State v. DelVecchio

• Decision Date: 19 June 1962
• Citation: 149 Conn. 567,182 A.2d 402
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. James V. DeIVECCHIO, Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court

Page 402

182 A.2d 402

149 Conn. 567

STATE of Connecticut v. James V. DeIVECCHIO,

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

June 19, 1962.

James O. Shea, New Haven, with whom were Louis S. Votto, West Haven, and, on the brief, Arthur B. O'Keefe, Sr., New Haven, for appellant (defendant).

George R. Tiernan, Pros. Atty., for appellee (state).

Before BALDWIN, C. J., and KING, MURPHY, SHEA and ALCORN, JJ.

BALDWIN Chief Justice.

This is an appeal from the Court of Common Pleas, where the defendant was accused of a violation, in 1959, of § 53-298 of the General Statutes, entitled 'Policy Playing,' ¹ and was tried to the court. The court concluded that the defendant was 'concerned in selling, exchanging, receiving and transferring policy slips, numbers and chances' in violation of the statute, and he was found guilty. See State v. Genova, 141 Conn. 565, 569, 107 A.2d 837. The defendant had been previously presented in the Municipal Court of West Haven on an information charging him, in a first count, with a violation of General Statutes § 53-295, entitled 'pool selling,' and, in a second count, with a violation of § 53-298, the policy playing statute. That court had found him not guilty on the first count but guilty on the second. The instant case is the result of an appeal from that judgment to the Court of Common Pleas.

The defendant has assigned error in the finding, in rulings on the admission of evidence, and in the court's ruling that he was not put in double jeopardy by a finding of guilty of a violation of General Statutes § 53-298 when he had been acquitted, in the West Haven Municipal Court, of a violation of § 53-295.

We shall consider first the ruling on the admission of evidence. The defendant claims that the police obtained the decisive evidence in the case by a search of his person and automobile after an unlawful arrest without a warrant of any kind. The finding of the court, with such corrections as we find should be made, may be stated in summary as follows: About 2:45 in the afternoon of September 12, 1959, Paul Albanese drove his Nash Rambler automobile east on route 1 and turned into the west driveway of the Dairy Queen, an ice-cream parlor located on the south side of route 1 in West Haven. He went around the back of the building and parked on the east side of it, backed in on a diagonal. He was alone. He got out of the car, bought some ice cream and returned to the car. He had sat there a few minutes when the defendant, in a Cadillac, drove into the west driveway of the Dairy Queen, circled behind the building, and came to a stop with the trunk of the Cadillac about in front of the Albanese car. Albanese then got out of his car and walked around the rear of the Cadillac towards the driver's side. A police officer, dressed in plain clothes, walked toward the Cadillac. The defendant started to drive away. The officer showed his police badge and ordered the defendant to stop; he did. Albanese had a brown paper bag in his possession. It contained a cloth bank bag in which there were a large number of sheets of blue-lined yellow paper, each separately rolled and held by an elastic band. The sheets were policy records which listed bets totaling $2694.62 on single-digit and three-digit numbers. They contained handwriting which indicated that a number of different agents had collected the bets.

Donald Paige, a police sergeant, arrested the defendant at the Dairy Queen. Albanese and the defendant were taken to the West Haven police headquarters, about two miles away. There, Paige searched the Cadillac. He found five packages of pads of blank blue-lined yellow paper, similar to the sheets in Albanese's possession which listed the policy bets; a box of carbon paper the size of the sheets; and, in the glove compartment, a pad of paper and a notebook. When the defendant was asked to empty his pockets, he took out a roll of money amounting to $1091 and a notebook which had inside it a pencil and a pad similar to the pad found in the glove compartment of the Cadillac. The pad which the defendant removed from his pocket had written on it policy bets which were also listed in the policy records found in Albanese's possession. After the defendant said he had emptied his pockets, a further search revealed $9300 in cash. The defendant claimed that this was to be used for buying cars and belonged to his employer, an automobile dealer who was the registered owner of the Cadillac. There was no evidence that Albanese and the defendant had spoken to one another or that they knew one another.

At the trial, the defendant made timely objection to the admission in evidence of the items seized pursuant to the search of his person and the Cadillac. He claimed that the search and the seizure which made this evidence available to the prosecution were illegal and in violation of rights guaranteed to him by article first, §§ 8 and 9, of the constitution of Connecticut and the fourth, fifth and fourteenth amendments to the federal constitution.

