Lathers v. United States, 24226.
Decision Date | 23 May 1968 |
Docket Number | No. 24226.,24226. |
Citation | 396 F.2d 524 |
Parties | David Matthew LATHERS, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
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William Liston, Winona, Miss., for appellant.
Robert E. Hauberg, U. S. Atty., E. Donald Strange, Asst. U. S. Atty., Jackson, Miss., for appellee.
Before RIVES, GOLDBERG and AINSWORTH, Circuit Judges.
We consider both the legality of an arrest without a warrant and the Miranda caveats, and, while finding no cause to impeach the arrest, we are convinced that Miranda precepts were traduced.
David Matthew Lathers, a resident of Arlington, Virginia, was arrested by state officers in Jackson, Mississippi, after attempting to sell a truck which was in his possession and which had been stolen from a used car lot in Washington, D. C. He was convicted in the federal district court under 18 U.S.C. § 2312, for transporting a stolen motor vehicle in interstate commerce. Lathers' substantive defense was as follows: that he had obtained a week's leave from work in Arlington to visit his sister in New Orleans; that while hitchhiking through Tennessee he was offered a ride in the truck previously mentioned; that while spending the night near Tupelo, Mississippi, he lost his belongings when the driver of the truck absconded with them; and that on the following day Lathers drove the truck into Jackson to sell it and recoup his losses.
The jury to the contrary notwithstanding, Lathers beats no retreat from his story of innocence. On appeal, however, he relies primarily on the two evidentiary roadblocks of (1) unlawful arrest and (2) unlawful custodial interrogation.
(1) Arrest By State Officers Without a Warrant
On the morning of July 25, 1966, Lathers approached Ben C. Daughtery, a used car dealer in Jackson, Mississippi, and attempted to sell him a 1965 maroon Chevrolet pick-up truck bearing a Virginia license. In 1965 the truck had a listed retail price of $1595, but Daughtery began the bargaining with a low $500 estimate. (Daughtery testified at trial that his true estimate of the truck's worth was $1100.) To Daughtery's surprise, Lathers accepted the estimate and offered the truck for sale without engaging in the customary trading dialogue. Because of Lathers' overeagerness and because he could not prove ownership of the truck, Daughtery sent him to another used car lot and then notified F.B.I. Agent Roy H. McDaniel. McDaniel relayed the information to the Jackson Police Department which issued a bulletin to stop the driver (described in the bulletin) of a 1965 maroon Chevrolet pick-up truck with a Virginia license.1 Two state police officers spotted Lathers, stopped him, and, after informing him of their suspicions, took him to police headquarters. On the day of his arrest Lathers was interrogated only by state officers. He was interrogated by F.B.I. Agent McDaniel the following day and was prosecuted only in federal court.
Without doubt, the two state police officers arrested Lathers without a warrant and without conclusive proof that a felony had been committed. The police did obtain a report from Washington, D. C., concerning the theft of the truck, but not until the following morning. Lathers contends that we must exclude all evidence obtained as a result of the arrest because the officers did not know that a felony had been committed. In the alternative he contends that the police did not even have probable cause for the arrest.
To support his first contention, Lathers encourages us to read with a literal eye Section 2470 of the Mississippi Code:
(Emphasis added.)
Because Lathers bases his first contentention entirely, and most strenuously, on Mississippi jurisprudence, we pause to dispose of this claim on his own battle-field. However, in section (b) infra we will move to the appropriate arena of decision.
Lathers construes Section 2470 as requiring absolute knowledge that a felony has been committed. Reasonable grounds, he asserts, are not enough. His interpretation, though having plausible acceptability, does not comply with the following interpretation reached by the Mississippi Supreme Court:
(Emphasis added.)
Bradshaw v. State, 1966, Miss., 192 So. 2d 387, 388, cert. den., 1967, 389 U.S. 941, 88 S.Ct. 299, 19 L.Ed.2d 293. See also Nash v. State, 1968, Miss., 207 So. 2d 104, 107 (at 1); Craft v. State, 1947, 202 Miss. 43, 30 So.2d 414, 415-416. Cf. Barnett v. United States, 5 Cir. 1967, 384 F.2d 848, 855 (at 4).2 The case of Corn v. State, 1964, 250 Miss. 157, 164 So.2d 177, is closely in point. The defendant Corn was arrested by policemen without a warrant because (1) he had sold a $35 record player for $5 and (2) one of the policemen had seen burglary tools in the defendant's car. The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the arrest on these facts alone.
An arrest by state officers with consequent prosecution for a federal offense involves the interaction of two sovereignties. The legal complexities which result from this interaction are illustrated by questions such as the following: Who vests whom with arresting authority? What conduct justifies the exercise of that authority? What are the rights, obligations, and duties of arresting officers as to the citizens under their jurisdiction? Lathers asks us to find answers to this concatenation of queries by reference to Mississippi law. His rather unique contention is that Mississippi law invokes the exclusionary rule even if less rigorous federal standards would not. Although we dismiss this contention on the merits, it requires a choice of law decision. We make that choice explicitly in the hope of avoiding misconstruction.
Prior to 1961 evidence obtained through an exclusively state arrest could be admitted into a federal trial regardless of the legality or illegality of the arrest. We quote from Weeks v. United States, 1914, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 ( ):
232 U.S. at 398, 34 S.Ct. at 346.
This immunity from exclusion gained the label "silver platter" doctrine following Justice Frankfurter's opinion in Lustig v. United States, 1949, 338 U.S. 74, 69 S.Ct. 1372, 93 L.Ed. 1819:
"The crux of that doctrine is that a search is a search by a Federal official if he had a hand in it; it is not a search by a federal official if evidence secured by state authorities is turned over to the federal authorities on a silver platter." 338 U.S. at 78-79, 69 S.Ct. at 1374.
In Elkins v. United States, 1960, 364 U.S. 206, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669, the Supreme Court overturned the "silver platter" doctrine and held that evidence obtained as a result of an unconstitutional arrest by state officers must be excluded from federal trials, regardless of whether federal agents participated in the arrest. The Court's extensive and perceptive analysis concluded with the following pronouncement:
"For these reasons we hold that evidence obtained by state officers during a search which, if conducted by federal officers, would have violated the defendant\'s immunity from unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment is inadmissible over the defendant\'s timely objection in a federal criminal trial." 364 U.S. at 223-224, 80 S.Ct. at 1447 (Emphasis added.)
The Court continued:
364 U.S. at 224, 80 S.Ct. at 1447. (Emphasis added.)
Clearly, the Elkins exception to the prior immunity of state arrests was...
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