People v. Shorr
| Decision Date | 02 June 1924 |
| Docket Number | No. 128.,128. |
| Citation | 227 Mich. 243,198 N.W. 969 |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. SHORR et al. |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Error to Circuit Court, Oakland County; Glenn C. Gillespie, Judge.
Harry Shorr and another were convicted of illegally transporting intoxicating liquor, and they bring error. Conviction affirmed, and cause remanded for further proceedings.
Argued before CLARK, C. J., and McDONALD, BIRD, SHARPE, MOORE, STEERE, FELLOWS, and WIEST, JJ.Charles S. Matthews, of Pontiac, for appellants.
A. Floyd Blakeslee, Pros. Atty., of Pontiac, for the People.
[1] Defendants were convicted in the circuit court of Oakland county under a charge of illegally transporting intoxicating liquor within the township of Bloomfield in said county, on June 5, 1923. A stay of sentence pending an appeal was granted, and the case is here for review on exceptions before sentence.
Upon their trial neither of the defendants took the stand as a witness, and no testimony was offered by the defense. Excepting the last, the substance of defendants' thirteen assignments of error condenses to the proposition that from start to finish there was no competent testimony in the case to justify the committing magistrate in holding the accused to the circuit court for trial, or the trial court to submit the case to the jury.
When the case was called, preliminary motions were made for the defense to quash the proceedings and discharge the accused because no prima facie case was made before the justice who bound them over for trial, and to suppress the evidence as incompetent because obtained by illegal arrest, search, and seizure. Throughout the trial objections were made to the evidence of the prosecution for similar reasons. At conclusion of the evidence a motion for discharge of defendants and request for directed verdict followed on similar grounds. Right of review was saved by motions, objections, requests, and exceptions, timely made as the trial progressed.
It is undisputed that the officers who arrested defendants and seized the liquor they were transporting in their automobile had no warrant for arrest, or search and seizure, and the gist of the defense, urged in various aspects, is that the officers had no reasonable ground when the arrest was made to believe defendants guilty of committing the offense for which they arrested them.
The arrest was made early in the morning of June 25, 1923, on Grand avenue, in the outskirts of the city of Pontiac, just outside its corporate limits, in Bloomfield township, the location being known as ‘South End,’ and inhabited mostly by colored people and foreigners.
Apparently to provide that district with a measure of police protection the sheriff of Oakland county had appointed as deputy sheriffs two colored men named Moody and Whitfield, who had resided in that locality for several years, and were well informed as to people and conditions there. They knew defendants by sight, knew they did not reside in that community, and had seen them in that vicinity on several occasions. Complaints had been made to them, as Moody testified, ‘that these two men were bringing in numerous amounts of liquor.’ Whitfield saw them in South End the night before their arrest, and, as he states, ‘shadowed them,’ discovering they were going from house to house, and amongst other places saw they went to a house where a man he knew named Wallace, who was a drayman, happened to be. Later that evening, after defendants had left the neighborhood, the officers saw Wallace on the street and learned from him defendants' mission in visiting that community. Whitfield testified he told them ‘these two men were taking orders and were to be in the next morning to deliver the booze.’ Moody's version of the communication was--
‘He told us the evening before the morning we did catch these two fellows, these two gentlemen over here, they were coming in regularly putting in liquor; and he said, ‘Now, if you fellows are right on the job to-morrow morning about 6 o'clock or a little after,’ he said, ‘you will catch them.”
Acting on this information and suggestion, the two officers were out early next morning on the street, ‘dressed in overalls to go to work,’ and a little after 6 o'clock saw defendants approaching in an Oakland automobile riding in the front seat. In the concluding part of their intinerary which the officers watched, they were coming from the north and turned in on Detroit street, went a block east to the corner where the officers were, and turned north onto Grand avenue, went part of a block on that street, and stopped in front of a house.
Whitfield testified that as the car approached the corner where they were he noticed some liquor spilling from it, and as they passed he detected the odor of moonshine whisky. The car stopped in front of a house where Whitfield had seen them go the night before. One of defendants then got out, the other remaining seated at the wheel. The officers then ran up with their revolvers drawn, ordered defendants to hold up their hands, and arrested them. At that time liquor was still dripping over the running board at the back part of the car. Both officers testified they saw it and readily recognized the odor of moonshine whisky. They then looked into the car and saw back of the front seat ten 5-gallon cans and a 2-gallon jug partly covered by a robe. These receptacles all contained whisky. The liquor they saw dripping from the car was running out of one of the cans, the cork, or stopper, of which had loosened, and about half of the contents had then escaped. The other cans and jug were well filled. Moody's story of the sequence of events relating to the arrest, search, and seizure, is in part as follows:
‘We detected the odor of whisky when we first went up to the car.
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People v. Parisi
...v. Thompson, 238 Mich. 171, 213 N.W. 159 (1927); People v. Flaczinski, 223 Mich. 650, 194 N.W. 566 (1923). In People v. Shorr, 227 Mich. 243, 249, 198 N.W. 969, 970 (1924), the Court, in upholding an arrest based on the small of alcohol, 'It is now settled as a matter of law, as it long has......
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State v. Mastriacchio
...In support of this contention it cites a number of cases, among which are People v. Cleaver, 365 Ill. 93, 5 N.E.2d 463; People v. Shorr, 227 Mich. 243, 198 N.W. 969; and Duroff v. Commonwealth, 192 Ky. 31, 232 S.W. 47. In the Cleaver case, 365 Ill. at page 98, 5 N.E.2d at page 465, the cour......
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