Draper v. United States

Petitioner
James Draper
Respondent
United States
Petitioner's Claim
That the search of petitioner and seizure of heroin following his warrantlessarrest by a federal narcotics agent violated the Fourth Amendment because the arrest was based solely on information from a paid informant.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Osmond K. Fraenkel
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Leonard B. Sand
Justices for the Court
Hugo Lafayette Black, William J. Brennan, Jr., Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, Potter Stewart, Charles Evans Whittaker (writing for the Court)
Justices Dissenting
William O. Douglas (Felix Frankfurter and Earl Warren did not participate)
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
26 January 1959
Decision
Upheld the lower courts' ruling that petitioner's arrest and the subsequent search of petitioner which turned up heroin were lawful, and affirmed his conviction.
Significance
This decision authorized a warrantless arrest by a federal narcotic agent under the federal narcotics laws based solely on information from a paid informant. Because the informant was employed by the agent to provide such information and his information had always been reliable in the past, the informant'sstatements to the agent, once verified by the agent's personal observations,gave the agent probable cause and reasonable grounds to believe that petitioner was violating the narcotics law. Since the arrest of petitioner was lawful, the subsequent search which turned up heroin was also valid as incident tothe lawful arrest.
In 1791, the states ratified the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and requiring probable cause for warrants. The newly independent states had learned through their experiencewith English law that the power to make arrests, searches, and seizures wasopen to abuse. English writs of assistance and general warrants, which allowed police to search and arrest based on mere suspicion without evidence of unlawful acts, had been exercised by English authorities arbitrarily and for political reasons. "Probable cause" is not defined in the Fourth Amendment, andits meaning has been the subject of numerous U.S. Supreme Court rulings. In 1959, the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether information from a paid informant was sufficient to show "probable cause" for a warrantless arrest.
In 1956, petitioner was arrested by a federal narcotics agent based on information given to the agent by a paid informant. A subsequent search of petitioner uncovered heroin. Petitioner was charged in federal district court with knowingly concealing and transporting narcotic drugs in violation of federal law. The district court overruled the petitioner's motion to suppress, or exclude from evidence, the heroin taken from him during the search. The motion claimed that the arrest and subsequent search were unlawful. At trial, the heroin was allowed into evidence over petitioner's objection, and he was convicted. The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the conviction. Petitioner sought a writ of certiorari from the U.S. Supreme Court, a methodby which the Supreme Court is asked to review a lower court decision. The Supreme Court agreed to review the case.
Informant Provided "Reasonable Grounds"
The Supreme Court affirmed the lower courts' rulings that the search of petitioner and seizure of the heroin were valid as incident to a lawful arrest andthat the heroin was properly admitted at trial. The Fourth Amendment requires "probable cause" for an arrest. Under the federal Narcotic Control Act of 1956, agents of the Bureau of Narcotics were permitted to "make arrests without warrant for violations of any law of the United States relating to narcoticdrugs . . . [if the arresting person] has reasonable grounds to believe thatthe person to be arrested has committed or is committing such violation." Thus, the "crucial question" for the Court was whether knowledge of the relatedfacts and circumstances gave the agent who arrested petitioner "probable cause" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and "reasonable grounds" within the meaning of the Narcotic Control Act, to believe that petitioner had committed or was committing a violation of the narcotic laws. According to theCourt, if "probable cause" and "reasonable grounds" existed, the arrest, though without a warrant, was lawful and the subsequent search of petitioner's person and the seizure of the heroin were validly made incident to a lawful arrest. Moreover, if the arrest, search, and seizure were valid, the motion to suppress was properly overruled and the heroin was competently received in evidence at trial.
The petitioner did not dispute this analysis of the issue, but instead asserted that the information from the paid informant was "hearsay," meaning that the information did not reflect the direct personal observations of the agent,but was obtained secondhand from the informant. The petitioner claimed that"hearsay" information could not be considered in determining "probable cause"or "reasonable grounds." The petitioner also argued that, even if hearsay could be considered, the information given to the agent in this case was insufficient to show "probable cause" or "reasonable grounds." The Supreme Court first determined that "probable cause" and "reasonable grounds" had substantially the same meaning. The Court then ruled, as to petitioner's first contention, that Brinegar v. United States (1949), had conclusively determinedthat evidence that is inadmissible to show guilt at trial, such as hearsay, may nonetheless be used to determine probable cause. Quoting from Brinegar, the Court explained that "[t]here is a large difference between . . . [guilt and probable cause], as well as between the tribunals which determine them, and therefore a like difference in the quanta and modes of proof requiredto establish them."
The Court also disagreed with petitioner's second contention that the information given to the agent by the informant was insufficient to show "probable cause" and "reasonable grounds" to believe that petitioner had violated or wasviolating the narcotic laws and to justify his arrest without a warrant. Theinformant identified petitioner by name and told the agent that the petitioner was peddling narcotics, had gone to Chicago to obtain a supply, and wouldreturn on a certain train on a certain day or the day after. The informant also gave the agent a detailed physical description of petitioner and of the clothing he was wearing and said that he would be carrying "a tan zipper bag,"and that he habitually "walked real fast." The agent met the train on both days identified by the informant and on the second day saw a person, having theexact physical attributes and wearing the precise clothing described by [theinformant], alight from an incoming Chicago train and start walking "fast" toward the exit. He was carrying a tan zipper bag in his right hand.
The Court concluded that, although the informant's information may have been"hearsay" to the agent, the agent would have been derelict in his duties hadhe not pursued it since the informant was employed for that purpose and his information had always been found accurate and reliable. Moreover, by the timeof the arrest, the agent had personally verified through his own observations every facet of the information given to him by the informant except whetherpetitioner had narcotics. The Court concluded that "surely, with every otherbit of [the informant's] information being thus personally verified, [the agent] had `reasonable grounds' to believe that the remaining unverified bit of[the informant's] information--that [petitioner] would have the heroin withhim--was likewise true." The Court stated that, "In dealing with probable cause, . . . as the very name implies, we deal with probabilities. These are nottechnical; they are the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act."
The Supreme Court upheld the state courts' rulings that the agent had probable cause and reasonable grounds to believe that petitioner was violating druglaws at the time he arrested petitioner, that the arrest was therefore lawful, and that the subsequent search and seizure were likewise valid, as incidentto that lawful arrest. The Court also affirmed the trial court's denial of petitioner's motion to suppress and the use of the seized heroin to convict petitioner.
Dissent Says Arrest Unlawful
Justice Douglas issued a lengthy dissent in which he concluded that the arrest made on the mere word of an informer violated the spirit of the Fourth Amendment and the requirement of the law governing arrests in narcotics cases. According to Douglas, "apart from those cases where the crime is committed in the presence of the officer, arrests without warrants, like searches without warrants, are the exception, not the rule in our society." Justice Douglas considered the majority's ruling a break from America's long history of opposition to arrests based on "whispered charges and accusations . . . in lieu of evidence of unlawful acts." Douglas stated, "[d]own to this day . . . [s]o faras I can ascertain the mere word of an informer, not bolstered by some evidence that a crime had been or was being committed, has never been approved by this Court as `reasonable grounds' for making an arrest without a warrant."
Although Justice Douglas agreed with the majority that "proof of `reasonablegrounds' for believing a crime was being committed need not be proof admissible at the trial," he nonetheless concluded that "[m]ere suspicion is not enough; there must be circumstances represented to the officers through the testimony of their senses sufficient to justify them in a good-faith belief that the defendant had violated the law." According to Douglas,

