Tough racket
Posted: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 11:25 AM by Sam Singal
By Pete Williams, NBC News justice correspondent
In dissenting from the Supreme Court's refusal to take up a drug case from Philadelphia, Chief Justice John Roberts today channeled his inner Jack Webb or Dashiell Hammett in summarizing the facts of the case like a hard boiled fiction writer.
"North Philly, May 4, 2001. Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three-dollar steak. Devin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He'd made fifteen, twenty drug busts in the neighborhood.
"Devin spotted him: a lone man on the corner. Another approached. Quick exchange of words. Cash handed over; small objects handed back. Each man then quickly on his own way. Devlin knew the guy wasn't buying bus tokens. He radioed a description and Officer Stein picked up the buyers. Sure enough: three bags of crack in the guy's pocket. Head downtown and book him. Just another day at the office."
The issue was whether the policeman had sufficient reason to make the arrest -- probable cause -- even though he didn't actually see any drugs change hands. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said no, he did not, and dismissed the charges. Justice Roberts, joined by Justice Kennedy, said that was the wrong ruling. They said the Supreme Court should have taken the case to overturn that decision.
Probable cause requires only a reasonable ground for belief of guilt. There could have been an innocent explanation for the transaction the policeman saw, said Roberts and Kennedy, but the officer knew it was a high-crime area where frequent drug sales take place. He was entitled to draw the conclusion he did, the justices said.
Tough racket.
