Whiteley v. Warden, Wyoming State Penitentiary/Dissent Black

by Hugo Black

United States Supreme Court

401 U.S. 560

Whiteley  v.  Warden, Wyoming State Penitentiary

 Argued: Jan. 13, 1971. --- Decided: March 29, 1971

Mr. Justice BLACK, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE joins, dissenting.

With all respect to my Brethren who agree to the judgment and opinion of the Court, I am constrained to say that I believe the decision here is a gross and wholly indefensible miscarriage of justice. For this reason it may well be classified as one of those calculated to make many good people believe our Court actually enjoys frustrating justice by unnecessarily turning professional criminals loose to prey upon society with impunity. Here is what this record shows:

On the night of November 23, 1964, several establishments, including a bar and hardware store were broken into at the village of Saratoga, Wyoming. Some old coins and other items were taken from the hardware store. Some people saw petitioner and his companion that night in or near Saratoga. The next morning the sheriff, who lived at Rawlins, the county seat, another village in sparsely settled Carbon County, ^[1] investigated the burglaries. In addition to viewing the scene of the crimes, the sheriff received a rather detailed description of the car, including a portion of the license plate number, said to have been used by the burglars. The sheriff also received a tip that persuaded him that petitioner and his companion, Jack Daley, were probably guilty of one of the burglaries. Upon the strength of this tip, coupled with his observation of the scene of the crimes and the description of the vehicle, the sheriff personally appeared before the justice of the peace in Rawlins to secure a warrant for the arrest of petitioner and his companion. After securing the warrant he authorized and sent a statewide radio police alert describing the men and their car and calling upon officers to arrest them. The night of November 24, policemen at Laramie, Wyoming, learned that petitioner's companion, Daley, was in the city. They located and stopped the car described in the alert, finding it occupied by two men matching the descriptions contained in the message. One of the officers personally recognized Jack Daley. In response to a request for identification, Harold Whiteley gave police a false name. At that point the two men were arrested and the car was searched. Old coins, tools, and other items later identified at trial as having been taken from the burglarized hardware store were found in the trunk and interior of the car.

At the trial the seized items were introduced into evidence over petitioner's objection. In addition, petitioner was identified as having been near the scene of the crime on the night of November 23. ^[2] Jack Daley, petitioner's companion, told the jury in vivid detail how he and Whiteley jimmied open the back door and burglarized the hardware store. ^[3] Petitioner took thestand and presented an alibi defense which was discredited by several witnesses including Jack Daley. Petitioner was convicted and sentenced to 10 years for burglary and concurrently to life imprisonment under Wyoming law because of his several prior convictions. It was charged and proved that he had been convicted of three felonies and the record shows that he was 43 years of age and had already served six times in the penitentiary. The Supreme Court of Wyoming affirmed the conviction September 15, 1966, Whiteley v. State, 418 P.2d 164, holding that the Laramie officers had a right and duty to arrest the men in their vehicle because they had reasonable ground to believe the men had committed a burglary and that they had the fruits of their crime in the car, citing among other cases Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925). See also Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970).

I think it is a distortion of the Fourth Amendment's meaning to hold that this petitioner's arrest and the seizure of the goods he had stolen were an 'unreasonable arrest' and an 'unreasonable seizure.' In deciding this question it should always be remembered that the Fourth Amendment itself does not expressly command that evidence obtained by its infraction should always be excluded from proof.

There was certainly probable cause to arrest this man. The store was burglarized. The county was a sparsely settled one in which people knew one another. Petitioner, whose previous life would appear to have earned for him the title of professional in the stealing vocation, was seen around the store with his car the very night of the burglary. Undoubtedly this longtime county sheriff (who appears still to be sheriff) was bound to know petitioner. The tip he received was so persuasive to him that in the performance of his official duty he was willing to assume all the risk incident to having petitioner arrested. It surely cannot be said that when a sheriff, with his prestige and standing, and bond against civil suit, communicates an emergency message to arrest men in cars as burglars, a policeman must stand supinely by while two people denounced as burglars go along their way. Of course these policemen had enough information from the sheriff to have probable cause to arrest petitioner.