[n]othing but suspicion is shown in the instant case--suspicion of an informer, notthat of the arresting officers. Nor did they seek to obtain from the informerany information on which he based his belief. The arresting officers did nothave a bit of evidence that the petitioner had committed or was committing acrime before the arrest. The only evidence of guilt was provided by the arrest itself.

Douglas contended that had the arresting officers gone to a

magistrate to get a warrant of arrest and relied solely on the report of the informer, it is not conceivable . . . that one would be granted . . . [because] they could not present to the magistrate any of the facts which the informer may have had. They could swear only to the fact that the informer had made theaccusation.

Douglas concluded that, "[w]e are not justified in lowering the standard whenan arrest is made without a warrant and allowing the officers more leeway than we grant the magistrate."
Also, this arrest could not be sanctioned based on the heroin that was uncovered during the search of petitioner after the arrest. "[A] search is not to be made legal by what it turns up. In law it is good or bad when it starts anddoes not change character from its success."
Impact
Police use of informants to obtain information on criminal activity has become common practice in the United States since Draper. The Draperdecision encouraged the use of paid informants by allowing police to use information obtained from such informants as the basis for making arrests as long as police take time to personally verify or corroborate the information tothe extent possible. Draper also established a definition of "probablecause" based on common sense, rather than technical rules, a definition still in use in the 1990s.
Related Cases

• Nathanson v. United States, 290 U.S. 41 (1933).
  
• United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581 (1948).
  
• Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160 (1949).
  
• Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23 (1963).
  
• Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108 (1964).
  
• Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410 (1969).
  
• United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1 (1977).
  
• Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983).

Marijuana Use and Drug Legalization
In 1973, on the heels of the drug-culture explosion that attended the late 1960s and early 1970s, the National Opinion Research Center asked a sampling ofthe population, "Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal or not?"

• Eighteen percent answered that it should, 80 percent that it should not.
• The percentage who wanted to legalize marijuana increased for each year up to and including 1978, when the ratio stood at 30:67.
• Thenthe number in favor began to decrease, and from 1986 until 1991 it remained at or below the 1973 levels.
• From 1991 the percentage in favor began to rise again, and by 1996 it was at 26 percent, the highest number since thehigh of 1978.

Interestingly, the Department of Health and Human Services' National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA), found an overall decrease in drug use between1985 and 1996.

• In 1985, 16.3 percent of respondents claimed to have used an illicitdrug during the preceding year, and 13.6 percent had smoked marijuana or hashish.
• Eleven years later, however, only 10.8 percent in 1996 claimed to have used illicit drugs in the past year, and just 8.6 percent had smoked marijuana.

Sources
Bureau of Justice Statistics Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics-1996. Washington, DC: U.S. Government, 1997.