Court Opinion

ID: 9450323
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:41:59.508411+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:14.850030
License: Public Domain

EDWARDS, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
This is a difficult case. The right of our citizens to be free from “unreasonable searches and seizures” is a part of those yearnings for freedom which gave birth to this country. Steadily through the decades our courts have sought to define the Fourth Amendment so as to ensure the freedoms it contemplated while leaving room for practical enforcement of public order by ordinary men acting within bounds of reason. (See Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669 (1960)).
In this case I concur in affirmance without reaching the problem of the application of Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963).
In my view of the evidence, the original arrest was not constitutionally “unreasonable” under any present United States Supreme Court interpretation of the Fourth Amendment.
The facts in this appeal are recited in an agreed statement:
“The information charged that on January 3, 1963, the Defendants being over eighteen years of age did without lawful authority and with intent to defraud, utter and insert in a vending machine designed to receive lawful coins of the United States a device and metal similar in size and shape of lawful twenty-five cent coin of the United States to procure a thing of value, to-wit, genuine coins of the United States in violation of Federal Law.
“No specific location was named but the proof was that it was the Kwick-Kleen Laundry. Lloyd K. Lindsey took care of the laundry for his mother. The night in question Mr. Lindsey was driving past the laundry with a friend when he noticed two men standing next to the coin changer. He stopped his car and watched from across the street. He also observed a third man in the laundry. He asked his friend to summon the police, and he remained at his lookout post. His friend returned without the police, so he called them. On cross examination he said he did not see either defendant take any money from the coin changer and that he did not see what either of the defendants may have put into the coin changer; that what created his suspicion was that the defendants were before the machine for some period of time. He further testified that just as the two men were leaving the police arrived and took them into custody. He further states that when he called the police originally, he said, T think someone is robbing my laundromat and they are right there now.’ ”
Subsequent to the arrests the coin changers were opened and 98 copper slugs the size of a quarter were found therein.
On this record there was probable cause for the arresting officers to believe that KRS 434.050(1) (a felony)1 had been violated. A citizen had report*321ed a crime to the police and they had caught the perpetrators in full flight from the scene. There was certainly no opportunity for them to get a warrant.
The Fourth Amendment is much more concerned with what a police officer does in an arrest than it is with the state of his legal knowledge pertaining to the finer distinctions between felonies and misdemeanors.
No lawyer (much less a police officer) could have predicted with certainty at the moment of decision on the scene of the crime whether defendant would ultimately be charged with a felony under state law, or (as was done) with a high misdemeanor under federal law. And subsequent decision to charge under the latter statute does not invalidate the arrest if there was probable cause to believe the former statute was being violated.
But this case also poses the question: Assuming the arrest was legal at the instant it was made, was it rendered unconstitutional by the fact that the police told defendant that he was being arrested for “vagrancy investigation”?
As I read this record, this never was an “investigation arrest.” This statement was an evasion probably designed to gain time to look up the chargé which would be technically correct. But there is no federal constitutional requirement that the arresting officer inform the person arrested of the reason for the arrest. The Sixth Amendment reads in applicable part: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right * * * to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.” (Emphasis added.) And, of course, defendant was so informed well prior to trial.
Kentucky has a statute (KRS 431.025 (1)) which adopts the English common law rule 2 that an arrest is illegal unless the arresting officer tells the person arrested why he is being arrested. Under this rule and the Kentucky statute it is held that the police statement need not be made when the arrested party obviously knows the answer3 or where it is dangerous to make it.
Here the defendant and his accomplice had just finished “slugging” a coin changer. The police were called by a citizen observer on the scene. Defendant was arrested in the nighttime in full flight from the laundromat where he had committed the crime. Such circumstances would serve to render unnecessary any formal statement of reason for arrest.
I join in affirmance of this conviction since I find no violation of defendant’s federal constitutional rights and no prejudicial error.

. “434.050 [1208] Obtaining money, property or signature by false pretenses. (1) Any person who, by any false pretense, statement or token, with intent to commit a fraud obtains from another money, property or other tiling which may be the subject of larceny, or who obtains by any false pretense, statement or token, with like intention, the signature of another to a writing, the false making of which would be forgery, shall be confined in the penitentiary for not *321less than one nor more than five years.” Ky.Rev.Stat. eh. 434, § 434.050(1) (1960).

. Christie v. Leachinsky (1947), A.C. 573, 587.x.

. Dale v. Commonwealth, 186 Ky. 510, 514, 217 S.W. 363 (1920); Sizemore v. Commonwealth, 279 Ky. 190, 195-196, 130 S.W.2d 31 (1939).