It has long been the law in this state that evidence, although obtained by unlawful search and seizure, is, nevertheless admissible in a criminal prosecution. State v. Carol, 120 Conn. 573, 575, 181 A. 714; State v. Reynolds, 101 Conn. 224, 231, 125 A. 636; State v. Magnzno, 97 Conn. 543, 546, 117 A. 550; State v. Griswold, 67 Conn. 290, 306, 34 A. 1046, 33 L.R.A. 227. In Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 648, 655, 81A S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the rule announced in Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 398, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652, excluding, in federal courts, evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the federal constitution, is enforceable against the states under the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. On this point, the Mapp case, supra, 367 U.S. 654, 81A S.Ct. 1684, overruled Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 93 L.Ed. 1782. See Thompson v. State, Ala.App., 132 So.2d 386, 388; Commonwealth v. Spofford, Mass., 180 N.E.2d 673; State v. Valentin, 36 N.J. 41, 43, 174 A.2d 737; People v. Loria, 10 N.Y.2d 368, 223 N.Y.S.2d 462, 179 N.E.2d 478. The Mapp decision is binding on our courts. International Union v. General Electric Co., 148 Conn. 693, 702, 174 A.2d 298; Brownell v. Union & New Haven Trust Co., 143 Conn. 662, 669, 124 A.2d 901; Wojculewicz v. Cummings, 143 Conn. 624, 629, 124 A.2d 886. Although the Mapp case was decided after the defendant's conviction, it applies to this appeal and abrogates the rule laid down in earlier decisions. Mickel v. New England Coal & Coke Co., 132 Conn. 671, 676, 47 A.2d 187, 171 A.L.R. 1001; People v. Loria, supra, 10 N.Y.2d 370, 179 N.E.2d 478; State v. Valentin, supra. The evidence seized was, therefore, inadmissible if the search and the seizure were unreasonable. If the search and the seizure were incidental to a lawful arrest, as the state claims, they were not unreasonable and the evidence was admissible. Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 314, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327; United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 60, 70 S.Ct. 430, 94 L.Ed. 653; State v. Reynolds, supra, 101 Conn. 229, 125 A. 636; State v. Magnano, 97 Conn. 543, 545, 117 A. 550. Apart from the claim that the search and the seizure were not incident to a lawful arrest, the defendant makes no claim that they were unreasonable. See Mapp v. Ohio, supra, 367 U.S. 649, 81 S.Ct. 1684; Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 172, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183.

We examine the law of this state to determine whether the arrest was lawful. See Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 15, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436; United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 589, 68 S.Ct. 222, 92 L.Ed. 210. General Statutes § 6-49, entitled 'Arrest without warrant,' comprehends arrests for both misdemeanors and felonies. ² State v. Carroll, 131 Conn. 224, 228, 38 A.2d 798. The violation with which the defendant was charged was a misdemeanor. General Statutes § 1-1. An arrest for a misdemeanor can be made by the peace officers named in § 6-49 without previous complaint and warrant when the person arrested 'is taken or apprehended in the act or on the speedy information of others.' The state does not rely on 'speedy information' to justify the arrest of the defendant. See State v. Carroll, supra, 131 Conn. 229, 38 A.2d 798; Sims v. Smith, 115 Conn. 279, 283, 161 A. 239. The question for decision, therefore, is whether the defendant was 'taken or apprehended in the act,' within the meaning of § 6-49. Obviously, because of the rationale of Mapp v. Ohio, supra, the evidence seized cannot be used to sustain the legality of the arrest. United States v. Di Re, supra, 332 U.S. 595, 68 S.Ct. 222; People v. Brown, 45 Cal.2d 640, 643-645, 290 P.2d 528; Dax & Tibbs, Arrest, Search and Seizure, p. 130.

We had occasion to consider the phrase 'taken or apprehended in the act' in Price v. Tehan, 84 Conn. 164, 79 A. 68, 34 L.R.A.,N.S., 1182, which concerned an arrest, without a warrant, for a misdemeanor. We pointed out (84 Conn. p. 168, 79 A. 68) that the arrest there was made on the strength of the officer's own knowledge, gained from his personal observation. We held that the authority conferred in such cases is to arrest when the offender is 'taken or apprehended in the act,' which 'implies an offender and an act of offense which is not in the past.' In McKenna v. Whipple, 97 Conn. 695, 118 A. 40, which also involved an arrest for a misdemeanor without a warrant, we held (97 Conn. p. 700, 118 A. 40) that an officer acting, under the rule of Price v. Tehan, with reference to something within his own field of observation acts at his peril. The essential feature of an arrest of one 'taken or apprehended in the act,' which distinguishes arrests so made from other arrests under § 6-49 without previous complaint and warrant, is that one or more of the acts constituting the crime must have occurred in the presence of the...