United States v. Chapdelaine, Cr. No. 85-040-S.

• Decision Date: 16 August 1985
• Docket Number: Cr. No. 85-040-S.
• Citation: 616 F. Supp. 522
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. George E. CHAPDELAINE.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Rhode Island

616 F. Supp. 522

UNITED STATES of America v. George E. CHAPDELAINE.

Cr. No. 85-040-S.

United States District Court, D. Rhode Island.

August 16, 1985.

James H. Leavey, Asst. U.S. Atty., Providence, R.I., for U.S.

Kirk Y. Griffin, Boston, Mass., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

SELYA, District Judge.

On May 14, 1985, between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m., George Chapdelaine, the defendant herein, was arrested at the Cloverleaf Motel in Lincoln, Rhode Island by members of the Lincoln police department, acting in concert with and under the aegis of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). A subsequent search of the defendant's luggage and vehicle turned up sizable quantities of both cash ($6,000) and cocaine (approximately 3.5 pounds). In short order, Chapdelaine was bound over to a grand jury, indicted for possession of a Schedule II controlled substance with intent to distribute, see 21 U.S.C. § 841, and detained pending trial. He thereupon moved to suppress the introduction of the above-described evidence, along with certain inculpatory statements which he allegedly made while in custody at the Lincoln police station.

An evidentiary hearing was held on June 25-27, 1985. A briefing schedule was thereafter implemented. The court took the matter under advisement as of July 18, 1985. This rescript comprises the court's resolution of the questions presented.

I.

Briefly summarized, the defendant argues that the physical evidence was obtained as a proximate result of (i) a warrantless arrest divorced of probable cause, and (ii) a warrantless search and seizure of his motor vehicle, which (a) was not incident to a lawful arrest, and (b) lacked probable cause. Chapdelaine further asseverates that his in-custody statements should be suppressed as they were obtained in violation of his Miranda rights, see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1612, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and in the wake of his requests for counsel. These claims will be treated seriatim.

A. The Arrest

Chapdelaine's arrest on May 14, 1985 capped a five-day DEA investigation headed by Special Agent Frank DiCarlo. The DEA had received information from Lt. Tempest of the Woonsocket police department that a plan was afoot to transport five kilograms of cocaine from Florida to Rhode Island for distribution in the New England region. On May 9, DiCarlo interviewed one Pamela Harnois at the Lincoln police station. During several audiences with Harnois over the next few days, the following people were also present at different intervals: DEA Agents Moffett and McCarthy; Lt. Tempest; Lt. Wood of the Lincoln police department; Assistant United States Attorney Leavey; and Detective Roy of the Providence police (a special deputy United States Marshal).

In substance, Harnois told the officers that she had travelled to Florida with the defendant and her quondam boyfriend (Albert Gagnon) in mid-January, 1985; that the trip was made in an automobile rented from a Hertz agency in Rhode Island; and that, at Chapdelaine's request, she had held $50,000 in cash for him during that jaunt. While the group was in Miami, and from the vantage point of a motel room there, she observed the defendant apparently purchasing five kilograms of cocaine with the money she had carried. After the transaction was consummated, Harnois and Gagnon began the trip back to Rhode Island in the rental car (detouring en route to experience the elaborate fantasies of Disney World). They rejoined Chapdelaine near Kinston, North Carolina; he had relatives there and had previously dropped off a rattletrap bus which he planned to convert into a luxury mobile home. The trio left North Carolina ensemble, crossed the Mason-Dixon line, and returned to Rhode Island. Once there, they brought the cocaine to the Cloverleaf Motel, where Chapdelaine (who, according to Harnois, knew the owner) apparently stayed on a frequent, if intermittent, basis. At some point, Chapdelaine mentioned that Frank Kowal (affectionately known as "Babe") and Jimmy Lyons, both of whom resided in southeastern New England, were destined to become involved in the scheme. Harnois buttressed her tale by noting that she had taken a series of snapshots during this journey. In addition, Harnois informed the officers that the defendant had told her that every time he went to Florida, he returned with cocaine. And, there was more.

She related that, predicated upon a discussion with Chapdelaine's son in early May, she believed that the defendant was in Florida at the moment. She thought that he was returning immediately (perhaps that very evening) to Rhode Island. She noted that he would be driving either a blue Volkswagen pickup truck with a "different-colored" door or a rented car. Finally, Harnois warned that the defendant kept company with an automatic weapon — probably an Uzi submachine gun — while engaged in narcotics trafficking; he had indicated to her that he would kill anyone who tried to interfere in his drug business because he did not want to go back to jail.

