Court Opinion

ID: 9686599
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 15:57:49.626355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:20.816045
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
(dissenting). In this case 2 State police officers were in possession of information, from a source considered to be reliable, that the defendant was engaged in “picking up bets.” They were given the name and color of his car, and were told that he had just left the village of Bangor and was proceeding east on M-43. At the intersection of M-40 and M-43 Detective Sergeant Beck “observed this car from a description given by the chief. I knew it was about time for it. I was sure of it *366after I saw the license plate. It was the same color the chief told me about and that is why we followed the car and also because of nonstop at the highway.”
It is the search of the defendant, after the car had been “curbed” about a mile past the intersection, for violating a stop sign, that a majority of this Court characterizes as unreasonable and in violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights.
I do not agree. I regard such holding as ill-considered, unwarranted by the constitutional provision, and unjustified by any respectable precedent. Moreover, if a police officer cannot arrest and search on the basis of such information then we indeed make this State a happy hunting ground for those evilly disposed. I would remind my brethren that constitutional rights travel a 2-way street. The law-abiding citizens have constitutional rights as well as the hoodlums and to the degree that we enlarge the one we restrict the other. Our problem is one of balance, and I question the kind of balance here achieved by the majority.
In more detail, Detective Sergeant Beck of the State police testified as follows:
“Q. I’ll further ask you, Mr. Beck, if you had any occasion to receive a complaint regarding the activities of the defendant?
“A. Yes, I have received at least 2 complaints.
“Mr. Stanley: I’ll object to that general question, about complaints about the defendant. It’s immaterial in this case'.
“The Court: The fact that he received a complaint about the defendant may stand. Any further testimony which might tend to show a conversation would be hearsay, and will be out.
“(Witness continuing):
“I have received at least 2 complaints on him, the first one on January 21, 1955 and the second complaint on February 5, 1955. I made a routine *367check on the subject upon receiving the complaint of January 21st and upon receiving the complaint of February 5th we received a call that Mr. Zeigler was proceeding east on M-43 and he had just left the village of Bangor and Mr. Menzies and myself proceeded toward the intersection of M-40 and M-43 and just as we got to that intersection we noted a bluish-colored Plymouth proceeding through the intersection without making a stop. We turned east on M-43 and followed that car for approximately a mile and the car was curbed. The identity of the man became known to us as Donald Zeigler. He was then interviewed.”
Upon cross-examination we find the following:
“Q. Were these complaints you talk about to the effect the defendant had committed a felony and was wanted for a felony somewhere?
“A. The complaints came from—
“Mr. Stanley: I object, not responsive.
“Q. Were they, or were they not?
“A. Yes.
“Q. What was the felony?
“A. That he was picking up gambling bets.
“Q. Was there a warrant out for that?
“A. No warrant out for him, the case was being investigated at that time. We had reasons to believe a crime was being committed and he was doing it.
“The chief never told me there was a warrant out for him. I knew of no specific crime that the defendant had committed except what the chief had told me. He did not give me the name of the place that the bet was being picked up at. He told me the man was in Bangor making pick-ups of bets and told me to find out who he was and what he was doing. He gave me the name and color of the car.”
