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B. Arrests and Investigation.

Although good investigations lead to arrests, an arrest is not the end of a criminal investigation. The arrest is often the beginning of the most serious phase of an investigation. One of the most important investigative techniques, custodial interrogation, is difficult to accomplish without probable cause to arrest. Police cannot pick up a suspect for questioning unless there is probable cause to arrest. See Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 216 (1979). While officers do ask suspects to come to the station voluntarily, see F. Inbau, J. Reid, & J. Buckley, Criminal Interrogations and Confessions 211-212 (3d ed. 1986), some will not go without compulsion. See id., at 212. In those cases, interrogation can only be secured through an arrest. See ibid. Given the importance of interrogations and confessions to solving crimes, see id., at xiv; Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S. 568, 571 (1961), the ability to arrest suspects is essential to the continuing investigation of a crime.

"In each case police were confronted with one or more brutal murders which the authorities were under the highest duty to solve. Each of these murders was unwitnsessed, and the only positive knowledge on which a solution could be based was possessed by the killer. In each there was reasonable ground to suspect an individual but not enough legal evidence to charge him with guilt. In each the police attempted to meet the situation by taking the suspect into custody and interrogating him. * * * [N]o one suggests that any course held promise of solution of these murders other than to take the suspect into custody for questioning. The alternative was to close the books on the crime and forget it, with the suspect at large. This is a grave choice for a society in which two-thirds of the murders already are closed out as insoluble." Watts v. Indiana, 338 U. S. 49, 58 (1949) (Jackson, J., concurring and dissenting) (emphasis in original).

An arrest opens the door for other investigative techniques. A suspect will be fingerprinted after an arrest, but it is unclear whether something short of probable cause will support a detention for the purpose of fingerprinting. See Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U. S. 721, 728 (1969). Many other physical tests of the suspect can be conducted after an arrest, such as placing the arrestee's hands under an ultraviolet lamp, taking fingernail scrapings, hair samples, urine samples, or a Breathalyzer test. See 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure §5.3(c), pp. 132-133 (3d ed. 1966). Arrest also allows police to identify the suspect as the perpetrator through a lineup or other means. See American Law Institute, Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure, Commentary, 294-295 (Proposed Draft 1975) (Model Code). The importance of DNA testing in criminal investigations, see Cronan, The Next Frontier for Law Enforcement: A Proposal for Complete DNA Databanks, 28 Am. J. Crim. L. 119, 127 (2000), insures that post-arrest investigation will be even more important in the future.

The importance of continuing the investigation after the arrest significantly influences the approach taken to the law of arrests. The Model Code rejected a preponderance of the evidence standard for arrests because it is

"the purpose of this decision [to arrest] is to take a person into custody so that the determination can be made whether or not to charge the arrested person with crime. To require that guilt be more probable than not at the time of the arrest is to require at the beginning of the process the degree of certainty which is appropriate to its conclusion." Model Code, supra, at 294.

The higher standard would frustrate investigation efforts, forcing society to pay an excessively high price in unsolved crime. See id., at 294-295. One noteworthy concern to the commentators was the case of a crime with more than one suspect. A preponderance standard would frustrate the ability of officers to use the arrest and subsequent investigation to solve the crime, an unacceptable proposition. See id., at 295-296.

This echoed the position adopted by the Second Restatement of Torts.

"A sees B and C bending over a dead man, D. B and C each accuse the other of murdering D. A is not sure that either B or C did the killing, but he has a reasonable suspicion that either B or C killed D. A is privileged to arrest either or both." Restatement (Second) of Torts §119, Illustration 2, p. 198 (1964); accord Model Code, supra, at 295.

Professor LaFave concurs with the Model Code's position.

"There is much to be said for the Model Code position. If the function of arrest were merely to produce persons in court for purposes of their prosecution, then a more-probable-than-not test would have considerable appeal. But there is also an investigative function which is served by the making of arrests." See 2 LaFave, §3.2(e), at 65.

Since the purpose of the arrest, however, "is to initiate a short-term process of sorting out, usually on the scene, to determine which person should be charged with crime, i.e., arrested in the full sense of the word," it can be appropriate to arrest more than one suspect for a crime. State v. Jordan, 583 P. 2d 1161, 1163 (Or. App. 1978). Where further investigation is called for, officers should be allowed to arrest multiple suspects. As the next section demonstrates, this reasonable approach is not defeated by any of this Court's precedents.

