Court Opinion

ID: 9453597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:18:26.837011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:43.572742
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing in Banc
Before LUMBARD, Chief Judge, and WATERMAN, MOORE, FRIENDLY, SMITH, KAUFMAN, HAYS, ANDERSON and FEINBERG, Circuit Judges.
FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge:
Upon the Government’s petition asserting that the opinion of the panel majority had established an “unrealistic” and “unworkable” standard of probable cause that “will have a seriously damaging pre-cedential effect on the entire range of the enforcement of the criminal laws,” the court voted to reconsider this appeal in banc. Counsel were afforded an opportunity to file further briefs but elected to stand on the material already before us. The court has reached a conclusion on the legality of Soyka’s arrest and the consequent search differing from the panel’s. Agreeing with Judge Smith’s disposition of Soyka’s other points, pp. 450-451, fn. 2, we affirm the conviction.
The Government forcefully contends that the detailed information disclosed by the informant and the verification of much of this by the agents supplied the reasonable cause that would have been necessary for issuance of a search or an arrest warrant, quite apart from Soyka’s behavior on encountering Agent Waters in the hallway. The general reliability of the informant being conceded, the issue would be whether there were sufficient “underlying circumstances” to war*453rant a conclusion that in this case he “was ‘credible’ or his information ‘reliable,’ ” Aguilar v. State of Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 114, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 1514, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964). The Government stresses the informant’s revelation of facts unlikely to have been knowable save as a result of personal observation — that Soyka was obtaining large amounts of heroin and selling it in ounce and half ounce quantities in Apartment 5A; that the windows were locked with gates, a fact normally available only to one who had seen them from the inside; that Soyka had recently changed his telephone number; and, on the informant’s second call, “that Frank Soyka at the present time had a quantity of heroin in the cabinet in his kitchen . . . the remains of an eighth of a kilogram of heroin,” and that there was a dog in the apartment — “a very small dog.” While it is possible, as the panel majority suggests, that this and other information could have been heard by the informant “from someone who knew somebody whose brother had bought heroin from Soyka,” p. 447 such an inference is exceedingly strained.
 Certainly the case for the validity of a search or arrest warrant obtained on what the agents had before going to the apartment would have been far better than in Aguilar v. State of Texas, supra, where there was nothing but an affidavit by the officers that they “have received reliable information from a credible person and do believe that heroin, marijuana, barbiturates and other narcotics and narcotic paraphernalia are being kept at the above described premises for the purpose of sale and use contrary to the provisions of the law,” 378 U.S. at 109, 84 S.Ct. at 1511, or in Riggan v. Virginia, 384 U.S. 152, 86 S.Ct. 1378, 16 L.Ed.2d 431 (1966), where the affidavit of probable cause stated, in merely conclusory terms, “Personal observation of the premises and information from sources believed by the police department to be reliable.” 206 Va. 499, 144 S.E.2d 298, 299 n. 1 (1965). If the informant had used the phrase “I have seen,” Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 267-268 n. 2, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960), and McCray v. State of Illinois, 386 U.S. 300, 303-304, 87 S.Ct. 1056, 18 L.Ed.2d 62 (1967), would be clear authority for the validity of a warrant. Yet the district judges who denied Soyka’s motion to suppress could fairly have considered this to be implicit in what the informant said. We have been wisely told that, in dealing vidth probable cause, we must depend on “the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act,” Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 175, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 1310, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949), and that affidavits for warrants are not to be interpreted “in a hypertechnical, rather than a commonsense manner ” in eases where the “circumstances are detailed” and there is “reason for crediting the source of the information * * * given.” United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 109, 85 S.Ct. 741, 746, 13 L.Ed.2d 684 (1965).
We are not, however, required to decide whether a magistrate or commissioner, told of all the Government here knew about Soyka, could not rationally have found this to be enough to justify the issuance of a warrant. A new set of facts was thrown on the scales when the agents’ proper reconnaissance was interrupted by the appearance of Soyka who, seeing Agent Waters in the hall near his apartment, “jumped back toward the inner recess of the apartment.” It is hardly usual, even in a Manhattan apartment building, for a hefty young male tenant to beat an alarmed retreat upon encountering another man in the hallway; . rather, his conduct afforded impressive confirmation of what the agents had been told, see United States v. Heitner, 149 F.2d 105 (2 Cir. 1945). Finding that Soyka’s physical appearance tallied precisely with the informant’s description and that he acted as a narcotics seller normally would upon encountering law enforcement officers, Agent Waters had reason to conclude from this “cumulation of instances” that *454the information about Soyka was right, whether it stemmed from the informant’s personal observation or not. See United States v. White, 124 F.2d 181, 185 (2 Cir. 1941); United States v. Bottone, 365 F.2d 389, 392 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 385 U.S. 974, 87 S.Ct. 514, 17 L.Ed.2d 437 (1966); United States v. DiBrizzi, 393 F.2d 642, 644 (2 Cir. 1968). All that the informant had said was reinforced by what Soyka did, and what Soyka did was colored by what the informant had said. Reading the Fourth Amendment as requiring a law enforcement officer, armed with the reasons for belief in guilt that Agent Waters possessed, to allow a suspect to retire and destroy the evidence of his crime, would ignore that only “unreasonable” searches and seizures are banned. Cf. United States v. Nicholas, 319 F.2d 697 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 375 U.S. 933, 84 S.Ct. 337, 11 L.Ed.2d 265 (1963).
The opinion of the panel mentions that Soyka’s was not a street arrest. We take it that these references were intended only to aid in the distinction of Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327 (1959), and similar cases where the information was that a suspect would commit a crime in a public place where in fact he later appeared. Although we agree that Draper is distinguishable, the Supreme Court has never declared that only the Draper syndrome constitutes probable cause. While the use of force to enter private premises in order to make an arrest may entail added requirements, see ALI, A Model Code of PreArraignment Procedure, § 3.06 and commentary pp. 121-29 (Tent. Draft No. 1, 1966), the standard of reasonable cause is the same for all felony arrests regardless of their location. It has not been contended that Waters broke into Apartment 5A; apparently he succeeded in placing Soyka under restraint before the latter had closed the door. In any event a breaking would have been justified to prevent almost certain destruction of the narcotics before a warrant could have been obtained. Id. § 3.06(2) (c).
Affirmed.