United States v. Gaither

• Decision Date: 05 October 1962
• Docket Number: Crim. A. No. 1405.
• Citation: 209 F. Supp. 223
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. Clarence GAITHER, Jr.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Delaware

209 F. Supp. 223

UNITED STATES of America v. Clarence GAITHER, Jr.

Crim. A. No. 1405.

United States District Court D. Delaware.

October 5, 1962.

Stanley C. Lowicki, Asst. U. S. Atty., Wilmington, Del., for the U. S.

Victor F. Battaglia, of Theisen & Lank, Wilmington, Del., for defendant.

LAYTON, District Judge.

During the early morning of October 3, 1961, two city policemen noticed an automobile with Pennsylvania license plates parked in the 500 block of South Market Street in Wilmington, Delaware. The car was apparently vacant or abandoned. The neighborhood is notorious for the many breakings and enterings of warehouses, gasoline stations and other business buildings in the locality. The officers walked over to the car and played a flashlight inside. Lying on the front seat was a Negro apparently asleep. While one officer questioned him, the other walked around the car shining his flashlight inside but not opening the doors. Questioning produced the information that the Negro occupant was Clarence Gaither proceeding from Philadelphia to some point in the South; that he did not own the car which, he said, had been loaned to him by a friend; that he had no license, registration or other identification whatever; that the car had run out of gas and he had pulled over to go to sleep; and that he had but seven cents on his person. The officer observed that despite the chilly temperature, he was clothed in nothing but a coverall. While the interrogation was taking place, the other policeman, by that time on the other side of the car with the flashlight, noticed that there was no key in the switch and that the ignition wires were hanging below the dashboard indicating the possibility that the car might have been stolen by "jumping" the wires. Because the defendant had no identification whatever, was scantily clothed against the cold, and practically penniless, the officers arrested him on the spot for vagrancy. Simultaneously, a passerby warned the officers that a suspicious man was loitering around the corner. While one officer went to investigate, the remaining officer asked defendant where he got the car and the defendant admitted he had stolen it. The officers then took him to headquarters under the charge of vagrancy and immediately called Philadelphia but could find no report of a stolen car. Later, Philadelphia police telephoned that the car had been stolen. The vagrancy charge was thereafter retired and the present charge of violation of the Dyer Act placed against the defendant, who was subsequently found guilty of the charge.

Defendant takes the position that the arrest was illegal and the fruits of the investigation invalidly obtained. This argument is difficult to follow. Defendant concedes the right of the officers to investigate the suspicious situation presented by an apparently unoccupied car at 3:00 a. m., in a neighborhood notorious for crime. But he argues that once the defendant gave his name, address and destination the officers should have waived him on his way, overlooking the apparently minor details that the car was out of gas, the defendant penniless, without any identification and scantily dressed, and the wires "jumped". The police were not obliged to believe that the defendant lived in Philadelphia. For all they knew the car might have been abandoned and the defendant, without sufficient clothing to withstand the cold and lacking funds for a lodging, was wandering along the highway and crawled into the car to sleep. They felt there was reasonable ground for a vagrancy charge. The "jumped" wires were discovered even before the vagrancy charge was placed and during the perfectly proper investigation of a car parked under suspicious circumstances.¹ When the defendant admitted without any pressure, "roughing up" or threats that he had stolen the car, the police might have abandoned the vagrancy charge and rearrested him for car theft. But it would have been a slightly absurd and empty formality at 3:00 o'clock in the morning to have stated that they were hereby withdrawing the vagrancy charge and placing a charge of auto theft against the defendant. Arresting officers are not held to the same strict precision in definition of crimes as is a prosecuting attorney in preparing an indictment. All that is required is that the officer have a "reasonable ground to believe that the person to be arrested has committed a misdemeanor in his presence * * *." Title 11, Del.C. § 1906.² The arresting officer does not have to have before him that degree of proof necessary for a conviction. Here, had the facts (leaving out the jumped wires and the confession) been presented to a Grand Jury on a vagrancy indictment, it is not unreasonable to suppose they might have returned a true bill. Of course, upon trial, when the facts as to defendant's background were all brought out and verified, no doubt there would have been an acquittal. And, very probably, an experienced prosecuting attorney after some investigation of the defendant's...