Our majority rejects all of the above as constituting probable cause for making the search complained of, primarily upon the ground that the in*368formation received was anonymous information. Rarely has the betrayal of justice by the easy seduction of words been more apparent than in this case. Here the word that solves everything for our majority is the word “anonymous.” We are told that “anonymous information does not meet the test” (of probable cause), citing People v. Miller, 245 Mich 115, 118. In the case before us the information is said to be “anonymous” because “the officer did not give the source of his information nor identify his informant.” This is a complete distortion of the doctrine of anonymity as applied to the search problem. If the information reaching the officer of the commission of a crime is definite, certain, and apparently trustworthy, the officer acts upon probable cause even though the informant refuses to state his name, is silenced before his name is disclosed, recites a fictitious name, or, indeed, gives his name as Smith or Jones. Per contra, the disclosure of an informant’s name will not furnish the officer with probable cause should the information, reasonably appraised, be fanciful or absurd. This is the real meaning of “anonymous” as that term is used in the law of search. I find nothing in People v. Miller, supra, properly analyzed to the contrary. If there is, it should be overruled. Here the information was apparently authentic, reliable, and precise, and the officers acted reasonably in moving promptly upon its receipt. The fact that the name of the informant was not made known at the preliminary examination (because said to be confidential) is, upon these facts, utterly immaterial. The informant’s name is only one of the factors bearing upon whether or not the officer, as a reasonably prudent person, having due regard for the rights of others, would be induced to the honest belief that a crime was being committed. The information may have all the earmarks of authenticity even though the informant’s name is *369not disclosed, or it may be utterly and obviously worthless even though the name is repeated over and over. It cannot be the law that officers of the law, given certain facts apparently reliable and trustworthy, may remain quiescent in the station house if their informant refuses to disclose his name, but must be galvanized into immediate action if the informant adds that his name is John Doe.
Nor can I agree with the majority that the people did not rely upon the presence of probable cause for the officers’ action. They summarize to us the claims of the defendant respecting the search under 3 heads, first, lack of sufficient information on the part of the officers that defendant was committing a crime prior to the search, second, “that even if the officers did have information, such information was of an anonymous character,” and, third, that defendant could not have waived his constitutional rights. In partial answer to the above the people point out that the defendant was “identified by the officers as one against whom they had received reliable and confidential information.” If this is not an argument in answer to the defendant’s probable cause assertions, its purpose escapes me.
Having thus eliminated probable cause, the majority then views the case as involving the following question: “Were the search and seizure lawful because made while defendant was lawfully under arrest for traffic violation?” In answer we are told that, for reasons stated in the case of People v. Gonzales, 356 Mich 247, it was not.
In the Gonzales Case we were confronted with the search of a car in which firearms were being carried illegally. The admissibility of such evidence is governed by a specific constitutional amendment.* If the amendment itself is valid, and we held that it *370was, that ends any question as to the admissibility of the evidence. The constitutional provision was clear and specific. It was neither necessary to the development of grounds of decision, nor desirable as a matter of policy, that we venture into search and seizure areas not covered by the amendment. The problems are too delicate and complex to be the subject of broad dicta. The welfare of the bulk of our people and the conduct of the entire law-enforcement personnel of the State are both involved.
Nevertheless the majority of our Court seized upon the case to lay down the law concerning what it described (p 250) an “important question,” namely, “may police who stop an automobile on a Michigan highway to issue a traffic ticket also routinely search the automobile under Michigan law?”
In our concurring opinion in Gonzales we refrained from examining this question on its merits in the hopes that the Court would, upon receipt of our demurrer, confine its opinion to the facts of the case then before it. The Court obviously did not care to so restrain itself and we now feel free to examine the question on its merits.
On the substance of the question (we shall reach in due course its procedural place under Anglo-American law), its primary deficiency, which is even now causing error, is that it is loaded with ambiguities that cannot be resolved. Why? Because, framed abstractly in terms of “routine” search, then answered abstractly with language in opinions divorced from the facts of the cases in which they were expressed, it fails to marshal the experience of the courts. Not all search and seizure cases will respond to the same analysis. All modern courts employ a common point of departure, an abhorrence of unrestrained police license. On lofty phrases of high principle condemnatory thereof we *371can all agree. But, ■ as has been well said, generalities, sound though they may be, will not answer specific problems. The automobile presents peculiar problems of its own with respect to crime, and they cannot be solved by quotation of routine generalities from a house-search case such as Agnello v. United States, 269 US 20 (46 S Ct 4, 70 L ed 145, 51 ALR 409).
If we attempt to apply the question put and answered in Gonzales, framed in terms of a “routine” search, we are in a morass of ambiguity at the very outset. A few simple illustrations will suffice. Suppose the officers stop a car for traffic violation, “to issue a ticket” as the question puts it, and nothing more. While stopped they observe something to excite their suspicions that the driver may be involved in commission of a crime. It may be no more than a bloody rag, or a single stick of dynamite. Is a search now offensive to constitutional principles? If it be answered that this is no longer a “routine” search, what is the meaning of routine? What are its limits ?
