Brinegar v. United States

• Decision Date: 27 June 1949
• Docket Number: No. 12,12
• Citation: Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949)
• Parties: BRINEGAR v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

338 U.S. 160

69 S.Ct. 1302

93 L.Ed. 1879

BRINEGAR

v UNITED STATES.

No. 12.

Argued Oct. 18, 19, 1948.

Decided June 27, 1949.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 10, 1949.

See 70 S.Ct. 31.

Mr. Irvine E. Ungerman, Tulsa, Okl., for petitioner.

Mr. Stanley M. Silverberg, Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Mr. Justice RUTLEDGE delivered the opinion of the Court.

Brinegar was convicted of importing intoxicating liquor into Oklahoma from Missouri in violation of the federal statute which forbids such importation contrary to the laws of any state.¹ His conviction was based in par on the use in evidence against him of liquor seized from his automobile in the course of the alleged unlawful importation.

Prior to the trial Brinegar moved to suppress this evidence as having been secured through an unlawful search and seizure.² The motion was denied, as was a renewal of the objection at the trial.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, 10 Cir., 165 F.2d 512, and certiorari was sought solely on the ground that the search and seizure contravened the Fourth Amendment and therefore the use of the liquor in evidence vitiated the conviction. We granted the writ to determine this question. 333 U.S. 841, 68 S.Ct. 662, 92 L.Ed. 1125.

The facts are substantially undisputed. At about six o'clock on the evening of March 3, 1947, Malsed, an investigator of the Alcohol Tax Unit, and Creehan, a special investigator, were parked in a car beside a highway near the Quapaw Bridge in northeastern Oklahoma. The point was about five miles west of the Missouri-Oklahoma line. Brinegar drove past headed west in his Ford coupe. Malsed had arrested him about five months earlier for illegally transporting liquor; had seen him loading liquor into a car or truck in Joplin, Missouri, on at least two occasions during the preceding six months; and knew him to have a reputation for hauling liquor. As Brinegar passed, Malsed recognized both him and the Ford. He told Creehan, who was driving the officers' car, that Brinegar was the driver of the passing car. Both agents later testified that the car, but not especially its rear end, appeared to be 'heavily loaded' and 'weighted down with something.' Brinegar increased his speed as he passed the officers. They gave chase. After pursuing him for about a mile at top speed, they gained on him as his car skidded on a curve, sounded their siren, overtook him, and crowded his car to the side of the road by pulling across in front of it. The highway was one leading from Joplin, Missouri, toward Vinita, Oklahoma, Brinegar's home.

As the agents got out of their car and walked back toward petitioner, Malsed said, 'Hello, Brinegar, how much liquor have you got in the car?' or 'How much liquor have you got in the car this time?' Petitioner replied, 'Not too much,' or 'Not so much.' After further questioning he admitted that he had twelve cases in the car. Malsed testified that one case, which was on the front seat, was visible from outside the car, but petitioner testified that it was covered by a lap robe. Twelve more cases w re found under and behind the front seat. The agents then placed Brinegar under arrest and seized the liquor.

The district judge, after a hearing on the motion to suppress at which the facts stated above appeared in evidence, was of the opinion that 'the mere fact that the agents knew that this defendant was engaged in hauling whiskey, even coupled with the statement that the car appeared to be weighted, would not be probable cause for the search of this car.' Therefore, he thought, there was no probable cause when the agents began the chase. He held, however, that the voluntary admission made by petitioner after his car had been stopped constituted probable cause for a search, regardless of the legality of the arrest and detention, and that therefore the evidence was admissible. At the trial, as has been said, the court overruled petitioner's renewal of the objection.

The Court of Appeals, one judge dissenting, took essentially the view held by the District Court. The dissenting judge thought that the search was unlawful and therefore statements made during its course could not justify the search.

The crucial question is whether there was probable cause for Brinegar's arrest, in the light of prior adjudications on this problem, more particularly Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543, 39 A.L.R. 790, which on its face most closely approximates the situation presented here. ³

The Carroll decision held that, under the Fourth Amendment, a valid search of a vehicle moving on a public highway may be had without a warrant, but only if probable cause for the search exists.⁴ The court then went on to rule that the facts presented amounted to probable cause for the search of the automobile there involved. 267 U.S. 132, 160, 45 S.Ct. 280, 287.

