Raif v. State

• Decision Date: 06 February 1964
• Docket Number: No. 22336,22336
• Parties: Marion RAIF v. The STATE. J. O. LUCK v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

Page 375

135 S.E.2d 375

219 Ga. 649

Marion RAIF v. The STATE.

J. O. LUCK v. The STATE.

No. 22336.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Feb. 6, 1964.

The Court of Appeals (in cases No. 40186 and 40187) certified the following questions to this court:

'At approximately 8:30 a. m. on a rainy Sunday morning, November 19, 1961, a police officer of the City of Newnan, Georgia (Officer Morris), observed a stranger (later identified as Ronald E. Smith a coindictee of the defendants), standing on the west side of Greenville Street, in the City of Newnan, directly across from a shopping center. Checking this same area approximately 15 minutes later he noticed that Smith had moved across the street to a spot approximately 15 feet from the center of the shopping center near a large boxwood tree.

'At approximately 9:00 a. m. the police received a report from a Mr. Powell that he had observed a car which he did not recognize parked in front of his dwelling about 2 blocks south of the shopping center. Upon receipt of this report other city police pulled the car in 'for checking.'

'At 10:25 a. m., while continuing to cruise the shopping center area police officer Morris and another officer spotted two other strangers, later identified as Marion Raif and John Oscar Luck, on Turner Street at a railroad crossing about four hundred or five hundred yards south of the shopping center and walking in the direction of the shopping center. These officers observed that the clothing on the left arm of each man was wet almost to the shoulder. At this point Raif and Luck were arrested without a warrant and taken to the police station where they were questioned by the police chief. No evidence was introduced that they had committed any crime in the presence of the officers or that the officers had any grounds, other than as set forth above, to suspect that they had committed a felony.

'Some two and one-half hours later the police learned that a store in the shopping center had been burglarized and the safe looted of some $3,000. Raif and Luck, together with Smith, were indicted for this crime and connected to the event on the trial mainly by evidence obtained from their persons after they were arrested. Such evidence coming from their clothes which they removed under the following circumstances according to the testimony of the police officer who obtained such clothing from them. 'I had those men in my custody at the County Jail. I asked them to remove the clothes. I said, 'Remove your clothes so I can have them checked.' They did not object. They pulled them off at my command. If they hadn't taken them off, I would have left them on. They did not tell me to keep the clothes. I did not put any more shoes and socks on them. I gave them coveralls to wear, while they were staying in jail. I couldn't say whether they had any shoes to wear down there. I didn't see them with any shoes and socks. I did not give the clothes back to them. I gave them to Chief Brown.' One defendant referred to the manner in which the police obtained the clothes in his statement as follows: 'As far as the clothing they taken from us. I didn't give it to them voluntary to nobody. Whenever they asked me for them we give them the...