Hinton v. United States

• Decision Date: 14 October 1969
• Docket Number: No. 22068.,22068.
• Parties: James O. HINTON, Jr., Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

137 US App. DC 388, 424 F.2d 876 (1969)

James O. HINTON, Jr., Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

No. 22068.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued April 23, 1969.

Decided October 14, 1969.

Petition for Rehearing Denied December 19, 1969.

Mr. I. Irwin Bolotin, Washington, D. C., (appointed by this court) for appellant.

Mr. Daniel E. Toomey, Asst. U. S. Atty., with whom Messrs. David G. Bress, U. S. Atty., at the time the brief was filed, and Frank Q. Nebeker, Asst. U. S. Atty., at the time the brief was filed, were on the brief, for appellee.

Before McGOWAN, LEVENTHAL and ROBINSON, Circuit Judges.

SPOTTSWOOD W. ROBINSON, III, Circuit Judge:

Appellant was convicted on two counts of an indictment for narcotic offenses,¹ emanating from his possession of 30 capsules allegedly containing heroin which were found in a pocket of the jacket he was wearing when arrested. He contends (1) that, for lack of probable cause for the arrest, the capsules were illegally seized, (2) that the fifteen-month delay between his arrest and trial infringed his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial, and (3) that the evidence was insufficient to show that the capsules contained more than a trace of a narcotic drug. We find no error to warrant reversal.

I

On the night of January 11, 1967, appellant was arrested in the company of a friend, Wendell Ford, while in the lobby of an apartment building en route to the apartment of a friend of Ford's. Seven police officers had arrived at the building at about the same time to execute a search warrant on Apartment 502, where quantities of narcotics were alleged to be. The officers saw appellant and Ford approaching the building and followed them inside. One of the officers, Sergeant David Paul, recognized Ford as a former narcotics user, and another remembered that an attachment from the Court of General Sessions was outstanding against him. They then heard Ford tell the security guard in the lobby that he wanted Apartment 502 and, when he saw the police, that he wanted Apartment 506 instead.

Thereupon, the officers approached appellant and Ford, and placed Ford under arrest. A search of Ford uncovered a loaded gun, and a bottle of capsules containing traces of a white powder. At this point, appellant, who had not been detained or searched, began to run down a corridor. Sergeant Paul chased him, and appellant stopped. Asked why he ran, appellant replied that he did not know why he was in the building, and that he was on his way to another address. Appellant was then arrested and searched, and 30 full capsules containing heroin were found in his jacket pocket.²

This case does not pose the problem of investigatory detention for a crime committed elsewhere,³ or test the limits of preventative patrolling in areas of frequent criminal activity.⁴ Instead, the apprehension of Ford and the arrest of appellant were something of a windfall for the seven police officers, who arrived at the apartment building to find that appellant and Ford were going their way. The problem here is one of probable cause for appellant's arrest, a requirement that mediates between the personal right to security from arbitrary intrusions by the police and the practical need to allow police officers reasonable play for their experience in judging actions and situations signaling the commission of crime.⁵ And within these bounds, the elements of a finding of probable cause are as varied as encounters between citizens and police; seldom does a decision in one case handily dispose of the next.

At the hearing on the motion to suppress, Sergeant Paul gave four reasons for his decision to arrest appellant, who was not a known narcotics user. Appellant was in the company of Ford, a known user. Ford had requested Apartment 502, which the police had a warrant to search for narcotics. Ford was armed and had a quantity of drugs. Appellant started to run away. From those facts, the officer concluded that appellant, too, was violating the narcotic laws, and we think the facts gave reasonable warrant for the belief that he had.

Courts have never countenanced arrest by association;⁶ nor is flight a reliable indicator of guilt without other circumstances to make its import less ambiguous.⁷ It has long been "a matter of common knowledge that men who are entirely innocent do sometimes fly from the scene of a crime through fear of being apprehended as the guilty parties, or from an unwillingness to appear as witnesses."⁸ Nevertheless, flight from the police may provide "additional justification"⁹ for an arrest and, "when coupled with specific knowledge on the part of the officer relating the suspect to the evidence of crime,"¹⁰ it may properly be considered in assessing probable cause.