It must be emphasized at this juncture that this informant's revelations did not tumble aimlessly into a vacuum. All four of the names mentioned by Harnois were known to the police (three of them in a drug-related context). Chapdelaine's son had previously been arrested on drug charges; during that federal trial (several months earlier), Chapdelaine had advised Lt. Tempest that he would cooperate with the DEA regarding his knowledge of drug trafficking if the prosecution would recommend a sentence of less than jail for his offspring. Lyons had been arrested on cocaine charges by Massachusetts state police just a few weeks prior to the May 9 contact. Kowal had been arrested by Special Agent McCarthy in 1975 (in West Warwick, Rhode Island) while in possession of hundreds of thousands of vials of morphine; he was later convicted and sentenced to a lengthy prison term. Harnois also told Agent DiCarlo that Gagnon had set a fire to order in Warwick, Rhode Island in September 1984, and that he had to be treated for burns at a local hospital (Fogarty) as a result. Warwick detectives confirmed that a home had indeed been torched and hospital records showed that Gagnon was hospitalized the day after the Warwick ustulation, suffering from first, second, and third degree burns.

With this information in hand, Agent DiCarlo ordered a surveillance of the motel, and had Pamela Harnois call to see if the defendant was due to arrive that night (May 9). The owner of the hostelry confirmed that Chapdelaine often stayed at the Cloverleaf, but denied that he was expected that evening. On May 10, DiCarlo confirmed (through the DEA in North Carolina) that Chapdelaine was in the Kinston area, driving a blue VW pickup truck with an oddly-colored door and bearing Rhode Island license plates. (Harnois had voiced her belief that the defendant had a brother, Joseph, and a nephew, Allan, in Kinston; the pickup truck was spotted in North Carolina at the home of a Joseph Chapdelaine.) The Rhode Island plates bore the number 69582; a Registry of Motor Vehicles check showed that the plates had been issued to George Chapdelaine. On the same day, at DiCarlo's urging, Harnois placed calls to the homes of the two Chapdelaines listed in the Kinston telephone directory — William Allen and Joseph William. A woman at one of those numbers acknowledged that George was overseeing the finishing touches on the rehabilitation of his mobile home, but that he would be leaving soon.

On May 11, fearing detection in the sparsely settled environs of rural Kinston, the DEA terminated the North Carolina surveillance exercise. On May 14, Agent DiCarlo learned from Harnois that she had called North Carolina again and had been told that Chapdelaine had left early that morning for Rhode Island. DiCarlo arranged for intensified surveillance in the vicinity of the Cloverleaf Motel. Lincoln police officers were instructed to look for a blue VW pickup truck with Rhode Island registration 69582, and to arrest the defendant. At approximately 8:45 p.m., the truck pulled into the motel parking lot and stopped near the office entrance. Chapdelaine left the motor running, exited the vehicle, and entered the office. He was refused lodging. As the defendant turned to leave, Detective Shey accosted him, asked if he was George Chapdelaine, and upon the defendant's answering affirmatively, placed him under arrest.

The defendant argues that there was no probable cause for his arrest because the information upon which the constabulary relied was stale (dated to January 1985), and because the informant's tip was unworthy of credence. In the latter regard, he urges particularly that the instability of the data source is made manifest by Harnois' prediction that he would be carrying an automatic weapon; such an augury was contradicted when no firearm was discovered at or after his arrest. Though Chapdelaine's assault upon the lawfulness of the arrest has been artfully mounted, he is firing blanks. His rodomontade is largely sound and fury, signifying little of consequence.

As the Court has recently emphasized, "perhaps the central teaching of our decisions bearing on the probable-cause standard is that it is a `practical nontechnical conception.'" Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 231, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983), quoting Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 1311, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949). In Gates, the Court explicitly linked its earlier observation regarding "particularized suspicion" to the probable cause standard:

`The process does deal with hard certainties, but with probabilities. Long before the law of probabilities was articulated as such, practical people formulated certain common-sense conclusions about human behavior; jurors as factfinders are permitted to do the same — and so are law enforcement officers. Finally, the evidence thus collected must be seen and weighed not in terms

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