Accarino v. United States

179 F.2d 456, 85 U.S. App. D.C. 394, 1949 U.S. App. LEXIS 2647
CourtCourt of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
DecidedNovember 7, 1949
Docket10183
StatusPublished
Cited by128 cases

This text of 179 F.2d 456 (Accarino v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Accarino v. United States, 179 F.2d 456, 85 U.S. App. D.C. 394, 1949 U.S. App. LEXIS 2647 (D.C. Cir. 1949).

Opinion

PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judge.

Appellant was indicted, convicted and sentenced in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for violations of the gambling laws of the District of Columbia. 1 In the course of the trial, certain alleged “numbers slips” and racehorse bets, taken from the person of the accused and found in his room by the police at the time he was arrested, were offered and received in evidence. There had been a motion to suppress that evidence and return the property, which motion was denied.

On October 16, 1948, two police officers, having received information that a man was “picking up numbers” (a form of organized gambling) in a certain vicinity, noticed the appellant and then trailed him as he drove around in the Northwest and Northeast sections of the City, making-some ten or twelve stops to enter apartment houses or places of business. At about one-thirty o’clock, p. m., the appellant drove to and entered an apartment house at 1310 Downing Place, Northeast, and remained there. On October 18th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 25th and 26th, officers trailed the appellant over practically the same route at the same time of day, observing him making the same stops and seeing him finally enter the apartment house at 1310 Downing Place at about the same time each day. Upon four of these days, an “under-cover man” for the police placed numbers bets with an attendant at one of the places where appellant stopped each day. On another day one of the offi *457 cers looked into appellant’s car while appellant was in a building on one of his stops. The officer observed several numbers slips, one of which he took.

1310 Downing Place, Northeast, is a two-story apartment house on the north side of the street. On October 26th two police officers stationed themselves in the hallway of a house on the south side of the street opposite the apartment house. They had not been trailing appellant on this particular day, but they had done so on other days. They were in plain clothes. They had no warrant, either of arrest or for search. Appellant drove up and parked on the south side of the street. He got out of the car, walked across the street, and entered the apartment house. The officers crossed the street and reached the apartment house door just about the time appellant was at the top of the stairs to the second floor. They called to him; one testified that they called, “Wait a minute, police,” and the other said they shouted “and told him that we were police”. The appellant entered his apartment, which was to the right of the top of the steps, and closed the door. The officers knocked, on the door and shouted at the appellant, one of them testifying that they called out, “Police.” The door not being opened, the officers broke it down. Upon entering, they saw the appellant standing in the middle of the room throwing papers and envelopes on a small desk. They seized these papers and also searched the appellant, finding a pad and some money in his pocket. They placed him under arrest.

The immediate question is whether the papers which were seized by the officers at the time of the arrest were properly admitted in evidence against appellant upon his trial. The Government says that the evidence was properly admitted, because it was seized as an incident to a lawful arrest. The appellant says that it was not admissible, because there was no search warrant; and that the arrest was not lawful, since the officers, being without an arrest warrant, illegally broke open the door to his dwelling place.

The Government argues that the officers had probable cause to believe that appellant had committed a felony and that, therefore, they had a right to arrest him without a warrant; that, having a right to arrest, they had a right to use whatever force was necessary to effectuate the arrest; and that the breaking of the door was necessary to make the arrest.

For a clear answer to the question presented, we need hardly go farther in the authorities than McDonald v. United States. 2 In that case, the accused was convicted on evidence obtained by a search made without a warrant, the indictment being for violation of the gambling laws, as in this case. The accused had been under police observation for several months. He lived in a rented rooming house. On the day of the arrest, -three police officers surrounded the house, and one of them thought he heard an adding machine. One officer opened a window, climbed through, identified himself to the landlady, and admitted the other officers to the house. McDonald’s room was on the second floor. The door to the room was closed. One of the officers stood on a chair and looked - through the transom. He saw McDonald and also saw numbers slips, piles of money, and adding machines. He yelled to McDonald to open the door, and McDonald did so. Thereupon, the officers arrested McDonald and seized the machines, the papers, and the money. The prosecution sought to build the lawfulness of the search on the lawfulness of the arrest. The Court said that the reasoning of the prosecution ran: So far as McDonald was concerned, the officers were lawfully in the hallway; since they observed him in the act of committing an offense, they were under a duty to arrest him; therefore, the arrest was valid; and since the search was incidental to the arrest, it too was valid.

The Court held that, whether that argument was or was not logically sound, no necessitous circumstance precluded the obtaining of a warrant before the arrest and *458 search and that, therefore, the search was illegal. The Court said:

“We do not stop to examine that syllogism for flaws. Assuming its correctness, we rej ect the result.
“This is not a case where the officers, passing by on the street, hear a shot and a cry for help and demand entrance in the name of the law. They had been following McDonald and keeping him under surveillance for two months at this rooming house. The prosecution now tells us that the police had no probable cause for obtaining a warrant until, shortly before the arrest, they heard the sound of the adding machine coming from the rooming house. And there is vague and general testimony in the record that on previous occasions the officers had sought search warrants but had been denied them. But those statements alone do not lay the proper foundation for dispensing with a search warrant.
“Where, as here, officers are not responding to an emergency, there must be compelling reasons to justify the absence of a search warrant. A search without a warrant demands exceptional circumstances, as we held in Johnson v. United States, supra [333 U.S. 10, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436]. * * * We cannot allow the constitutional barrier that protects the privacy of the individual to be hurdled so easily. Moreover, when we move to the scene of the crime, the reason for the absence of a search warrant is even less obvious. When the officers heard the adding machine and, at the latest, when they saw what was transpiring in the room, they certainly had adequate grounds for seeking a search warrant.
“Here, as in Johnson v. United States and Trupiano v. United States [334 U.S.

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Bluebook (online)
179 F.2d 456, 85 U.S. App. D.C. 394, 1949 U.S. App. LEXIS 2647, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/accarino-v-united-states-cadc-1949.