RAIF v. THE STATE; LUCK v. THE STATE
40186, 40187
Court of Appeals of Georgia
February 25, 1964
March 16, 1964
109 Ga. App. 354
NICHOLS, Presiding Judge
Judgment reversed. Hall and Russell, JJ., concur.
DECIDED MARCH 13, 1964.
C. B. King, for plaintiff in error.
Marcus B. Calhoun, Solicitor, contra.
40186. RAIF v. THE STATE.
40187. LUCK v. THE STATE.
DECIDED FEBRUARY 25, 1964—REHEARING DENIED MARCH 16, 1964.
Eugene Cook, Attorney General, Albert Sidney Johnson, Assistant Attorney General, Wright Lipford, Solicitor General, contra.
NICHOLS, Presiding Judge. 1. These cases were tried under the law enunciated in Winston v. State, 79 Ga. App. 711 (2a) (54 SE2d 354), and the cases there cited which held: “Although evidence against a defendant in a criminal case may be obtained by peace officers in the course of an unlawful, unwarranted, unreasonаble, and reprehensible search of the home of the defendant, in a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Federal Constitution and article 1, section 1, paragraph 16 of the Constitution of the State of Georgia, this does not affect the admissibility of the evidence thus obtained. Williams v. State, 100 Ga. 511 (1) (28 SE 624, 39 LRA 269).”
Judge Townsend, in that case, recognized the effect of such decisions and, speaking for himself and not for the court, said: “These decisions have had the effect of making but an empty shell of what was intended by the framers of these great guaranties of liberty to be the living seed of freedom. The Bills of Rights were ordained and established to protect the citizen against his public officers. A part of the first provision of the Constitution of the State of Georgia (
At the time the Winston case and other similar cases were decided the decisions of the U. S. Supreme Court permitted each State to dеtermine if such illegally obtained evidence was admissible in the courts of that State. See Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25 (69 SC 1359, 93 LE 1782). And following such decisions this court in Winston and similar cases followed the decisions of the Supreme Court of Georgia. Since that time the U. S. Supreme Court has repudiated its decision in the Wolf case and in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (81 SC 1684, 6 LE2d 1081) held that evidence obtained as a result of an illegal search and seizure is not admissible in either Federal or State courts. See also Fahy v. Connecticut, 375 U.S. 85 (84 SC 229, 11 LE2d 171). Thus, under such decision evidence obtained under an illegal arrest is not admissible in state courts. In Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23 (83 SC 1623, 10 LE2d 726), it was decided that evidence obtained in connection with a legal arrest was admissible although obtained from the defendant‘s home without a search warrant and although the arrest was made without a warrant. The officer there had reasonable grounds to believe an offense was being committed and such case is of course distinguishable from the present case where there was no evidence that the defendants were violating any law or municipal ordinance at the time of the arrest, no evidence of flight, and no evidence to authorize the arresting officer to arrest the defendants because thеre was likely to be a failure of justice if the arrest was not made. See
The arrests were illegal and if the evidence obtained after such illegal arrests from the defendants was not voluntarily given then, under the Mapp case, supra, such evidence being the fruits of an illegal search and seizure of the persons, was inadmissible. The police officers, who obtained such evidence, testified they merely asked the prisoners for the evidence and they gave it to them. It is contended that such evidence was freely and voluntarily furnishеd by the defendants and under such circumstances was admissible. In reply to this contention it is only necessary to refer to the language of Justice Lumpkin in Chattahoochee Brick Co. v. Braswell, 92 Ga. 631, 634 (18 SE 1015): “The plaintiff was a convict, and according to the evidence, his movements were absolutely controlled and directed by a guard, or ‘boss,’ whose orders he was compelled to obey. This guard had and exercised over him the most complete dominion and authority. The plaintiff‘s position, so far as the power of the guard was concerned, was more that of a slave than a mere servant, and it is apparent that he dared not disobey any of the guard‘s commands.” A prisoner in police custody by reason of an illegal arrest is in no position to refuse to comply with the demands of the officer in whose custody he is placed whether such demand is couched in the language of a polite request or a direct order. If a command, the prisoner is directly forced to comply, and if a request, he is indirectly forced to comply.
As previously shown, the arrests were illegal, and the defend-
This court is bound by the decisions of the Supreme Court of Georgia (
Therefore, the judgment overruling the special grounds of the amended motion for new trial which complained of the admission of evidence obtained from the defendants by an illegal search and seizure while they were under an illegal arrest must be reversed.
2. Other special grounds of the motion for new trial present questions which will probably, in view of the ruling in the first division of the opinion, not recur on another trial of the case and therefore will not be passed upon. In as much as the evidence may not be the same on another trial the usual grounds of the motion for new trial are not passed upon.
Judgments reversed. Felton, C. J., Frankum, Hall, Eberhardt, Russell and Pannell, JJ., concur. Bell, P. J., and Jordan, J., dissent.
JORDAN, Judge, dissenting. The opinion in this case is predicated on the theory that the defendants were illegally arrested and therefore any evidence obtained from them as an incident
There have been numerous cases in this court since the Mapp decision (1961) in which appellants have sought application of its principles. General interest in the Mapp case would seem to justify an examination of its effect on criminal procedure in this State. Having stated the general rule which it laid down, let us now see what was not decided in the Mapp case.
