Court Opinion

ID: 9774801
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:34:05.316618+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:16.140309
License: Public Domain

Tom Glaze, Justice. I join Justice Steele Hays’s dissent, but write only to say the majority opinion’s single reason for reversing is the court’s hypertechnical construction of its own rule, A.R.Cr.P. Rule 4.1(d). The majority court agrees that the Sevier County officers had collective knowledge that constituted reasonable cause to arrest the appellant without a warrant. Nonetheless, the court opines that the arrest, as it occurred, was unlawful because the state police officers actually making the warrantless arrest had no reasonable cause information to arrest appellant and the Sevier County officers, having that information, failed specifically to instruct the state law enforcement officers to arrest appellant. Instead, the Sevier County officers merely informed other police authorities to stop and hold appellant for questioning, not arrest him. The majority court reverses based upon its reading of Rule 4.1(d) which reads as follows: (d) A warrantless arrest by an officer not personally possessed of information sufficient to constitute reasonable cause is valid where the arresting officer is instructed to make the arrest by a police agency which collectively possesses knowledge sufficient to constitute reasonable cause, (majority court’s emphasis) Here, even if Rule 4.1(d) was technically violated, appellant suffered no prejudice from his initial arrest. He gave no statement to the arresting officers in Garland County, and it is difficult for me to understand how the majority court can say the statement he eventually gave authorities in Sevier County resulted from his arrest in Hot Springs. As noted in the majority opinion, appellant voluntarily agreed to go to Sevier County for further interrogation. Thus, the confession eventually given by appellant in Sevier county is the fruit of his own voluntary decision to return to Sevier County, not from his so-called illegal arrest in Hot Springs. For the reasons above and those stated in Justice Hays’s dissent, I would affirm appellant’s conviction. Hays and Brown, JJ. join in this dissent.