U.S. v. Chamberlin

• Citation: 644 F.2d 1262
• Decision Date: 07 October 1980
• Docket Number: No. 79-1076,79-1076
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Hozie CHAMBERLIN, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (9th Circuit)

Page 1262

644 F.2d 1262

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Hozie CHAMBERLIN, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 79-1076.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted Aug. 6, 1979.

Decided Oct. 7, 1980.

Judy C. Clarke, San Diego, Cal., for defendant-appellant.

Michael H. Walsh, U. S. Atty., David C. Doyle, Asst. U. S. Atty., San Diego, Cal., (argued), for plaintiff-appellee; David C. Doyle, Asst. U. S. Atty., San Diego, Cal., on brief.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of California.

Before CHOY, ANDERSON and HUG, Circuit Judges.

HUG, Circuit Judge:

The opinion of December 26, 1979 is hereby withdrawn and the following opinion is substituted. Hozie Chamberlin appeals from a conviction of possession of a check stolen from the mail in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1708. The principal question on this appeal is whether the detention of the appellant following an investigatory stop resulted in a seizure amounting to an unlawful arrest, requiring suppression of the evidence derived from that detention. The appellant moved to suppress the evidence; and upon denial of the motion he waived a jury trial and proceeded to trial before the court on stipulated facts. We find that the detention was unlawful and the motion to suppress should have been granted. We therefore reverse.

The issues involved are: (1) whether the investigatory stop of Chamberlin by the officer was justified by founded suspicion; (2) whether the subsequent detention amounted to unlawful arrest without probable cause; and (3) whether subsequent evidence obtained was the fruit of an unlawful arrest.

Facts

On October 4, 1978 at about 12:20 P.M. Officer Morse of the San Diego Police Department, while driving on routine patrol, observed appellant, Hozie Chamberlin, and a companion, Robert Franklin, walking away from the Chicano Park area in southeast San Diego. Officer Morse recognized Chamberlin and Franklin as individuals with extensive criminal records for narcotics violations, receipt of stolen property, forgery and burglary. Officer Morse was suspicious that criminal activity was afoot because they looked worried as he passed and quickened their pace. He drove back by the area about a minute later. Robert Franklin then darted between two houses, looked back out between the houses at the officer and began running away. Appellant Chamberlin also attempted to flee but was hampered from running because of his physical handicap.

Officer Morse caught up with Chamberlin and asked him what he was doing. Chamberlin replied that he was returning from paying his mother's furniture bill at the Universal Furniture Store. Officer Morse then asked why Robert had run away. Chamberlin replied, "I don't know any Robert." This increased Officer Morse's suspicions because he knew that Chamberlin and Robert Franklin were well acquainted.

At this point, Officer Morse required appellant Chamberlin to get in the back of the patrol car so he could continue his search for Robert Franklin. It was Officer Morse's intention to detain Chamberlin for further investigation while he attempted to find Franklin.

Officer Morse proceeded to Franklin's residence and began working back towards the area from which Franklin and Chamberlin had fled. Five minutes after Chamberlin's detention began, Officer Morse received a radio call informing him that a check had been found lying near the point where Chamberlin and Franklin had been when they had begun to flee. He then went back to the area and obtained the check, which was a United States Treasury check bearing the name "Willie Johnson" as payee.

When Officer Morse returned to his patrol car with the check, Chamberlin became nervous and began to sweat. Officer Morse then reinquired as to Chamberlin's statement regarding paying his mother's furniture bill at the Universal Furniture Store. Chamberlin denied that he made any statement about having been at the Universal Furniture Store and explained that his mother lived on University Avenue and that this was possibly what the officer heard him say. At this point, Officer Morse decided to go to the Universal Furniture Store to investigate the matter further.

