Court Opinion

ID: 9458546
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:55:05.794113+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:48.291312
License: Public Domain

VAN DUSEN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusion that the federal agents had constitutionally adequate probable cause to arrest and search Lampkin as they did at the Greater Pittsburgh Airport Terminal on June 3, 1970, and believe that at the least the judgment of conviction and sentence should be vacated and the case remanded to the district court for further findings in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S. 560, 91 S.Ct. 1031, 28 L.Ed.2d 306 (1971). I agree with the majority that Lampkin was arrested at the instant that the federal agents approached him with their guns drawn and detained him, before they had asked him •his name, and that this detention was not simply a “stop and frisk” which may be justified by less stringent probable cause standards, see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); United States v. Fields, 458 F. 2d 1194 (3d Cir., 1972). Thus, as the majority states, whether Lampkin’s arrest was constitutionally valid will depend upon whether the record before the district court supports the conclusion that at the moment that the federal officers approached Lampkin “the officers had probable cause to make it — whether at that moment the facts and circumstances within their knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information, were sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the petitioner had been or was committing an offense.” Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 225, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964).1
The only evidence introduced at the pre-trial suppression hearing conducted on January 18, 1971, was the testimony *1099of Agent Sheid, a special agent with the United States Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Agent Sheid testified that on the morning of June 3, 1970, as he and two other special agents were proceeding west on Interstate 76 toward the Greater Pittsburgh Airport, they observed a 1967 Cadillac car occupied by “two male Negro individuals” also proceeding toward the airport. N. T. 3-4. When asked on direct examination whether he recognized either of the two occupants of the automobile, Agent Sheid declared:
“I recognized them only to the extent that I thought that I had perhaps seen one of them earlier, prior to that occasion . . . [d]uring my work as an undercover agent in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.” N.T. 4.
On cross-examination, however, Agent Sheid acknowledged that he had never seen the passenger of the vehicle before (who was, in fact, the defendant Lamp-kin) and did not know his name (N.T. 16), so that it must have been the driver of the automobile that he had “thought” that he “had perhaps seen” earlier. Apparently because of this identification and the fact that Agent Sheid “thought that [he] had seen this subject vehicle in the Hill District of Pittsburgh” (N.T. 4), Agent Sheid radioed the Pittsburgh office of the Bureau for a registration check on the car while the agents followed it to the airport (N.T. 4-5). The Pittsburgh office reported that the automobile was registered in the name of Lonnie F. Lampkin. N.T. 5. Since the name Lampkin was familiar to Agent Sheid as the surname of a Joseph Lamp-kin, whose name was included in the narcotics files of the Pittsburgh District Office of the Bureau, Agent Sheid ordered the Pittsburgh office to contact the City of Pittsburgh Narcotics Squad for any additional information they could provide. N.T. 5,17-18.
The Pittsburgh Police Department reported, according to Agent Sheid, that “Lonny F. Lampkin was the name which appeared on an arrest warrant charging him with illegal sale of narcotics in violation of Pennsylvania Drug, Device, and Cosmetic Act” and that “Lonny F. Lampkin was currently under investigation by their department and was a known narcotics dealer in the city of Pittsburgh, and the fact that his suspected source of supply was in New York City.” N.T. 7.
When the vehicle registered in the name of Lonnie F. Lampkin arrived at the airport, two agents followed the passenger (actually the defendant Lamp-kin) to a ticket counter and determined that he purchased a ticket in the name of Gene McClary for a flight to Newark, New Jersey, leaving that morning. N.T. 6. After “Gene McClary” got on the plane, a request was made by the Pittsburgh office to the Newark office to follow him after his arrival in Newark. N.T. 7-8. The Newark agents reported to Agent Sheid that after arriving in Newark, the suspect inquired at a ticket counter about a return flight to Pittsburgh that day and then went into the New York City area, where they lost sight of him. Under prodding from the prosecutor, Agent Sheid acknowledged that the surveillance of Lampkin was “discontinued in the neighborhood of Pratt’s residence or place of business” (N.T. 9), and that Pratt was a “well known trafficker in large quantities of narcotics” (N.T. 11). However, there is no indication in the record that the fact that the Newark agents lost track of the suspect “in the vicinity of Pratts” was known by the agents at the moment of their arrest of Lampkin, which is the critical time on the issue of whether there was probable cause to arrest. See, e. g., Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21-22, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). Agent Sheid did not, directly or indirectly, indicate that he had this information prior to arrest and, in fact, when asked whether he received any other report concerning the defendant Lampkin from the time that his airplane left the Pittsburgh airport until the time he arrested him, Agent Sheid testified that *1100he did not. N.T. 23. Since the district court made absolutely no mention of Pratt in its opinion (including its 21-paragraph findings of fact), it seems clear that this information was learned by the arresting officers after the arrest.2
Meanwhile, Agent Sheid remained at the Pittsburgh airport and obtained information regarding return flights from the New York area. N.T. 11. Later that afternoon he saw the same individual who had driven Lampkin to the airport in the morning enter the airport and meet Lampkin and proceed to a Ford Thunderbird automobile (not the Cadillac that they had driven to the airport in the morning). N.T. 12-13. As these men began to enter the ear, the federal agents approached with their guns drawn and arrested both Lampkin and his companion (N.T. 13, Stipulation of January 18, 1971).
What then did the federal agents know about Lampkin that would have given them probable cause to arrest him at the moment that they did? The record in this case indicates that all these agents knew at the time of arrest was that Lampkin (whom the agents did not recognize) was driven to the airport for a one-day trip to New York City by another male Negro individual whom one of the agents “thought that [he] had perhaps seen . . . earlier” in a car which this same agent “thought that [he] had seen ... in the Hill District of Pittsburgh” and which was registered in the name of Lonnie F. Lampkin, that the name Lampkin was familiar to the federal agent as the last name of one “suspected of being a drug trafficker,” and that the Pittsburgh Police had reported that Lonnie F. Lamp-kin was the subject of a state arrest warrant charging him with illegal sale of narcotics and was “currently under investigation” as “a known narcotics dealer in the city of Pittsburgh” with a “suspected source of narcotics . in New York.”
