Court Opinion

ID: 9423762
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:09:01.448194+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:45.948760
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Black,
concurring in No. 74 and dissenting in No. 63.
I concur in the affirmance of the judgment against Peters but dissent from the reversal of No. 63, Sibron v. New York, and would affirm that conviction. Sibron was convicted of violating New York’s anti-narcotics law on the basis of evidence seized from him by the police. The Court reverses on the ground that the narcotics were seized as the result of an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Court has decided today in Terry v. Ohio and in No. 74, Peters v. New York, that a policeman does not violate the Fourth Amendment when he makes a limited search for weapons on the person of a man who the policeman has probable cause to believe has a dangerous weapon on him with which he might injure the policeman or others or both, unless he is searched and the weapon is taken away from him. And, of course, under established principles it is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment for a policeman to search a person who he has probable cause to believe is committing a felony at the time. For both these reasons I think the seizure of the narcotics from Sibron was not unreasonable *80under the Fourth Amendment. Because of a different emphasis on the facts, I find it necessary to restate them.
About 4 p. m. Patrolman Martin saw appellant Sibron in the vicinity of 742 Broadway. From then until 12 o’clock midnight Sibron remained there. During that time the policeman saw Sibron talking with six or eight persons whom the policeman knew from past experience to be narcotics addicts. Later, at about 12 o’clock, Sibron went into a restaurant and there the patrolman saw Sibron speak with three more known addicts. While Sibron was eating in the restaurant the police-man went to him and asked him to come out. Sibron came out. There the officer said to Sibron, “You know what I am after.” Sibron mumbled something and reached into his left coat pocket. The officer also moved his hand to the pocket and seized what was in it, which turned out to be heroin. The patrolman testified at the hearing to suppress use of the heroin as evidence that he “thought he fSibron] might have been” reaching for a gun.
Counsel for New York for some reason that I have not been able to understand, has attempted to confess error — that is, that for some reason the search or seizure here violated the Fourth Amendment. I agree with the Court that we need not and should not accept this confession of error. But, unlike the Court, I think, for two reasons, that the seizure did not violate the Fourth Amendment and that the heroin was properly admitted in evidence.
First. I think there was probable cause for the policeman to believe that when Sibron reached his hand to his coat pocket, Sibron had a dangerous weapon which he might use if it were not taken away from him. This, according to the Court’s own opinion, seems to have been the ground on which the Court of Appeals of New York justified the search, since it “affirmed on the *81basis of § 180-a, which authorizes such a search when the officer 'reasonably suspects that he is in danger of life or limb/ ” Ante, at 63. And it seems to me to be a reasonable inference that when Sibron, who had been approaching and talking to addicts for eight hours, reached his hand quickly to his left coat pocket, he might well be reaching for a gun. And as the Court has emphasized today in its opinions in the other stop- and-frisk cases, a policeman under such circumstances has to act in a split second; delay may mean death for him. No one can know when an addict may be moved to shoot or stab, and particularly when he moves his hand hurriedly to a pocket where weapons are known to be habitually carried, it behooves an officer who wants to live to act at once as this officer did. It is true that the officer might also have thought Sibron was about to get heroin instead of a weapon. But the law enforcement officers all over the Nation'have gained little protection from the courts through opinions here if they are now left helpless to act in self defense when a man associating intimately and continuously with addicts, upon meeting an officer, shifts his hand immediately to a pocket where weapons are constantly carried.
In appraising the facts as I have I realize that the Court has chosen to draw inferences different from mine and those drawn by the courts below. The Court for illustration draws inferences that the officer’s testimony at the hearing continued upon the “plain premise that he had been looking for narcotics all the time.” Ante, at 47, n. 4. But this Court is hardly, at this distance from the place and atmosphere of the trial, in a position to overturn the trial and appellate courts on its own independent finding of an unspoken “premise” of the officer’s inner thoughts.
In acting upon its own findings and rejecting those of the lower state courts, this Court, sitting in the marble halls of the Supreme Court Building in Wash*82ington, D. C., should be most cautious. Due to our holding in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, we are due to get for review literally thousands of cases raising questions like those before us here. If we are setting ourselves meticulously to review all such findings our task will be endless and many will rue the day when Mapp was decided. It is not only wise but imperative that where findings of the facts of reasonableness and probable cause are involved in such state cases, we should not overturn state court findings unless in the most extravagant and egregious errors. It seems fantastic to me even to suggest that this is such a case. I would leave these state court holdings alone.
Second, I think also that there was sufficient evidence here on which to base findings that after recovery of the heroin, in particular, an officer could reasonably believe there was probable cause to charge Sibron with violating New York’s narcotics laws. As I have previously argued, there was, I think, ample evidence to give the officer probable cause to believe Sibron had a dangerous weapon and that he might use it. Under such circumstances the officer had a right to search him in the very limited fashion he did here. Since, therefore, this was a reasonable and justified search, the use of the heroin discovered by it was admissible in evidence.
I would affirm.