Court Opinion

ID: 9707355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:09:42.915684+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:31.740400
License: Public Domain

Otis, Justice
(dissenting).
I would hold that the arrest by Officer Hessel’s fellow officers, together with the seizure by them of defendant’s marijuana and hashish, was without sufficient probable cause and therefore invalid. I do not consider that the police acted in utter disregard of defendant’s constitutional rights. However, we have the advantage of hindsight which was denied them.
Regard for the demands of the Fourth Amendment and the exclusionary rule which it mandates require that all doubts be resolved in favor of the individual citizen. Hence, notwithstanding that defendant’s guilt is now undoubted, the issue may only be considered in terms of the circumstances then existing. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 81 S. Ct. 1684, 6 L. ed. 2d 1081, 84 A. L. R. 2d 933 (1961); State v. Bryant, 287 Minn. 205, 177 N. W. 2d 800 (1970).
The only evidence that defendant possessed marijuana was the box of hand-rolled cigarettes observed by Officer Hessel upon his first encounter with defendant. This observation was from a position several feet away. The officer was standing in the hallway outside defendant’s room. Hessel neither saw nor smelled *83the contents of the cigarettes. It is significant that the arresting officer confirmed the nature of the material in them only by breaking open a cigarette. I have in mind that Hessel testified that in each of some 50 cases during his 3 years of professional experience subsequent analysis had “always” shown hand-rolled cigarettes to contain marijuana. His colleague, Officer Paul Pederson, testified that it was so in “most” cases he had investigated. However, the police department of which they are members distributes a pamphlet to parents advising them of the obvious fact that not every hand-rolled cigarette contains marijuana. Suspected cigarettes in possession of their own children may be merely homemade tobacco cigarettes. Whether or not, as these officers indicated, young people in the community do not commonly smoke hand-rolled tobacco cigarettes, it was hardly within the competence of the police officers to assume that out-of-state visitors to the motel do not do so. Although the cited authorities support the initiation of this general investigation, the stated facts upon which they were decided give no support to an arrest and search under circumstances as ambiguous as these.
The totality of the circumstances leading to the investigation does not elevate the officers’ understandable suspicion to the level of probable cause. The general conduct of defendant had been quiet and unobtrusive, with no suggestion of furtive or secretive activity. Cf. State v. Dill, 277 Minn. 40, 151 N. W. 2d 413 (1967). The mere fact that defendant was a member of the Jefferson Airplane, some of whose members or associates occupying rooms on another floor were known to have possessed and smoked marijuana, created no reasonable inference that defendant was implicated in that criminal activity. His presumed bohemian attributes would not warrant so adverse an inference of unlawful behavior any more than his occupation as a rock musician would. Although his disguise as a person of like mind and habits afforded Officer Hessel the opportunity to visit with defendant in the coffee shop, there is no indication in this record *84defendant intimated he had participated in the marijuana smoking which had occurred on the second floor.1 Rather than suggesting an association with Odell, for whom Officer Hessel pretended to be searching, the evidence indicated that defendant had no present knowledge of Odell’s whereabouts.
We are reminded by Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 62, 88 S. Ct. 1889, 1902, 20 L. ed. 2d 917, 934 (1968), that not even the association of one in conversation with known narcotics addicts during a period of 8 hours will raise such a reasonable inference of criminal culpability as to support an intrusion by the police upon an individual’s personal security.
I would reverse.
Mr. Justice Todd, not having been a member of this court at the time of the argument and submission, took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

 It is not wholly without significance that the police officers had undertaken to arm themselves with a search warrant with respect to rooms of persons in the Jefferson Airplane entourage on the second floor of the motel but, lacking any like evidence of probable cause from any source, anonymous or disclosed, with respect to defendant and his room on the first floor, had not undertaken to include his room in the premises to be searched.