We would hesitate to hold that the facts that appellant was found with Ford and bolted when Ford was arrested and searched added up to probable cause,¹¹ but there was another circumstance connecting appellant to a violation of the narcotic laws. Both appellant and Ford were on their way to an apartment which the police had reasonable grounds to believe was a narcotics "pad."¹² If appellant and Ford had been in Apartment 502 when the police arrived, and if narcotics had been uncovered, there very likely would have been probable cause to arrest both.¹³ While Sergeant Paul could not be certain that the raid on Apartment 502 would uncover narcotics or that appellant knew where Ford was taking him, we think he could reasonably make both assumptions in deciding to arrest appellant, and that they served to anchor an incriminating implication possible from appellant's flight.

II

Denial of the Sixth Amendment right to speedy trial is a form of punishment never excused by a belated conviction. For the accused, delay may mean pretrial imprisonment, anxiety, prejudice to his defense, or all of these.¹⁴ A delay of more than a year between arrest and trial raises a speedy trial claim of prima facie merit.¹⁵ Further generalizations are not profitable, however, for still longer delays may be necessary consequences of other proceedings for the benefit of the accused.¹⁶ "The question whether there has been denial of the right to a speedy trial depends upon the circumstances of the case, and requires consideration of the length of delay; reasons for the delay; diligence of prosecutor, court and defense counsel; and reasonable possibility of prejudice from the delay."¹⁷

Appellant was arrested on January 11, 1967, indicted on March 20, and arraigned on March 31, after the appointment of counsel. He was released on personal recognizance on April 7. Proceedings on appellant's motion to suppress took place in May and June, and the transcript of the suppression hearing was ordered prepared on August 17. The case was placed on the ready calendar for trial on September 11, nine months after appellant's arrest, and was first called on November 20, but a continuance to December 4 was granted at the request of the defense. On that date, appellant did not check in at the District Court's assignment office, as he was supposed to do, and his bond was revoked and a bench warrant issued for his arrest. He was finally tried five months later, on April 24, 1968. In toto, the proceedings extended over fifteen months.

Until December, appellant's case had proceeded at a deliberate pace. We focus, then, on the delay of five months after the December trial date. This delay is accounted for by the fact that the prosecutor thought that appellant was a fugitive when he was actually a prisoner, in jail on another offense. Defense counsel said he had informed both the assignment office and the prosecutor of appellant's whereabouts three weeks after the December trial date, although pertinent records do not indicate notice of this fact. About three months later, when counsel was asked to advise the chief judge of the District Court of the status of the case, his letter of reply, dated March 13, 1967, explained that appellant was not a fugitive. At the ensuing hearing before the chief judge on April 11, defense counsel first moved, without success, to dismiss the indictment for want of a speedy trial. The motion was renewed, and denied at the trial.

There is no reason to doubt the prosecutor's belief that appellant had fled. The Government was ready for trial in September, 1967, and had nothing to gain by foot-dragging. We have had occasion to admonish that the Government takes "a double risk in delay,"¹⁸ for witnesses may disappear and the passage of time may present a sufficient likelihood of such prejudice to the defense that a fair trial is impossible, on account of which the indictment must be dismissed. We must assume, too, that defense counsel did attempt to inform the Government of appellant's whereabouts; we would not condone his engaging the prosecutor in a game of hide-and-seek with the accused for tactical reasons. At the same time, since appellant was apparently in jail on a separate charge and might not have won release through an earlier trial of the instant offenses, we do not exclude the possibility that defense counsel acquiesced in the delay.¹⁹ Given the spare state of the record, we stop short, however, of considering whether appellant's speedy trial claim may have been lost by his counsel's failure to take formal action to expedite the case until he was questioned about it by the chief judge.²⁰

The delay here may have been the result of institutional inefficiency, a failure of communication between the different offices of government concerned with appellant. The chief judge, for his part, expedited the case with the inquiry to defense counsel. And although it is in any event the duty of the prosecutor to bring the case to trial, we cannot characterize a delay as "arbitrary, purposeful, oppressive or vexatious"²¹ or the product of indifference²² when the prosecutor believes the defendant is unavailable for trial, and the...