Singletary v. State

• Decision Date: 29 September 1975
• Docket Number: No. 48543,48543
• Citation: 318 So.2d 873
• Parties: Marcus SINGLETARY v. STATE of Mississippi.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 873

318 So.2d 873

Marcus SINGLETARY v. STATE of Mississippi.

No. 48543.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

Sept. 29, 1975.

Moore, Epps & Ginger, Jackson, for appellant.

A. F. Summer, Atty. Gen. by Karen Gilfoy, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Billy L. Gore, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.

Before GILLESPIE, C.J., and SMITH and ROBERTSON, JJ.

GILLESPIE, Chief Justice, for the Court:

Marcus Singletary was convicted of burglary and sentenced by the Circuit Court of the First Judicial District of Bolivar County to serve a term of five years in the Mississippi State Penitentiary.

Singletary was indicted and tried for the burglary of a store in the Town of Benoit, in Bolivar County near Cleveland. The burglary was discovered on Sunday morning, October 1, 1972. On October 2, about noon, the Warren County Sheriff's Department received information from the manager of a Vicksburg motel that three rooms in the motel had been rented under the name of Alonzo Pritchard. Pritchard was one of five persons indicted for the burglary of the Benoit store, the other four being Linda McMillan, Nell McMillan, Julian L. McMillan and Singletary. Pritchard's conviction was previously affirmed by this Court. Pritchard v. State, 295 So.2d 283 (Miss.1974).

The manager of the motel called Edward H. Reed, Chief Criminal Deputy Sheriff of Warren County, and informed him that a large sum of money was in the room occupied by Julian and Linda McMillan; that there were some people in the room counting money; that there was a gun in the room occupied by Singletary. Upon receipt of this information, Reed called the Jackson office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and asked them to send some agents to Vicksburg because he thought that the occupants of the three rooms at the motel might be connected with a bank robbery which had occurred in Jackson a few days before.

Reed and another officer placed the motel rooms in question under surveillance at 1:30 p.m. on October 2, and the FBI agents arrived in Vicksburg between three and four o'clock. Deputy Reed learned from the FBI that a recent bank robbery in Mobile and the one in Jackson involved three males and two females. The occupants of the rooms in the motel matched the description of the bank robbers in a general way, and Pritchard and Singletary fitted the description of two of the bank robbers.

While the rooms were under surveillance, Singletary, McMillan and Pritchard arrived at the motel in Singletary's automobile, which bore a Georgia license tag. Singletary and Julian McMillan went to their rooms and Nell McMillan came from her room and got into the car with Pritchard. This was the same car that the five persons occupying the rooms were in when they first arrived at the motel to rent the three rooms. Pritchard and Nell McMillan then left in Singletary's automobile and traveled west on Highway 80 toward the City of Vicksburg. Officer Reed and one of the FBI agents followed in one car and two FBI agents followed in another. After these vehicles had traveled some distance, Officer Reed turned on his blue light and outside speaker and ordered Pritchard to stop the car, get out and put his hands on top of the car. Pritchard complied, and in doing so, left the door open. As Reed approached he saw a loaded 38-calibre Colt pistol lying on the floor of the automobile. Reed then asked Pritchard if he had been in any previous trouble and Pritchard replied, 'I just got out of the big house.' Reed then placed Pritchard under arrest on the gun charge. Nell McMillan refused to get out of the automobile, and one of the FBI agents bodily took her out of the car, and found a fully loaded automatic pistol in the glove compartment.

At this point, Officer Reed advised Pritchard of his Miranda rights and the search of the glove compartment followed, after which the trunk of the car was also searched. They found a large crowbar, a smaller crowbar, a large sledgehammer, and a small screwdriver.

After the search of the car, Officer Reed and the FBI agents returned to the motel and went into the room occupied by Julian McMillan, who ran to the bathroom. In this room, they seized a suitcase containing a large amount of change. One of the coins had a bullet hole in it, and there were four silver dollars. Two other officers went to the room occupied by Singletary; they knocked, were invited in, and they observed a weapon on a night stand by the bed. All of the occupants of the three rooms were arrested at that time.

The proof showed that paint, scraped from the crowbars and the sledgehammer, was identical with samples of paint taken from the safe which had been forced open in the burglary of the store at Benoit. The coins were identified as those stolen from the Benoit store. At the time Pritchard, Singletary and the other co-indictees were arrested, the officers did not know of the burglary of the Benoit store.

The principal assignment of error raises the question: Did the trial judge err in admitting in evidence the two guns, a screwdriver, a prybar or crowbard, and a sledgehammer found in defendant's automobile when it was searched subsequent to Pritchard's arrest? Most of the argument on behalf of Singletary is directed to the question whether the officers had probable cause to stop and arrest Singletary.

In our view of the case, the question is whether the officers had sufficient facts to justify their action in stopping the automobile for investigative purposes. The proof clearly shows that this was their purpose and that Singletary was arrested after Deputy Reed had looked through the open door of the automobile and saw the gun partly hidden by the seat.

This Court has held in a number of cases that an arrest begins when the pursuit for the purpose of making an arrest begins. Pollard v. State, 233 So.2d 792 (Miss.1970). The present case does not involve pursuit for the purpose of making an arrest. It does involve the question whether the officers had sufficient informatin to justify stopping the automobile for investigatory purposes. Police activity in preventing crime, detecting violations, making identifications, and in apprehending criminals may be divided into three types of action: (1) Voluntary conversation: An officer may approach a person for the purpose of engaging in a voluntary conversation no matter what facts are known to the officer since it involves no force and no detention of the person interviewed; (2) Investigative stop and temporary detention: To stop and temporarily detain is not an arrest, and the cases hold that given reasonable circumstances an officer may stop and detain a person to resolve an ambiguous situation without having sufficient knowledge to justify an arrest; (3) Arrest: An arrest may be made only when the officer has probable cause.

The present case involves stop and detention, and references to the other kinds of police intrusion are made only to put the question in perspective.

The beginning of the inquiry is the Fourth Amendment whose standard of reasonableness requires that in every situation the officer must make the intrusion into the person's privacy as limited as reasonably possible. On the other hand, as aptly stated in United States v. West, 460 F.2d 374 (5th Cir. 1972), 'The local policeman . . . is also in a very real sense a guardian of the public peace and he has a duty in the course of his work to be alert for suspicious circumstances, and, provided that he acts within constitutional limits, to investigate whenever such circumstances indicate to him that he should do so.' See also United States v. Alle, 472 F.2d 145 (5th Cir. 1973).

The Supreme Court of the United States in several recent opinions recognized the need for balancing these competing considerations. In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), the Court approved the action of the local officer who observed three men as they appeared to be 'casing' a store for robbery purposes. The officer approached the men, identified himself, and asked their names. Upon receiving a mumbled reply, the officer frisked them for weapons, found pistols on two of them whom he arrested for carrying concealed weapons. The Court said it was not deciding the question whether the stop was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. In holding that the officers acted reasonably in making the limited search, the Court said:

Officer McFadden had reasonable grounds to believe that petitioner was armed and dangerous, and it was necessary for the protection of himself and others to take swift measures to discover the true facts and neutralize the threat of harm if it materialized. The policeman carefully restricted his search to what was appropriate to the discovery of the particular items which he sought. Each case of this sort will, of course, have to be decided on its own facts. We merely hold today that where a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dangerous, where in the course of...