Thompson v. State

• Decision Date: 17 December 1987
• Citation: 539 A.2d 1052
• Parties: Keith L. THOMPSON, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee. . Submitted:
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Delaware

Page 1052

539 A.2d 1052

Keith L. THOMPSON, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Delaware.

Submitted: Dec. 17, 1987.

Decided: March 28, 1988.

Robert Phillips (argued) and David Facciolo, Asst. Public Defenders, Wilmington, for appellant.

Ferris W. Wharton (argued) and Loren Meyers, Deputy Attys. Gen., Wilmington, for appellee.

Before CHRISTIE, C.J., WALSH and HOLLAND, JJ.

HOLLAND, Justice:

The appellant, Keith L. Thompson ("Thompson"), was tried before a jury in the Superior Court in and for New Castle County. He was convicted of Rape First Degree, Kidnapping First Degree and Assault First Degree. Thompson was sentenced to life imprisonment on the rape charge, ¹ to life imprisonment on the kidnapping charge, and to two years imprisonment on the assault charge.

The central issue on appeal is whether Thompson's warrantless felony arrest was made with probable cause. The underlying issue on appeal is whether the Superior Court erred in not granting a motion to suppress evidence that was obtained incident to Thompson's arrest. We have concluded that there was probable cause for Thompson's warrantless felony arrest based upon our examination of the record and an evaluation of the probative value of the forensic hair analysis, relied upon in part by the police. Accordingly, we affirm the Superior Court's decision to deny Thompson's motion to suppress. Therefore, we also affirm Thompson's convictions.

Facts

On July 28, 1984, an eight-year-old girl ("victim") was sleeping in a bed at her grandmother's house on Bowers Street in Wilmington. ² At approximately 5:00 a.m., a black male burglar carried the victim out of the house and into the backyard where he undressed the victim and attempted to rape her. When the victim screamed, the man struck her in the face and carried her to a nearby dump site. There she was placed upon a mattress, again struck in the face, and raped by the man. After the victim pretended she was dead, the man left the dump site. The victim ran back to her grandmother's house. Her uncle called the police who arrived at the house at approximately 5:20 a.m. The physician who later treated the victim testified that her injuries were consistent with rape. ³

During their investigation, the police found a mattress inclined against a hill on the edge of the dump site. The police removed a section of the mattress cover that had a red substance on it. Nearby, the police discovered shoe prints and a barefoot print in the mud. The police made plaster casts of several of these prints. At the grandmother's house, the police collected a blanket that was wrapped around the victim and the sofa cushion upon which the victim sat after the rape. The police were able to obtain hair samples from the mattress cover, the blanket, and the sofa cushion.

On September 9, 1984, at 3:15 a.m., a similar crime occurred at the Royal Oaks Apartments in New Castle County outside of the City of Wilmington. ⁴ In that incident, a black male burglar took a nine-year-old girl from her bedroom in a first floor apartment into the apartment's living room. The burglar undressed her and was apparently preparing to commit a sexual offense against her when the girl awoke, causing the burglar to flee. The police were called immediately. Approximately twenty to thirty minutes later, a Delaware State policeman stopped Thompson about a mile from where the incident occurred because he fit the general description of the suspect. Thompson stated that he was jogging. Thompson was taken back to the crime scene and positioned fifty feet away from the girl's apartment. It was still dark outside, and she was unable to identify him at that time. Several days later, however, when viewing a photographic line-up, the girl in the Royal Oaks case picked out Thompson's picture. Although she would not positively identify him as her assailant, she stated that Thompson "might be the one," indicating that his degree of resemblance, on a scale of one to ten, was a ten.

On September 21, 1984, Thompson was requested to voluntarily accompany detectives from the New Castle County Police Department to their headquarters for further questioning about the Royal Oaks case. After he was questioned, Thompson consented to the taking of fingerprints and voluntarily provided samples of his head and pubic hair. Detective Dennis E. Godek ("Detective Godek"), of the New Castle County Police Department, took these hair samples from Thompson to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Laboratory in Washington, D.C. on that same day. There, Detective Godek turned the hair samples over to Special Agent H. Michael Warren ("Special Agent Warren") of the Microscopic Laboratory, Hairs and Fibers Section.