In the Carroll case three federal prohibition agents and a state officer stopped and searched the defendants' car on a highway leading from Detroit to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and seized a quantity of liquor discovered in the search. About three months before the search, the two defendants and another man called on two of the agents at an apartment in Grand Rapids and, unaware that they were dealing with federal agents, agreed to sell one of the agents three cases of liquor. Both agents noticed the Oldsmobile roadster in which the three men came to the apartment and its license number. Presumably because the official capacity of the proposed purchaser was suspected by the defendants, the liquor was never delivered.

About a week later the same two agents, while patrolling the road between Grand Rapids and Detroit on the lookout for violations of the National Prohibition Act, were passed by the defendants, who were proceeding in a direction from Grand Rapids toward Detroit in the same Oldsmobile roadster. The agents followed the defendants for some distance but lost trace of them. Still later, on the occasion of the search, while the officers were patrolling the same highway, they met and passed the defendants, who were in the same roadster, going in a direction from Detroit toward Grand Rapids. Recognizing the defendants, the agents turned around, pursued them, stopped them about sixteen miles outside Grand Rapids, searched their car and seized the liquor it carried.

This Court ruled that the information held by the agent , together with the judicially noticed fact that Detroit was 'one of the most active centers for introducing illegally into this country spirituous liquors for distribution into the interior,' 267 U.S. at page 160, 45 S.Ct. at page 287, constituted probable cause for the search.

I.

Obviously the basic facts held to constitute probable cause in the Carroll case were very similar to the basic facts here. In each case the search was of an automobile moving on a public highway and was made without a warrant by federal officers charged with enforcing federal statutes outlawing the transportation of intoxicating liquors (except under conditions not complied with).⁵ In each instance the officers were patrolling the highway in the discharge of their duty. And in each before stopping the car or starting to pursue it they recognized both the driver and the car, from recent personal contact and observation, as having been lately engaged in illicit liquor dealings.⁶ Finally, each driver was proceeding in his identified car in a direction from a known source of liquor supply toward a probable illegal market, under circumstances indicating no other probable purpose than to carry on his illegal adventure.⁷

These are the ultimate facts. Necessarily the concrete, subordinate facts on which they were grounded in the two cases differed somewhat in detail. The more important of the variations in details of the proof are as follows:

In Carroll the agent's knowledge of the primary and ultimate fact that the accused were engaged in liquor running was derived from the defendants' offer to sell liquor to the agents some three months prior to the search, while here that knowledge was derived largely from Malsed's personal observation, reinforced by hearsay; the officers when they bargained for the liquor in Carroll saw the number of the defendants' car, whereas no such fact is shown in this record; and in Carroll the Court took judicial notice that Detroit was on the international boundary and an active center for illegal importation of spirituous liquors for distribution into the interior, while in this case the facts that Joplin, Missouri, was a ready source of supply for liquor and Oklahoma a place of likely illegal market were known to the agent Malsed from his personal observation and experience as well as from facts of common knowledge.

Treating first the two latter and less important matters, in view of the positive and undisputed evidence concerning Malsed's identification of Brinegar's Ford, we think no significance whatever attaches, for purposes of distinguishing the cases, to the fact that in the Carroll case the officers saw and recalled the license number of the offending car while this record discloses no like recollection.

Likewise it is impossible to distinguish the Carroll case with reference to the proof relating to the source of supply, the place of probable destination and illegal market, and consequently the probability that the known liquor operators were usi g the connecting highway for the purposes of their unlawful business.

There were of course some legal as well as some factual differences in the two situations. Under the statute in review in Carroll the whole nation was legally dry. Not only the manufacture, but the importation, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors were prohibited throughout the country. Under the statute now in question only the importation of such liquors contrary to the law of the state into which they are brought and in which they were seized is forbidden.

In the Carroll ...