Court Opinion

ID: 9451152
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:07:57.198265+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:35.377927
License: Public Domain

*710J. SKELLY WRIGHT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
The panel opinion in this case looks 180 degrees in the opposite direction from the panel opinion in Ross v. United States, 121 U.S.App.D.C. -, 349 F.2d 210 (1965), decided just two months ago.1 Moreover, it sanctions a system of law enforcement which, in my judgment, is fraught with the danger of convicting, and branding as criminal, defenseless and innocent people. As the panel opinion shows, appellant is one of 102 alleged narcotics offenders against whom a new policeman filed complaints all at one time. The majority opinion would approve convictions predicated on the uncorroborated testimony of the undercover policeman 2 in spite of the fact that prosecution was purposefully delayed for a period of several months during which the accused-to-be, innocent or guilty, would have no way of knowing the Government was holding a charge against him.
The policeman in this case, Officer Moore, followed the traditional pattern of narcotics investigations made by the Metropolitan Police Force. Under this pattern, a new policeman, working undercover, goes into the street, usually with a drug addict informant, and makes cases against other drug addicts by buying capsules of heroin. Customarily, the purchases of narcotics are made from persons the police officer has never seen before in his life and may never see again during the undercover investigation. The incident, however, is entered in the undercover policeman’s diary as to time, date and place of each purchase, but no description of the seller, other than possibly a nickname, is recorded. There are no pictures in the policeman’s diary. The only picture of the seller is in the mind of the undercover officer.
At the appointed time, months after the purchases of narcotics, using his diary as his prop, the undercover policeman files charges against all of the persons from whom he has made buys, in this instance 102. He then goes out on the street with other officers to find the people accused. In this search the undercover officer’s primary prop is his own mental picture of the sellers. I suggest that it defies human experience for any man, particularly a new policeman, to remember and to identify with absolute conviction the particular 102 faces, as distinguished from hundreds of others, that passed through his mind, many on just one occasion, during the kaleidoscope of his months-long undercover investigation. Indulging the unlikely assumption that he can remember the 102 particular faces, to suggest that he can allocate each face to the appropriate time and place shown in his diary offends credulity.
Viewed from the standpoint of the people the policeman identifies, the situation is even more disconcerting. There is just no way in which an accused can protect himself against the stale charge in the policeman’s diary plus the policeman’s mental image of him as the offender. The accused has no way of knowing, to say nothing of proving, where he was at the time and on the day the policeman says his diary shows he made a sale of narcotics to the policeman. At the close of the undercover investigation, when arrest time came, Officer Moore in this case could have *711of walked into the Negro slum area Washington and picked up the first 102 people he found, charged them with the 102-odd sales shown in his diary, identified them on trial, and the persons so identified would doubtless be convicted in large numbers. They would be helpless to defend themselves. The people in this subculture simply do not have desk pads and social calendars to assist them in determining where they were at a particular time many months before. They live from day to day and one day is very much like another.
I am not suggesting, of course, that Officer Moore would accuse the first 102 people he met. I am suggesting that in this kind of grab bag operation he could make mistakes in identification, and his mistakes would very likely wind up in the Lorton Reformatory serving five-, ten- or fifteen-year sentences. This spectre apparently does not disturb the majority of this panel. I find it frightening.
The practice of this court in narcotics delay cases 3 has been to remand to the District Court for hearing on the reasonableness of the delay and the prejudice to the defendant. Now that the guidelines for determining reasonableness and prejudice in this type of case have been set out in Ross, it is particularly appropriate that the District Court be permitted to apply these guidelines to this case after a proper evidentiary record on this issue is developed. I would, therefore, remand this case to the District Court for this purpose.
I respectfully dissent.

. Fortunately, since the facts in this case, as shown by the court’s opiinon, are clearly distinguishable from Ross, the statements made in the opinion in no way impair the principles announced in Ross.

. The panel opinion, at page 709, states:
“Though we do not consider it necessary to our decision, it should be noted that the narcotics sales for which appellant stands convicted were made, in the presence of Officer Moore, to one Atria Harris, a special employee of the Narcotics Squad. * * *”

. See Ross v. United States, supra, No. 17,-877, remanded for further proceedings January 28, 1964, decided June 30, 1965, 121 U.S.App.D.C. -, 349 F.2d 210; Mackey v. United States, No. 18,525, remanded for further proceedings November 19, 1964, decided June 30, 1965, 122 U.S.App. D.C.-, 351 F.2d 794; Johnson v. United States, No. 18,207, remanded for further proceedings December 16, 1964, appeal dismissed April 14, 1965, 350 F.2d 784; Woody v. United States, No. 17,965, remanded for further proceedings December 11, 1964, appeal pending; Godfrey v. United States, No. 18,442, remanded for further proceedings November 23, 1964, appeal pending; Roy v. United States, No. 18,285, remanded for further proceedings November 10, 1964, decided September 1, 1965; Ward v. United States, No. 18,420, remanded for further proceedings September 18, 1964, decided April 30, 1965, 120 U.S.App.D.C. 311, 346 F.2d 423; and Jackson v. United States, No. 18,597, remanded for further proceedings April 21, 1965, decided September 13. 1965, 122 U.S.App.D.C. -, 351 F.2d 821.