The officers, indeed, may be warned by the police chief of a neighboring city that a man believed to be engaged in picking up bets is proceeding east on M-43 in a blue Plymouth. While following the car it is observed to run through a stop sign. The officers are now, under the wording of the hypothetical question, in a dilemma. May they stop it “to issue a traffic ticket”? If so, are they precluded from searching? If, again, it be held that under these circumstances the search is not routine, I again ask: What does “routine” mean?
The question, of course, may have envisioned an elderly couple driving the family sedan home from a church social, arrested for failure to yield the right-of-way in a blinding snowstorm. May their car be “routinely” searched? Upon these facts, and *372nothing more if search is made, a gross invasion of constitutional rights would seem to have been suffered. But we have yet to find such a case in the books.
But our major objection is not the inherent ambiguities of the question employed but arises from considerations far more basic. The formulation of rules of conduct for the future, as answers to abstract questions, is not the way of the common law.
The common-law reasons from case to principle. As Dean Pound puts it: “It is a traditional art of judicial decision; a traditional technique of developing the grounds of decision of particular cases on the basis of reported judicial experience, just as the civilian has a traditional art of construing legal texts and a traditional technique of developing the grounds of judicial decision therefrom.”* When we abandon the technique of the common law, and are precluded by our form of government from adopting the technique of the civil law, we invite egregious blunder of the magnitude here committed. Here our majority holds, not upon a firm foundation of factual precedent, but upon the authority of a quivering mass of dicta, that the police cannot search, after arrest for a traffic violation, a ear and driver they have been reliably informed are engaged in the commission of crime.
What is the law governing search on the facts before us? Does the fact that a traffic violation was involved give such violator some kind of immunity to search that other suspected criminals do not enjoy? The truth of the matter is that the fact of a precedent traffic violation is no more than one of the surrounding circumstances, and oftentimes an immaterial circumstance at best. We might have a traffic violation or a narcotic violation, a jay-walk*373ing violation or a homicide violation. The crucial issue is not the kind of law violated, nor indeed the arrest itself, but the reasonable necessity, under all of the circumstances, for making the search complained of without a warrant. The housewife arrested for jay-walking across Main street, or arrested for making an illegal left turn thereon, may not normally be searched upon being arrested for such offense. Not because she is a housewife, nor because it was a mere offense against the traffic laws, but because under the circumstances presented there is no reasonable necessity for the search. We should not attempt a formulation of greater precision. At the one extreme it is clear that a search made solely upon caprice is not reasonably justified by the circumstances. Yet, at the other extreme, we will not demand of the officer that he weigh the circumstances confronting him with the detachment and precision of a laboratory technician while the seconds may be ticking away his span of life. No more is required of him than that he act with' the prudence and reason demanded of any responsible official in the conduct of his duties, in the light •of the surrounding circumstances.
"We need not cite extensive authority in a field where the great jurists have written so trenchantly. Holmes may be found in Olmstead v. United States, 277 US 438, 469 (48 S Ct 564, 72 L ed 944, 66 ALR 376), Brandéis in the same case at page 471, Cardozo in People v. Chiagles, 237 NY 193 (142 NE 583, 32 ALR 676), to mention but a few of the authorities available. The leading automobile search case is Carroll v. United States, 267 US 132 (45 S Ct 280, 69 L ed 543, 39 ALR 790), wherein are discussed some of the peculiarities of the automobile problem. The case of United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 US 56 (70 S Ct 430, 94 L ed 653), contains the most •comprehensive of the recent discussions of the topic. *374No study of the English authorities should omit the case of Leigh v. Cole (1853), 6 Cox’s Criminal Cases 329, on the point of necessity.
Viewed in the light of the principles hereinabove set forth there was ample justification for the search here made. The sentence should be affirmed.

 Const 1908, art 2, § 10, as last amended in 1952.

 The Theory of Judicial Decision, 36 Harv L Rev 641, 648, 649.