I believe that at the least the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S. 560, 91 S.Ct. 1031, 28 L.Ed.2d 306 (1971), requires this court to remand this case to the district court for further findings of fact. In Whiteley the Court held that, although in general a police officer acting pursuant to an arrest warrant is entitled to assume that the warrant is based upon probable cause, if this is not the ease the fact of the warrant cannot justify an “otherwise illegal” arrest. See 401 U.S. at 568, 91 S.Ct. 1031. In the instant case, the majority acknowledges that the Pittsburgh Police Department report of an outstanding state arrest warrant for Lonnie F. Lampkin for narcotics violations “is now thought to have been seemingly erroneous,” but declares that Whiteley is not controlling because “it is clear in this appeal, that probable cause existed irrespective of the questionable warrant and therefore the arrest could not be termed ‘otherwise illegal.’ ” But if the Pittsburgh Police Department report of a state arrest warrant is to be discounted as “seemingly erroneous,” then I would think it also possible that the contemporaneously received Pittsburgh Police Department report that Lonnie F. Lampkin was “currently under investigation” as “a known narcotics dealer in the city of Pittsburgh” with a “suspected source of narcotics . in New York” is also “seemingly erroneous.”3 The district court, whose *1101decision was announced on February 23, 1971, more than a month before the Supreme Court announced its decision in Whiteley on March 29, 1971, made no findings as to whether either of the reports by the Pittsburgh Police Department was substantially true. I believe that at the least this court should remand this case to the district court for findings as to whether the reports received from the Pittsburgh Police Department were substantially accurate, since without this information I think it is clear that the arrest was “otherwise illegal.”
However, assuming that the arresting agents were entitled to rely on the report of the Pittsburgh Police Department that Lonnie F. Lampkin was a “known narcotics dealer” in Pittsburgh with a suspected source of narcotics in New York City, I believe that these agents did not have probable cause to arrest the defendant Lampkin at the time that they did so. The record reveals that at the time of arrest, before Lampkin had been asked his name, the federal agents knew only that Lampkin (whom none of the agents recognized or identified) had been driven to the Pittsburgh airport for a one-day trip to New York City by a man that one of the undercover agents “thought that [he] had perhaps seen” earlier in a car which was registered in the name of one identified by the Pittsburgh police as a “known narcotics dealer” with a “suspected source of narcotics in New York City,” and was about to be driven from the airport by this same man in a different car. At the time of arrest, the agents had no reason to believe that Lampkin was not Gene McClary, the name he had used on the flight to Newark. Officer Sheid testified that he did not assume that the person he arrested was Lonnie F. Lampkin (N.T. 2) and that, in fact, he would have placed him under arrest even if Lampkin had said that his name was McClary (N.T. 24). In these circumstances, the information possessed by the federal agents at the time of their arrest of Lampkin does not seem “sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the petitioner had been or was committing an offense.” Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 225, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964).
In Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968), the Supreme Court held that a policeman could not constitutionally arrest Sibron merely because the officer saw Sibron talking to a number of known narcotics addicts over a period of eight hours in circumstances in which narcotics may have been transferred. A different result in this case would be contrary to Sibron, particularly since Lampkin was never even seen in the company of a known narcotics addict or trafficker (at most, he was in such a person’s car), and the narcotics agents had no specific reason to believe that Lampkin had an illegal reason for taking a one-day trip to New York from Pittsburgh. It may well be that in both cases the police had their suspicions aroused because of the capacity for illegal activity inherent in the suspects’ activities. But unless the constitutional standard for effecting an arrest (as opposed to a “stop and frisk”) is to be relaxed to include mere suspicion, I do not see how an arrest can be justified.
Dicta from the recent decision of this court in United States v. Fields, 458 F. 2d 1194 (3d Cir., 1972), supports the view that there was no probable cause to arrest Lampkin at the moment that he was arrested. In Fields, special agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, while waiting at the Pittsburgh airport on Monday, December 22, 1969, for several embarking passengers who did not appear, observed the debarkation of three Negro passengers, two men and a woman. The men carried no luggage and the woman carried a pocketbook and a flight bag. At least one of the narcotics agents, actually recognized both of the men, Fields and Davis, as persons believed to be illegally trafficking in narcotics and knew of a Bureau report from an informant (believed to be reliable) that Fields fre*1102quently went to New York and usually returned by plane on Monday accompanied by a woman who carried drugs for him. The narcotics agents kept Davis, Fields and the woman under surveillance and noted that they did not walk together or speak to one another and, in fact, the woman appeared to be intentionally avoiding contact with Davis. After Davis left the airport, Fields waited in the entrance to the passenger terminal about 30 minutes while parking attendants got his car. The woman waited nearby, apparently nervous and ill at ease, but not communicating ' with Fields. When the ear finally arrived. Fields walked to the driver’s side and the woman walked to the passenger’s door. At this point the federal agents stopped Fields and the woman and asked the woman what was in her flight bag. The woman responded that the bag belonged to Fields, who immediately exclaimed that it was not his. The agent then asked to look into the flight bag and she obliged by extending it to him, although maintaining that it was not hers.
In these circumstances, the Court declared that “[i]t is doubtful whether the information possessed by the federal agents, supplemented by their observation of the suspects, supplied probable cause to justify a search of the flight bag in invitum” (458 F.2d at 1197). If there was not probable cause to arrest the suspects in Fields and search the flight bag, a fortiori there was not probable cause to arrest Lampkin as the officers did in the instant case. In Fields the narcotics agents stopped an individual who was known to them as a suspected narcotics trafficker behaving suspiciously and acting consistently with a reliably reported modus operandi. In the instant case, in contrast, the narcotics agents arrested an individual whom they had never seen or heard of before, whose specific actions were not unusual, and who was not acting consistent with any specific modus operandi characteristic of a criminal enterprise. I recognize, of course, that local and federal law enforcement officials must be given reasonable latitude if the safety and welfare of the community are to be maintained, particularly so in the case of narcotics traffic, which is both insidious and difficult to detect and prevent. Thus, in Fields, Judge Hastie, speaking for this court, declared that the narcotics agents had a privilege, indeed a responsibility, to stop Fields and his woman companion in order to question them and ask to examine the flight bag. But Judge Hastie followed this declaration with the following caution:
“In so ruling, we do not sanction or in any way condone the stopping and harassing of persons merely because they have criminal records or bad reputations.”
458 F.2d at 1198.
I believe that Lampkin’s arrest under the circumstances presented in the record constituted a violation of the Fourth Amendment and would reverse the judgment of conviction.

