Court Opinion

ID: 9456355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:50:31.388661+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:56.820796
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
As this ease was argued both in the district court and on appeal, Connecticut sought to validate the police sergeant’s actions solely on the basis of “stop and frisk.” Eschewing the argument that Officer Connolly had probable cause for arrest, it contended that he did have enough cause to make it reasonable to demand that Williams open the door of the car.1 Once that proposition was established, the State’s argument continued, quite logically, as follows:
(1) Since leaving Williams in the car without immediate removal of the gun would have exposed the officer to danger, he was justified in reaching into Williams’ waistband and taking the gun without attempting to “pat,” a course impracticable under the circumstances;
(2) Having found the gun, the officer had reasonable grounds for arresting Williams, since persons reputedly engaged in the narcotics traffic do not ordinarily have gun permits; and
(3) Since the arrest was thus valid, the search was reasonable, at least under pre-Chimel law.
My. difficulty was, and is, not with these three steps but with the premise underlying them, namely, that Officer Connolly had “constitutional grounds to insist on an encounter, to make a forcible stop,” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 32, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1885, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (concurring opinion of Harlan, J.).2
As I read my brother Danaher’s opinion, he believes that when Connolly approached Williams’ ear, the officer had sufficient cause not simply for a stop but for an arrest. I cannot agree. The officer’s own observation — nothing more than seeing a man sitting alone in a car at 2:15 A.M. in a “high-crime” area— fell far short of what the Court held insufficient in Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98, 80 S.Ct. 168, 4 L.Ed.2d 134 (1959), which also involved the arrest of occupants of an automobile. Almost everything must therefore turn on what the unnamed informer said, and the value of his statement does not approach the requirements laid down in the three Supreme Court decisions which establish the constitutional parameters in this area. These are Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327 (1959), where the combination *36of information and observation was held sufficient for a warrantless arrest, and Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964), and Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969), where affidavits for search warrants were held insufficient. In contrast to the named informer in Draper,3 a “special employee” of the Narcotics Bureau who had given reliable information about narcotics for six months, the only basis for Officer Connolly’s belief in the unnamed informer here was that on one prior occasion the latter had given information about homosexual activity at the Bridgeport Railroad Station, which, however, was never substantiated and did not lead to an arrest. While the officer’s explanation that the suspect in the station desisted because he saw the police coming may be reasonable enough, the episode, even if it had turned out more successfully for the police, would scarcely establish the informer as an authority on narcotics or guns. In addition, the informer in Draper had provided a detailed description of the scenario which the suspect later performed, thus making the report one that, in the language of Spinelli, 393 U.S. at 417-418, 89 S.Ct. at 590, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 “was of the sort which in common experience may be recognized as having been obtained in a reliable way.” By contrast, the informer here, assuming he existed,4 related a single fact with no indication of how he had come upon it. The inarticulate premise for the reliability of this scant information, namely that no one could have stated such a fact unless he had personally observed it, is precisely the view that Aguilar, 378 U.S. at 113-114, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 and Spinelli, 393 U.S. at 416-417, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 rejected. It is as true here as in Spinelli, 393 U.S. at 417, 89 S.Ct. at 589, 21 L.Ed.2d 637, that “this meagre report could easily have been obtained from an offhand remark heard at a neighborhood bar,”5 and there was less, in fact nothing, in the way of meaningful corroboration by police investigation before the intrusion. I therefore turn to what I regard as the serious and doubtful issue whether, despite the absence of probable cause for arrest, Officer Connolly was nonetheless justified under Terry v. Ohio, supra, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, in demanding that Williams open the door of the car.
It has been well said that Terry and •the two other cases decided with it, Sibron v. New York and Peters v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968), constitute “the Court’s first word — but certainly not its last— on the subject of stop and frisk * * *. [Tjhis was the Court’s first foray into this particular thicket, and it is thus understandable that it made a conscious effort to leave sufficient room for later movement in almost any direction.” La Fave, “Street Encounters” and the Constitution, 67 Mich.L.Rev. 39, 46 (1968). Of the three decisions, only in Terry did a majority of the Court sustain a stop and protective search where there had been less than probable cause for ar*37rest.6 The Chief Justice was at pains to make clear the limited character of the holding when he jaid in the concluding paragraph of his opinion, 392 U.S. at 30, 88 S.Ct. at 1884, 20 L.Ed.2d 889. “We merely hold today that where a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dangerous,” he may make a stop and conduct a protective search under the conditions there defined.
The instant case differs from Terry in important respects. Officer Connolly himself observed no “unusual conduct” leading him “reasonably to conclude * * * that criminal activity may be afoot” — unless we are to say that the mere fact of Williams’ sitting alone in an automobile at 2:15 A.M. in a “high-crime” area is so inherently suspicious as to justify such a conclusion — a view I would deem exceedingly dangerous. The officer’s only basis for believing that Williams may have been committing a crime was the alleged tip from the not proved to be reliable, unnamed informer. See 19 Buffalo L.Rev. 680, 685-86 (1970). Moreover, what Officer McFadden saw in Terry was “unusual conduct” giving reason to believe that armed robbery was about to be committed; swift intervention on his part was required to prevent a serious crime of violence. Here, while Officer Connolly could well have thought that Williams would not possess the gun and narcotics mentioned by the informer merely for pleasure, he could not have believed that sale of the narcotics or use of the gun was imminent, and the record suggests that the officer had ample means for placing Williams under surveillance. See, in this connection, Mr. Justice Harlan’s concurring opinion in Sibron, 392 U.S. at 73, 88 S.Ct. at 1907, 20 L.Ed.2d 917.