The Supreme Court has set this forth very clearly in the later decision of Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 31 (83 SC 1623, 10 LE2d 726), in which it held that the arrests made in that case without warrants were sufficiently grounded on probable cause, thus making the arrests legal and the evidence obtained incident thereto admissible. Both the Mapp opinion and the Ker opinion were written for the majority by Mr. Justice Clark, who in a discussion of thе Mapp case said in the Ker case, “First, it must be recognized that the ‘principles governing the admissibility of evidence in federal criminal trials have not been restricted . . . to those derived solely from the Constitution. In the exercise of its supervisory authority over the administration of criminal justice in the federal courts . . . this court has . . . formulated rules of evidence to be applied in federal criminal prosecutions.’ [citing cases]. Mapp, however, established no assumption by this Court of supervisory authority over state courts, . . . and, consequently, it implied no total obliteration of state laws relating to arrests and searches in favor of federal law . . . Second, Mapp did not attempt the impossible task of laying down a ‘fixed formula’ for the application in specific cases of the constitutional prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures; it recognized that we would
In this case the trial court, by its rulings made during the progress of the trial and the subsequent denial of the motion for new trial, has determined that the actions of the officers in this case did not violate the rights of the defendants relative to illegal arrest, search and seizure and that the evidence obtained from them incident to the arrest was therefore admissible against them. In order for this court to examine this finding by the trial court, we must set forth fully the facts leading up to and immediately following the arrest as brought out on the trial of the case.
At some time during the night of Saturday, November 18, 1961, a store in a shopping center in Newnan was burglarized, the safe looted of some $3,000 which was later found in a trash can covered with a pile of leaves approximately 225 feet south of the shopping center. Subsequent investigation showed forcible entry through the rear door, a hole blown in the safe and elaborate equipment found on the premises, including acetylene torches, an oxygen tank, a drill, a piece of canvas, two walkie talkie radios, and other burglary tools. That such burglary had taken place was not known by the officers at the time the defendants were arrested. On Sunday, November 19th, at approximately 6:45 a.m. a witness for the State observed “an automobile which I did not recognize” containing three occupants at a red light near his home about two blocks from the shopping center. This witness later identified one of the defendants as the driver of this car. Upon his return to his home about 9 a.m. this witness noticed this car parked on the street in front of his house with no one in it. He called the city police and the car was removed.
At approximately 8:30 a.m. police officer Morris while cruising the area near the shopping center observed a man (later
Keeping in mind that up to this point the police did not know of the burglary which had been committed and for which the defendants were subsequently convicted, did the officers have authority to take the defendants into custody under the provisions of
The officers making the arrest in this case had observed a series of events in the neighborhood of a shopping center area which they were patrolling that could and should lead them to the reasonable conclusion that a crime was being perpetrated, committed or concluded in their presence and within their knowledge. Beginning at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning they had observed a stranger standing on one side of a street across from the shopping center and who some fifteen minutes later had moved across the street nearer the shopping center to a spot covered by a large boxwood plant. (A walkie talkie radio with its switch “On” was found later in the day concealed in this plant.) Around 9:00 a.m. a report was made to police headquarters of a strange abandoned car just two blocks from the shopping center, which car was pulled in for checking. Some hour and a half later the arresting officers observed two other strangers (the defendants) at a railroad crossing just south of the shopping center, and observing the nature of their clothing and the fact that both left arms were wet аlmost to their shoulders, brought them to their chief for questioning. As a matter of human experience we know that strangers seen in a small city are viewed with a higher degree of curiosity and suspicion than they might be in a large metropolitan area, especially so in view of their continued presence near the railroad tracks and a shopping center on a Sunday morning. Based on their obser-
That the officers had probable cause for taking this action is borne out by the fact that within an hour or two after the defendants’ arrest, a burglary was discovered at this shopping center. Further bearing out the officers’ conclusion of the suspicious nature of the events and circumstances surrounding these defendants are the statements of the defendants themselves. In these statements the defendants, while denying knowledge of the burglary, admitted they were engaged in a crime at the time of their arrest in that they hаd helped a man run some whiskey that night and that they got their clothes wet from dew on the shrubbery while packing the whiskey and that they were then waiting by the railroad tracks for the man to come back to show them where to put the whiskey. So even under the defendants’ explanation of the circumstances surrounding their presence at this location, the officers would have been justified in reaching the conclusion that a crime was being committed at that very time in their presence. Can they now claim their arrest to be illegal simply because the officers did not know the exact nature of the crime then being committed? Such being the facts surrounding the apprehension of these defendants, it is my conclusion that the arrest was legal and not an illegal one as set forth in the majority opinion.
Assuming then that the arrest was legal, was the subsequent action of the officers which produced evidence used against the defendants on the trial lawful as incident to those arrests? During the interrogation at police headquarters just after their detention, the defendant Luck gave his name as John Rogers, then admitted this to be incorrect. The defendant Raif, questioned separately, stated that he did not know Luck and had just met him on the railroad tracks. When asked if he had any identification he replied affirmatively and reached and got his wallet from his pocket. The police chief looked inside and found a new Reese key number 802 in the billfold with a driver‘s license. This key was later identified as being the type that would unlock a lock found on the back door of the Woolworth
This question has been answеred by our Supreme Court. “This court has repeatedly held that, where the accused after arrest does an act, without objection, which tends to incriminate himself, it is not error to allow testimony respecting the act, nor is evidence of the act violative of any constitutional right of the accused.” Thomas v. State, 213 Ga. 237 (2) (98 SE2d 548), citing Franklin v. State, 69 Ga. 36 (3) (47 AR 748), and other cases. See also Whippler v. State, 218 Ga. 198 (126 SE2d 744).
Considering all the facts and circumstances of this case, it is my conclusion that the broad principles laid down in the Mapp case have not been violated, this case on its facts being closer to the situation in the Ker case where the Supreme Cоurt held that the arrests without warrants were based on reasonable and probable cause, making the evidence obtained in the resulting search admissible in the trial of the defendants.
While the safeguards under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and
I think the trial court did not err in finding the arrests to be legal and the evidence to be admissible.
I am authorized to say that Presiding Judge Bell joins in this dissent.