My disagreement with the majority concerning the wisdom and constitutional necessity of a 'little trial' before a magistrate or justice of the peace prior to the issuance of a search or arrest warrant is a matter of record. See Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 116, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 1514, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964) (Clark, J., dissenting); Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 429, 89 S.Ct. 584, 595, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969) (Black, J., dissenting). But even accepting those decisions, arguendo, they do not control the disposition of this case which involves the apprehension of criminals in an automobile moving away from the scene of the crime less than 24 hours after its commission. The sheriff's belief that Whiteley and Daley were guilty, even if it was only a 'suspicion' as the majority seems to label it, gave police officers proper grounds to stop petitioner's car and inquire about its passengers. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). And once the officers stopped the car and positively identified Jack Daley, they had every reason to believe that Whiteley was lying and attempting to escape detection when he reported a false name. At least at that point, if not before, the Laramie police had probable cause to arrest petitioner and Daley. With probable cause to arrest the men, they also had authority to search the car. Such a search could be justified under either of two theories. Even under Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969), the search of an automobile incident to the arrest of the occupants is permissible. And in this very case, the officers found a fully loaded handgun in the glove compartment. The search was also permissible under the 'movable vehicle' exception to the usual requirement for a search warrant. Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970); Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925). I consider it a travesty of justice to turn this man out of jail or give him a new trial six years after he was convicted. ^[4]

Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963), does not, in my judgment, justify what the Court is doing. The trial court passed on this issue of validity of petitioner's arrest some years ago. Later he asked for relief through state post-conviction procedures on the same ground and his claim was rejected. He has now sought relief through federal habeas corpus. After the United States District Court and the Court of Appeals rejected his unlawful-search claim bringing to 10 the number of state and federal judges who have consistently and unanimously rejected petitioner's claim, this Court reverses his judgment of conviction, although petitioner does not, of course, now allege his innocence. As I said in Kaufman v. United States, 394 U.S. 217, 231, 89 S.Ct. 1068, 1076, 22 L.Ed.2d 227 (Black, J., dissenting), the Fay v. Noia remedy should be limited as it was by its own facts, and convictions should remain final unless a petitioner seeking habeas corpus alleges that he can currently show he was innocent. There is not even a suspicion here that this hardened criminal is innocent and I would let him stay in confinement to serve his sentence.

Mr. Justice BLACKMUN agrees with much that is said by Mr. Justice BLACK and also dissents from the opinion and judgment of the Court.

Notes

1. The population of Carbon County according to the 1970 census is about 13,000 persons.
2. Leonard Russell Marion testified at trial that he had seen Whiteley at his home in Saratoga, a town of about 1,000 population, on the day of the robbery. Mr. Marion further testified that he observed Whiteley's car and a portion of the license plate number and gave that information to the sheriff. See R. 317-321, 329-330. The majority fails to recognize that Saratoga is a very small country town and that strangers are most unlikely to move about unnoticed. Something obviously aroused Mr. Marion's suspicion or else he would not have reported the observation of petitioner and his car to the sheriff.
3. Daley's testimony was not uncorroborated. He testified in detail about the trip from Laramie to Saratoga where the crime was committed with stops in Medicine Bow and Elk Mountain. Ernest Hornden testified at trial that Daley and Whiteley were in the Dip Bar in Medicine Bow on the night of November 23, 1964, shortly before the burglary. Another witness, LeRoy Hansen, testified that Whiteley was in Elk Mountain on the day of the burglary, see R. 315-316.
4. The search in this case took place on November 24, 1964. Although I disagreed with Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969), I have always believed that constitutional decisions should be fully retroactive in their application. See Linkletter v. Walker. 381 U.S. 618, 640, 85 S.Ct. 1731, 1743, 14 L.Ed.2d 601 (1965) (Black, J., dissenting). I am thus glad to see that the majority has apparently decided to apply constitutional decisions retroactively even when they do not affect the 'integrity of the fact-finding process,' see id., at 639, 85 S.Ct., at 1743, and will greatly burden the administration of justice, see Desist v. United States, 394 U.S. 244, 250, 89 S.Ct. 1030, 1034, 22 L.Ed.2d 248 (1969).