The question thus becomes whether, even though the decisions of the Supreme Court of Connecticut and the district court in this case go beyond the facts of Terry and the narrow statement of its holding, they are nevertheless within its rationale. This seems to lie in the passages, 392 U.S. at 26-27, 88 S.Ct. at 1882-1883, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, where the Chief Justice explained that, in contrast to an arrest, “the protective search for weapons * * * constitutes a brief, though far from inconsiderable, intrusion upon the sanctity of the person”; that, because of the lesser nature of the intrusion, a smaller showing of cause may suffice; and that Terry’s “reliance on cases which have worked out standards of reasonableness with regard to ‘seizures’ constituting arrests and searches incident thereto is thus misplaced.” A further signal that the Court was thus adopting a test balancing the amount of cause required to be shown against the extent of the particular invasion of personal security was given by the citation of Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 534-537, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967). See LaFave, supra, 67 Mich.L.Rev. at 54-56; Hall, Kamisar, LaFave and Israel, Modern Criminal Procedure 324-26 (1969).
The Court’s decision that less may be required to justify a stop and a protective search than an arrest and a search incidental thereto leaves many open questions. How much less is enough? Does something depend upon the seriousness of the offense ? Cf. Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 183, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949) (dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Jackson).7 What favor, if any, should be shown to *38intervention aimed at preventing crime rather than detecting it? Cf. LaFave, supra, 67 Mich.L.Rev. at 66; 82 Harv.L.Rev. 178, 182 (1968). Do not such factors enter into an appraisal of what the Court evidently regarded as one significant test — whether failure to take immediate action would be “poor police work” ? 392 U.S. at 23, 88 S.Ct. at 1881, 20 L.Ed.2d 889. While almost everyone would agree it would have been “poor police work” for Officer McFadden to have failed to take action to foil an armed robbery by Terry and his confederates, many would think Officer Connolly would have done well enough to report what he allegedly had been told and the little he had seen.
Only future decisions by the Supreme Court can answer these and other questions. Striking the balance here as best I can in light of the few guidelines thus far available, I would hold the State had not shown sufficient cause to justify a forcible stop:
To begin, I have the gravest hesitancy in extending Terry to crimes like the possession of narcotics, see LaFave, supra, 67 Mich.L.Rev. at 65-66. There is too much danger that, instead of the stop being the object and the protective frisk an incident thereto, the reverse will be true. Against that we have here the added fact of the report that Williams had a gun on his person. I would follow Mr. Justice Harlan in thinking that “if the State * * * were to provide that police officers could, on articulable suspicion less than probable cause, forcibly frisk and disarm persons thought to be carrying concealed weapons, * * * action taken pursuant to such authority could be constitutionally reasonable.” Terry v. Ohio, supra, 392 U.S. at 31, 88 S.Ct. at 1885, 20 L.Ed.2d 889. But, as in Terry, the State here has done nothing of the sort. Connecticut allows its citizens to carry weapons, concealed or otherwise, at will, provided only they have a permit, Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 29-35 and 29-38, and gives its police officers no special authority to stop for the purpose of determining whether the citizen has one. Indeed, as my analysis of the State’s argument shows, the narcotics and the gun are inseparably linked; it is the report about narcotics on which the State pins reasonable cause to arrest for illegal possession of a gun.
If I am wrong in thinking that Terry should not be applied at all to mere possessory offenses, and a dictum in Sibron, 392 U.S. at 63, 88 S.Ct. at 1903, 20 L.Ed.2d 917, indicates that I may be, I would not find the combination of Officer Connolly’s almost meaningless observation and the tip in this case to be sufficient justification for the intrusion. The tip suffered from a threefold defect, with each fold compounding the others. The informer was unnamed, he was not shown to have been reliable with respect to guns or narcotics, and he gave no information which demonstrated personal knowledge or — what is worse — could not readily have been manufactured by the officer after the event. To my mind, it has not been sufficiently recognized that the difference between this sort of tip and the accurate prediction of an unusual event is as important on the latter score as on the former. Narcotics Agent Marsh would hardly have been at the Denver Station at the exact moment of the arrival of the train Draper had taken from Chicago unless someone had told him something important, although the agent might later have embroidered the details to fit the observed facts. Cf. United States v. Comissiong, 429 F.2d 834 (2 Cir.1970). There is no such guarantee of a patrolling officer’s veracity when he testifies to a “tip” from an unnamed informer saying no more than that the officer will find a gun and narcotics on a man across the street,8 as he *39later does. If the state wishes to rely on a tip of that nature to validate a stop and frisk, revelation of the name of the informer or demonstration that his name is unknown and could not reasonably have been ascertained should be the price.9
Terry v. Ohio was intended to free a police officer from the rigidity of a rule that would prevent his doing anything to a man reasonably suspected of being about to commit or having just committed a crime of violence, no matter how grave the problem or impelling the need for swift action, unless the officer had what a court would later determine to be probable cause for arrest. It was meant for the serious cases of imminent danger or of harm recently perpetrated to persons or property, not the conventional ones of possessory offenses. If it is to be extended to the latter at all, this should be only where observation by the officer himself or well authenticated information shows “that criminal activity may be afoot.” 392 U.S. at 30, 88 S.Ct. at 1884, 20 L.Ed.2d 889. I greatly fear that if the decision here should be followed, Terry will have opened the sluice-gates for serious and unintended erosion of the protection of the Fourth Amendment.
I would grant the writ.