Thompson's head hairs were compared microscopically to three head hairs from the Bowers Street case--one from the mattress cover, one from the blanket, and one from the sofa cushion. Based upon this analysis, Special Agent Warren concluded that Thompson's hair and the hair evidence from the Bowers Street case exhibited the same characteristics. He told Detective Godek that hair comparisons, unlike fingerprint comparisons, do not result in positive identification. However, he was relatively sure that the hairs from the Bowers Street case came from Thompson because in his seven years of conducting hair comparisons, he had never found head hairs from two different people, even twins, that exhibited the same characteristics.

Detective Godek telephoned the results of the hair comparisons to his commanding officer. Detective Godek then immediately returned to the Wilmington police station and met with the Wilmington police officers who were investigating the Bowers Street case. Soon thereafter, on the night of September 21, 1984, those officers made a warrantless felony arrest of Thompson. The Bowers Street victim viewed a line-up which included Thompson following his arrest. The victim stated that one of the men in the line-up looked something like her assailant. She selected number four in the line-up as the person most closely resembling her assailant. Number four was Thompson. The tennis shoes Thompson was wearing at the time of his arrest were seized as evidence in order to compare them to the plaster casts made at the Bowers Street rape scene.

Thompson argues on appeal that his warrantless arrest was based solely upon the hair comparisons which do not constitute probable cause. Although Thompson acknowledges that hair comparisons can be relevant evidence, he contends that this microscopic analysis is an unreliable indicator of positive identity and as such cannot be relied upon exclusively to support a probable cause determination. Since his arrest was therefore illegal, Thompson further argues that any evidence obtained during this period of illegal detention is "fruit of the poisonous tree" and should have been excluded under Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). The State argues that the probable cause determination was not based exclusively upon the hair comparisons, but upon the totality of the circumstances which included the fact that Thompson was a suspect in the Royal Oaks case.

Probable Cause for a Warrantless Arrest

We begin our analysis with the authority of a peace officer to make a legal arrest without a warrant. The statutory authority of Delaware law enforcement officers to make felony arrests without a warrant is limited to offenses committed in their presence or to instances where they have "reasonable ground to believe that the person to be arrested has committed a felony, whether or not a felony has in fact been committed." 11 Del. C § 1904(b)(1). A similar federal statute has been held to meet the constitutional requirement that no arrest warrant issue except "upon probable cause." Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98, 100, 80 S.Ct. 168, 170, 4 L.Ed.2d 134 (1959).

The Henry Court observed that the requirement of probable cause is deeply rooted in the history of Anglo-American law:

The general warrant, in which the name of the person to be arrested was left blank, and the writs of assistance, against which James Otis inveighed, both perpetuated the oppressive practice of allowing the police to arrest and search on suspicion. Police control took the place of judicial control, since no showing of "probable cause" before a magistrate was required.

Id. (footnotes omitted). ⁵ Rumor, suspicion, or even "strong reason to suspect" has never been adequate in American legal history to support a warrant for arrest. Id. at 101, 80 S.Ct. at 170. A fortiori, mere suspicion cannot support a warrantless arrest.

The Delaware statute which authorizes warrantless arrests requires "reasonable ground to believe" the person to be arrested has committed a felony. 11 Del. C. § 1904(b)(1). Given the fact that suspicion alone is insufficient justification for a warrantless arrest, this statute can only pass constitutional muster if "reasonable ground to believe" is construed to mean probable cause. This Court has found this to be an appropriate interpretation of a similar statute, 11 Del.C. § 1935, which authorizes "pursuit" in order to arrest a person when there is "reasonable grounds to suspect" a felony has been committed. State v. Cochran, Del.Supr., 372 A.2d 193, 195 (1977). In Cochran, we held that the phrase "reasonable grounds to suspect" is the legal equivalent of probable cause. Id. We now hold that the phrase "reasonable ground to believe" is also the legal equivalent of "probable cause" and should be accorded the same meaning. See id.; Thomas v. State, Del. Supr., 467 A.2d 954, 957 n. 3 (1983) (citing United States ex rel. Mealey v. Delaware, 352 F.Supp. 349, 353 (D.Del.1972)).

However, the identification of "probable cause" as the standard by which to measure the propriety of a warrantless felony arrest begins rather than ends our inquiry. We have long recognized...