O'Neal v. United States, 1482.

• Decision Date: 09 June 1954
• Docket Number: No. 1482.,1482.
• Citation: 105 A.2d 739
• Parties: O'NEAL v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

Page 739

105 A.2d 739

O'NEAL v. UNITED STATES.

No. 1482.

Municipal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Argued May 3, 1954.

Decided June 9, 1954.

Rehearing Denied July 8, 1954.

Charles A. Schaeffer, Washington, D. C., for appellant.

Harold H. Greene, Asst. U. S. Atty., Silver Springs, Md., with whom Leo A. Rover, United States Attorney, Lewis A. Carroll and Robert J. Asman, Asst. U. S. Attys., Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellee.

Before CAYTON, Chief Judge, and HOOD and QUINN, Associate Judges.

QUINN, Associate Judge.

Appellant was convicted by a jury of violating Title 33-416 of the District of Columbia Code, which reads as follows:

"Any store, shop, warehouse, dwelling-house, building, vehicle, boat, aircraft, or any place whatever, which is resorted to by narcotic drug addicts for the purpose of using narcotic drugs or which is used for the illegal keeping or selling of the same, shall be deemed a common nuisance. No person shall keep or maintain such a common nuisance."

At the trial it was shown that Johnson, an undercover agent for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, had made several purchases of narcotic drugs from one George Carter. These purchases were made either at 408 K Street, N. W., or in the immediate vicinity. On the basis of these purchases, Johnson had sworn to an arrest warrant for Carter. On July 7, 1953, at approximately 11 p.m., Carter was seen by Johnson at the corner of 4th and K Streets. This information was relayed by Johnson to his superior officers, who at that time were making final preparations to serve a number of arrest warrants in a city-wide raid on various narcotic peddlers, including Carter. Other officers were then sent out with instructions to arrest Carter. About 2 o'clock in the morning they proceeded to 408 K Street, wherein Carter was believed to reside. As they approached the building a woman's voice was heard to call out, "The Police." Upon hearing this the officers immediately entered the building through a closed but unlocked door and proceeded to the second-floor apartment. They went into the kitchen and found appellant standing next to a table on which were various articles of drug-taking paraphernalia. One of the officers identified himself and asked for Carter. Appellant denied knowing him. In explaining the presence of the drug-taking paraphernalia, she admitted to the police that she was a drug addict and had just taken a "shot" of heroin. Of the four other persons present in the apartment, two admitted being drug addicts. While these persons were being questioned, another officer discovered 34 capsules of heroin lying on the ground directly beneath the window next to which appellant had been found standing. These capsules and the drug-taking paraphernalia, which contained traces of heroin, were introduced into evidence at the trial. No evidence was offered by or in behalf of the defendant.

Appellant assigns two errors. She first contends that the trial court erred in denying her motion to suppress as evidence the drug-taking paraphernalia seized in her apartment. The motion was based on the premise that the search and seizure by the police was in violation of her rights under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and therefore the seized articles were not available to the prosecution. With this we cannot agree. It is clear that the Constitution protects citizens only from unreasonable searches and seizures, and in order to have seized evidence suppressed it must be shown that the search and seizure was unreasonable. No such showing was made in the present case.

Although there have been numerous rules laid down as to what constitutes an unreasonable search and seizure, it has often been stated that the legality of any particular search must be ultimately determined by the facts and circumstances of each case.¹ In the present case the police had an arrest warrant for a known drug peddler issued only after actual purchases of contraband narcotics. They had reasonable grounds for believing that he would be found at 408 K Street, as some of the purchases had been made at that address. Although Carter possibly could have been arrested earlier on a public street, there...