop by police. I cannot agree. The essence of Carroll and its progeny is summed up in the Chambers opinion as follows:
In enforcing the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Court has insisted upon probable cause as a minimum requirement for a reasonable search permitted by the Constitution. As a general rule, it has also required the judgment of a magistrate on the probable-cause issue and the issuance of a warrant before a search is made. Only in exigent circumstances will the judgment of the police as to probable cause serve as a sufficient authorization for a search. Carroll, supra, holds a search warrant unnecessary where there is probable cause to search an automobile stopped on the highway; the car is movable, the occupants are alerted, and the car’s contents may never be found again if a warrant must be obtained. Hence an immediate search is constitutionally permissible. 399 U.S. at 51, 90 S.Ct. at 1981.
Carroll did not hold that the capacity of a vehicle to move or the fact that it was so doing provided probable cause to search; those factors, instead, were viewed as exigent circumstances justifying a warrantless search where police officers independently possessed probable cause to search. The potential of a vehicle for movement excuses the failure obtain a warrant, but it cannot validate the stop and search if probable cause therefor is lacking.
The majority next points to “the suspicious behavior of the two passengers [in] staring at the patrolling police officer and then lowering themselves in their seats as though to conceal something.” The latter activity, however, occurred after the officer had turned on his light and siren. The fruits of a search by police do not provide original justification for the search; only those facts known to the officers beforehand may be taken into account in assessing probable cause. By the same token, facts which come to the attention of an officer while engaged in stopping a vehicle cannot justify his original decision to stop. They may justify his search of the vehicle and the arrest of its occupants — as, for example, where a stopping officer observes contraband being thrown from the windows of a car — but his decision to stop must be grounded in an independent and prior justification.
This leaves the suspicious circumstance of “staring at the patrolling officer.” This followed and was in response to the execution of a U-turn by the police car which eventually made the stop. Staring back at a police car in that circumstance cannot, I think, be taken as more than the natural reaction of any person. This is hardly “unusual behavior” of the sort which justified a stop and frisk in United States v. Lindsey, 451 F.2d 701 (3d Cir. 1971), where the *364defendant, attempting to board a plane, identified himself by three different names, displayed “indicia of extreme anxiety,” and appeared to be carrying two large objects in his coat pocket. Ballou v. Massachusetts, 403 F.2d 982 (1st Cir. 1968), also cited by the majority, is not apposite in this context; probable cause to stop in that case was not founded on observation of the eventual defendant by the police who stopped him.
I come, finally, to the “race riot” justification for the instant stop. That is the crux of this case. What evidence ol a race riot was adduced at the motion to suppress ? Dean, the gas station attendant, testified:
Q: Could you tell us, sir, if you saw or noticed anything unusual that day?
A: Yes. Other than the riot that was happening at Washington High School at this time, ....
The only other pertinent statement was by Officer Radecki, the policeman who stopped Adams. He mentioned that there was a “disturbance with the students” at nearby Washington High School. In sum, the record establishes a “disturbance” or “riot” void of racial overtones. Only at the trial was the racial character of the riot hinted at.
This reference to a disturbance, standing alone, has no probative bearing on the issue of probable cause to stop. Other questions necessarily arise. Did his knowledge of the disturbance give Officer Radecki good reason to believe that armed men in the vicinity were proceeding or might proceed to the high school to violently intercede in the turmoil? The record is silent on the magnitude or character of the disturbance. More important, did the officer, if he had a reasonable fear of armed intervention, connect Adams and his companions with that fear? Radecki never testified to that effect, and the record would contradict him if he had. It appears that Adams was proceeding away from the high school at the time Radecki first observed the car, and that Adams was at all pertinent times further from the high school than he was when first observed by the informant. Finally, was the combination of Radecki’s fear with the admonition of the police bulletin the reason for his stop of Adams, or was Radecki relying solely on the bulletin? The only testimony by the officer on the point was:
Q: Wouldn’t you say there was a lot of confusion out there that day when —not when you first stopped them, but when you saw the guns in the ear?
A: You might say there was a little confusion. I didn’t see where anybody was confused. The confusion was out at the school.
Q: You had no knowledge that these people were involved with anything out at the high school, did you?
A: No; just the call came out over the air.
Q: The call didn’t say anything about these guys being out of the Washington High School, did it?
A: No, it did not.
Given nothing else, the ambiguity of this testimony must be resolved in favor of Adams.
The majority, I believe, proceeds on the mistaken assumption that the defendant bore the burden of proof on the riot issue at the suppression hearing. At a hearing on a motion to suppress, the defendant-movant bears the burden of coming forward with evidence that his search was not pursuant to warrant or that a warrant issued against him or his property was constitutionally defective. Once he has shown a warrantless search, the Government must shoulder the burden of proving the legality of that search. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 455, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971); United States v. Jeffers, 342 U.S. 48, 51, 72 S.Ct. 93, 96 L.Ed. 59 (1951); McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 456, 69 S.Ct. 191, 93 L.Ed. 153 (1948); United States v. Gamble, 473 F.2d 1274 (7th Cir., 1973); *365Wrightson v. United States, 95 U.S. App.D.C. 390, 222 F.2d 556 (1956); 8A Moore’s Federal Practice f[ 41.08 [4] (1972). Why this is so was made evident as far back as McDonald:
Power is a heady thing; and history shows that the police acting on their own cannot be trusted. And so the Constitution requires a magistrate to pass on the desires of the police before they violate the privacy of the home. We cannot be true to that constitutional requirement and excuse the absence of a search warrant without a showing by those who seek exemption from the constitutional mandate that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative. 335 U.S. at 456, 69 S.Ct. at 193. (Emphasis added.)
Since the Government failed to demonstrate any legal justification to stop the automobile driven by Adams, the subsequent search of the vehicle was unlawful.
In my judgment, the trial judge erred in denying Adams’ motion to suppress. I would therefore reverse his conviction.

 At the hearing on the motion to suppress the attendant testified as follows:
Q: What did you tell him [police officer] ?
A: I said that I saw three Negroes approaching a yellow Chevrolet.
*363Q: Okay. That is what you told the police officers.
A: Yes.
Q: And you said you thought you saw one carrying a rifle?
A: Bight; what appeared to be a rifle.
Q: Appeared to be a rifle. Okay. And that is all you told the police?
A: Well, I gave him the location when he asked for it.