Court Opinion

ID: 9462760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:49:33.810572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:46.090058
License: Public Domain

McCREE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
The question before us is whether the facts and circumstances within the knowledge of the officers at the time they made the search, and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information, were sufficient to warrant a man of reasonable caution to believe that illegal drugs were in the bag they seized and searched. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 162, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925).
Here the telex message (quoted in full in the majority opinion) contained the only information known to the officers before they searched Giles’ suitcase.1 The majority opinion holds that the average person, told that a medium-sized suitcase shipped on a commercial airline was “filled with pills,” would conclude that it was “exceedingly probable” that the bag contained illegal drugs.
I do not agree that the telex message afforded probable cause to believe that there were illegal drugs in the suitcase. There is nothing in the record to indicate that the term “pills,” or the way in which the pills here were being carried, had any special significance to the officers. The general definition of the word “pill” is “a medicine in the form of a little ball or a small rounded mass that is to be swallowed whole.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. Without evidence showing a special significance of the number of pills, or the way they were packed, the telex message affords no more probable cause than a communication that a bag full of medicines or chemicals had been checked with the airline. Medicines and chemicals, *142as well as pills, may be either legal or illegal substances.
I cannot distinguish this case from our recent decision in United States v. Jackson, 533 F.2d 314 (Decided and filed April 12, 1976), where agents arrested a woman based on an informant’s tip describing her general appearance,2 and stating that she would be arriving at a bus station at noon on a certain date to deliver 14 ounces of heroin to the informant. Judge Weick, writing for the court, stated:
[W]e are unable to conclude that probable cause was established on the basis of the information supplied by Goff, even when supplemented by the agents’ observations of Goff and Jackson on the day of her arrest.
The agents may have had reason to be suspicious of Patricia Jackson, to place her under surveillance, or even to attempt to arrange a purchase of heroin from her; however, mere unconfirmed suspicion is not the criteria upon which probable cause is based. Something more was needed, and even the agents recognized this. [Emphasis added.]
I would similarly hold that although the telex message should have alerted the officers here to investigate further to corroborate their suspicions, it did not afford probable cause to seize appellant Giles’ bag and search it. I would therefore reverse the conviction because it was based upon evidence seized in violation of Giles’ Fourth Amendment rights.

. Because “Terlesky,” the signatory of the Telex, was not known to either the Detroit air line personnel or the police officers, the reliability of the message was not established.

. The informant, a friend of appellant’s ex-husband, described her as “a black female, approximately five feet tall, weighing one hundred pounds ... she usually wore slack suits