People v. Daniels

• Decision Date: 06 December 1973
• Docket Number: Docket No. 15813,No. 1,1
• Citation: 213 N.W.2d 780,50 Mich.App. 754
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Russell Jenkins DANIELS, Defendant-Appellant
• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US

Page 780

213 N.W.2d 780

50 Mich.App. 754

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Russell Jenkins DANIELS, Defendant-Appellant.

Docket No. 15813.

Court of Appeals of Michigan, Division No. 1.

Dec. 6, 1973.

Released for Publication Jan. 21, 1974.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 6, 1974.

Norman R. Robiner, Hoffa, Chodak & Robiner, Detroit, for defendant-appellant.

Frank J. Kelley, Atty. Gen., Robert A. Derengoski, Sol. Gen., William L. Cahalan, Pros. Atty., Dominick R. Carnovale, Chief, Appellate Div., Angelo A. Pentolino, Asst. Pros. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee. Before LESINSKI, C.J., and DANHOF and BASHARA, JJ.

LESINSKI, Chief Judge.

Defendant was convicted by a Recorder's Court jury of breaking and entering a business establishment with intent to commit larceny. M.C.L.A. § 750.110; M.S.A. § 28.305. He appeals as of right.

The first challenge raised on appeal concerns the defendant's arrest. He argues that there was insufficient probable cause to justify his arrest. The arresting officer responded to a radio run alerting him that a breaking and entering of a garage on an alley was occurring near the intersection of Butternut and Tillman Streets. The officer was driving in the area with his lights off when he saw a light in a garage adjacent to a Butternut address approximately one-half block away from the intersection of Butternut and Tillman. After seeing the defendant and a companion walk out of the garage, the officer turned his lights on, whereupon the defendant and his companion began to run. The officer gave chase on foot and made the arrest.

The Legislature has prescribed a police officer's power to arrest without a warrant in response to a radio run. He may arrest:

'(w)hen he has received such positive information broadcast from any recognized police or other governmental radio * * * as may afford him reasonable cause to believe that a felony has been committed and reasonable cause to believe that such person has committed it.' M.C.L.A. § 764.15(f); M.S.A. § 28.874(f).

This Court has held that where the arresting officers received information by radio of a glass breaking, and defendant was the only person on the street coming from the store in which a plate glass door had been smashed and defendant had responded negatively to the officer's question as to whether he had heard glass breaking, such facts constituted probable cause to arrest without a warrant. People v. Jones, 37 Mich.App. 91, 194 N.W.2d 433 (1971).

In the instant case, the radio run's specification of garage, alley, and location, coupled with the officer's observance of the defendant coming from the garage and running when the police car's lights were turned on, constitute sufficient probable cause to warrant a man of reasonable caution to believe that a felony had been committed and that the defendant had committed it. Thus, the arrest was valid.

Defendant next contests the admissibility of evidence obtained from a search of his car.

Defendant's arrest occurred at approximately 11:30 p.m. After being taken to the police station, a codefendant who was arrested simultaneously with the defendant made a statement at 2 a.m. that the defendant had taken a fishing box out of the garage and placed it in the trunk of his car. The police then removed the keys to the defendant's car without his consent from the inventory of his property, picked up the car, and searched the car immediately upon its arrival at the station. The search disclosed a fishing box full of tooling accessories and other tools appropriate for use in a machine shop, which was the nature of the business located on the property the garage was incident to.

Upon learning of the search of the car at the trial, the defendant objected to admission of the above items, but the trial court allowed the fruits of the trunk search into evidence.

Automobile searches and seizures have been a popular topic of review before the United States Supreme Court. As early as 1925, the Court made clear that warrant requirements in automobile situations differed from those in home or office situations. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925). However, the articulation of precisely what these differences are has been recently described by the Court as 'something less than a seamless web'. Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 440, 93 S.Ct. 2523, 2527, 37 L.Ed.2d 706, 714 (1973).

Granting this difficulty, the principle which controls the instant case threads the course of most of the Supreme Court decisions on automobile searches. That principle is simply that the minimal justification of a warrantless search requires probable cause plus an additional factor, sometimes denominated as 'exigent circumstances', sanctioning the substitution of the searching officer's determination of probable cause for that of a neutral magistrate. This additional factor has ranged from the mobility of a car on the open road in Carroll, supra, and Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970), to the local official noncriminal involvement with automobiles enunciated in Cady, supra, at 413 U.S. 441--442, 93 S.Ct. 2528, 37 L.Ed.2d 714--715.

This principle was applied to station searches in Chambers, supra. Chambers held that if Carroll applies at the scene of the contact, that is, if there is probable cause at the scene plus an additional factor justifying the lack of a warrant, then the car may be taken to the station and searched. This holding was supported by the common sense rationale that there is no greater intrusion at the station than there would have been at the scene.

The application of these principles to the instant case dictates a conclusion that the search of the defendant's car without a warrant was invalid. At the scene of the defendant's arrest, there was no probable cause whatsoever to search the defendant's car. The police did not know that the car was involved until the accomplice's statement at the station two hours after the arrest. Therefore, this lack of probable cause at the scene prevents a Chambers justification of the station search.

Once the accomplice made the statement that the defendant had placed a fishing box from the complainant's premises into the car trunk, there is no question that at this point probable cause existed to search the automobile. However, we find that the failure of the police to obtain a warrant was inexcusable. Both the defendant and his accomplice were in custody. There is no appearance on the record of any additional factor which when coupled with probable cause would justify the warrantless search. The subsequent appearance of probable cause at the station cannot alone justify the warrantless search. 'Here there was probable cause, but no exigent circumstances justified the police in proceeding without a warrant.' Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 464, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2037, 29 L.Ed.2d 564, 581 (1971). As stated in Carroll, supra, at 267 U.S. 156, 45...