. The State does not contend that Williams’ action was voluntary.

. It seems clear that this is the threshold issue. I do not read the Chief Justice’s opinion as holding otherwise, although, as Mr. Justice Harlan indicated, 392 U.S. at 32, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 the thought may not have been “fully expressed.” If the initial intrusion is justified, the privilege of the officer to take reasonable steps believed in good faith to be necessary for his own safety scarcely requires argument.

. Named doubtless because he had died within a few days after the arrest.

. It is cause for no small wonder that on the first suppression hearing, Officer Connolly never mentioned the informer but said he had responded to a police signal. In the subsequent hearing the informer appeared and the signal disappeared. See note 9 infra.

. The majority opinion urges against this that because the alleged informant was allegedly across the street, he should be regarded as an “eye-witness” and cites McCreary v. Sigler, 406 F.2d 1264, 1269 (8 Cir. 1969), and United States v. Acarino, 408 F.2d 512, 514 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 395 U.S. 961, 89 S.Ct. 2101, 23 L.Ed.2d 746 (1969), in support. In McCreary, the informant gave a detailed affidavit of his observations including the fact that he had seen McCreary in the phone booth whence the coin box was stolen and heard coins rattling. In Acariño the informer had given a detailed scenario 4 la Draper. Here the implicit assumption that the informer had been with Williams in the car or saw him enter it is sheer speculation.

. The search in Sibron was held unlawful because the officer was seeking to find narcotics rather than to protect his own safety; in Peters the majority found there was probable cause for arrest.

. As said in LaFave, supra, 67 Mich.L.Rev. at 57:
Taking into account the seriousness of the offense does not require the use of some fine-spun theory whereby each *38offense in the criminal code has its own probable-cause standard; rather, it involves only the common-sense notion that murder, rape, armed robbery, and the like call for a somewhat different police response than, say, gambling, prostitution, or possession of narcotics.

. While the findings of the Connecticut courts and the district court preclude our holding that the unnamed informer did *39not exist in this case, we can take the danger of fabrication into account in framing a general rule.

. The State’s claim that Williams failed previously to raise this point is without foundation. At the first hearing on Williams’ motion to suppress evidence, Officer Connolly testified he was in a radio car and responded to a police signal directing him to go to the Williams car. No mention of an informant was made at that time. After Williams was bound over to the Fairfield County Superior Court, a second hearing was held and the officer testified that while on patrol he met an undisclosed informant who told him that Williams was in the car with drugs and a gun. Williams’ attorney asked who the informant was, but the state objected, the court sustained the objection, and Williams’ attorney took an exception. Again, in his amended and second amended petitions for habeas corpus presented to the Superior Court for Hartford County, Williams claimed his conviction was illegal since his “right of confrontation and due process rights were violated by reason of the Court's failure to permit inquiry as to the identity of the police informant upon whose information the probable cause was claimed.” Finally, in the Claims of Law which Williams submitted to support his federal habeas corpus petition, he mentioned that he had sought to elicit the identity of the informant but was not permitted to do so; he alleges also that at the federal habeas hearing the judge sustained an objection to questions on the informant’s identity.