Court Opinion

ID: 9725827
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:13:40.752327+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:20.427270
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE STOUDER, specially concurring: I concur in the result reached by the majority but for different reasons. I think the efforts to distinguish between arrests and “Terry stops” as not being arrests depend on distinctions without a difference. Much judicial labor is being invested in answering the question: When is an arrest not an arrest? The answer is, of course, an arrest is not an arrest when it is a Terry stop. Another way of answering the question is to say a person is arrested only a little. Because articulable suspicion provides a much larger and vaguer umbrella under which to accomplish the same result, prosecutors feel no useful purpose is served in talking about arrests for probable cause. This practice is understandable. In the instant case, accepting the testimony of the police officers as credible, it seems to me that they had probable cause to make the arrest initially of Jones and then of Oliver. The description of the robber and his wearing apparel was quite specific, and if the officers were able to identify Jones from this description as they said they could, then probable cause existed for his arrest. I therefore would affirm the convictions for these reasons.