He drove to the store with Chamberlin still in the back of the patrol car. At the store the manager and the employees informed Officer Morse that they knew Hozie Chamberlin and that he had been in the store an hour earlier attempting to negotiate a check. Officer Morse showed them the check bearing the name "Willie Johnson" as payee and they identified it as the check Chamberlin had earlier tried to cash. Officer Morse then placed Chamberlin under arrest. Chamberlin had been detained in the rear of the patrol car for twenty minutes from the time he was first picked up.

Chamberlin was indicted for possession of a check stolen from the mail. 18 U.S.C. § 1708. Chamberlin contended that the stop and arrest were unlawful and moved to suppress all statements and evidence obtained as a result of the stop and arrest. The motion was followed by a hearing at which Officer Morse and other witnesses testified. The district court noted that this was a close case and denied the motion, holding that the stop was lawful under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). The district court relied largely upon the Sixth Circuit case of United States v. Pope, 561 F.2d 663, (6th Cir. 1977), in which the flight of the accused upon the approach of an officer to question him was a major factor in the court's determination that reasonable suspicion for the Terry stop existed. The district court in the instant case did not focus upon the question of the lawfulness of the detention in the patrol car subsequent to the investigatory stop and prior to the interview with the employees of the furniture store. It should be noted that the district court did not then have the benefit of the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979), which bears heavily upon this question.

Discussion

We first examine the two possible intrusions into rights protected by the fourth and fourteenth amendments: the stop and the subsequent detention.

1. The stop. When Officer Morse first observed Chamberlin and Franklin, he knew that both men had criminal records. He also observed that when these two men noticed him, both men looked worried and quickened their pace. A minute later while watching the two men for the second time, Officer Morse observed Franklin go between two houses, look toward him, and begin to run. Chamberlin also attempted to flee. As the trial judge correctly noted, the flight of both men is a crucial fact which justified the investigatory stop. Under all these circumstances, Officer Morse was justified in making an investigatory stop of Chamberlin under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). ¹

2. The subsequent detention. The detention in this case must be analyzed in light of the Supreme Court's recent decision of Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979). In Dunaway, Rochester police suspected that the defendant had killed the proprietor of a pizza parlor in Rochester, N.Y., but did not have probable cause to get a warrant for his arrest. The police officers took the defendant from a neighbor's house, seated him in a police car, transported him to the police headquarters, and placed him in an interrogation room. Although the defendant was not told he was under arrest, he would have been physically restrained if he had attempted to leave. After giving the defendant his Miranda warnings, the officers questioned the defendant. Defendant waived counsel and eventually made statements and drew sketches that incriminated him in the crime.

The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the Rochester police violated the fourth and fourteenth amendments when, without probable cause to arrest, they took the defendant into custody, transported him to the police station, and detained him there for interrogation. The Court stated:

The Fourth Amendment, applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), provides: The right of the people to be secure in their persons . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . . . There can be little doubt that petitioner was 'seized' in the Fourth Amendment sense when he was taken involuntarily to the police station.

Dunaway, 99 S.Ct., at 2253. The Court then noted: "It must be recognized that whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has 'seized' that person." Dunaway, 99 S.Ct. at 2253 n.6, quoting from Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 16, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1877, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).

The Court in Dunaway carefully analyzed the distinction between the seizure of a person for purposes of arrest, which requires probable cause, and the more limited seizure of a person by a brief investigatory stop, which requires merely reasonable suspicion. The Court rejected the suggestion of a multifactor balancing test of "reasonable police conduct under the circumstances." It emphasized that the Terry stop was a narrow exception and was not to be extended so as to erode the long prevailing standards of probable cause. The Court stated A single, familiar standard is essential to guide police officers, who have only limited time and expertise to reflect on and balance the social and individual interests involved in the specific circumstances they confront. Indeed, our recognition of these dangers, and our consequent reluctance to depart from the proven protections afforded by the general rule, is reflected in the narrow limitations emphasized in the cases employing the balancing test. For all but those narrowly defined intrusions, the requisite "bala...