. It is settled that the term “reasonable cause” in 26 U.S.C. § 7607, cited by the majority, is substantially equivalent to the term “probable cause” in the Fourth Amendment. See e. g., Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 310 n. 3, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327 (1959) ; United States v. Simon, 409 F.2d 474 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 829, 90 S.Ct. 79, 24 L. Ed.2d 79 (1969) ; Rocha v. United States, 387 F.2d 1019, 1022 n. 2 (9th Cir. 1967), cert. denied, 390 U.S. 1004, 88 S.Ct. 1247, 20 L.Ed.2d 104 (1968) ; United States v. Burruss, 306 F.Supp. 915, 918 (E.D. Pa.1969).

. Testimony at Lampkin’s sentencing proceeding is consistent with the acquisition of this information after the arrest. At the sentencing proceeding held on December 15, 1971, Special Agent Lund, of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, testified that after Lampkin was arrested he cooperated with the Bureau and told them that he had been sent to New York by his father to purchase narcotics from someone named Pratt. N. T. 6-7.

. At Lampkin’s sentencing hearing, Special Agent Lund acknowledged that it was Lampkin’s father who was suspected and had a reputation of being involved in the narcotics traffic and that the defendant Lampkin “wasn’t known to us to the best of our knowledge.” N.T. 6-7.