C. Conflict.

Three decisions from this Court, Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471 (1963), Mallory v. United States, 354 U. S. 449 (1957), and Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10 (1948), could create a conflict over probable cause in multiple suspect situations to create a bright-line rule against multiple suspect arrests if improperly read. Bright lines are particularly inappropriate to probable cause decisions, Ornelas v. United States, 517 U. S. 690, 699 (1996), and none of these cases can support a bright-line rule favoring the defendant.

In Johnson, federal agents received information from the Seattle police that unknown individuals were smoking opium in the Europe Hotel. See 333 U. S., at 12. Three federal agents and a Seattle police detective went to the hotel, where they detected a strong scent of burning opium coming from Room 1. See ibid. The Seattle officer knocked on the door and identified himself to the defendant, who opened the door and let the officers in. See ibid. After seeing that she was alone in the room, the officers arrested the defendant and searched the room. The search uncovered "opium and smoking apparatus." Ibid.

This Court held the search was the product of an illegal arrest. The odor of burning opium was not enough to justify a warrantless search, see id., at 13, so the search stood or fell on the legality of the arrest. While the United States attempted to justify the search as incident to a valid arrest, it "in effect, concedes that the arresting officer did not have probable cause to arrest petitioner until he had entered her room and found her to be the sole occupant." Id., at 16. The Court agreed with the concession. "Thus the Government quite properly stakes the right to arrest, not on the informer's tip and the smell the officers recognized before entry, but on the knowledge that she was alone in the room, gained only after, and wholly by reason of, their entry of her home." Ibid. Since this initial entry was unlawful, the arrest and search were also invalid. See id., at 17.

Mallory is another case susceptible to misreading. The victim was alone in the basement of her apartment when she was raped by "a masked man, whose general features were identified to resemble those of petitioner and his two grown nephews . . . ." 354 U. S., at 450. The petitioner, Mallory, and his nephews lived in the same building as the victim. Ibid. Mallory and one of the nephews disappeared from the apartment house soon after the crime. The petitioner was apprehended the next day and taken to police headquarters along with his nephews. See ibid. The suspects were then interrogated over the next ten hours until confessions were obtained. See id., at 450-451.

Mallory is most noted for the holding that the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure required suppressing a confession due to an excessive delay between the arrest and the arraignment. See id., at 455-456. A statement at the end of the opinion addresses the nature of probable cause. In finding that the fact that there were multiple suspects did not excuse the delay, the Court stated that

"[n]or is there an escape from the constraint laid upon the police by [FRCP, rule 5(a)] in that two other suspects were involved for the same crime. Presumably whomever the police arrest, they must arrest on 'probable cause.' It is not the function of the police to arrest, as it were, at large and to use an interrogating process at police headquarters in order to determine whom they should charge before a committing magistrate on 'probable cause.' " Id., at 456.

Wong Sun is the most recent case to suggest that probable cause must focus on one suspect. In addition to establishing the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine for Fourth Amendment cases, the Wong Sun Court also ruled on probable cause to arrest. Federal agents were told by an arrestee that he had purchased heroin from a person known to him as " 'Blackie Toy' " who operated a laundry on Leavenworth Street in San Francisco. See 371 U. S., at 473. Federal agents went to a laundry on Leavenworth Street operated by James Wah Toy. Upon learning that he was confronted by federal narcotics agents, Toy slammed the door to the laundry and ran through a hallway to his living quarters in the back. The agents pursued, arresting him as he reached into a nightstand drawer in his bedroom. See id., at 474. There was no other information linking Toy or his laundry to "Blackie Toy" described by the informant. See ibid. This Court held that Toy's arrest was illegal because the agents lacked sufficiently precise information. The arrest was unlawful because there was no "information of some kind which had narrowed the scope of their search to this particular Toy." Id., at 481.

These cases do not establish a per se rule requiring police to narrow their investigation to one suspect before making an arrest. Johnson and Wong Sun involved very low levels of suspicion. In Johnson, the officers did not know who or how many people were in the hotel room. Except for the smell of burning opium, the agents had no idea what was being done or who was doing it. This is very different from the present case in which the officer knew someone possessed the cocaine and could narrow his suspicion to the three occupants. This focus was also lacking in Wong Sun. The federal agents had scant information that pointed to a potentially large universe of suspects. The street named by the informant was 30 blocks long, and the laundry's name did not bear the name Toy. See id., at 480-481. This Court's emphasis on the agent's failure to narrow the focus down to James Toy indicates that there were unknown other people named Toy that could have been subject to this information. Since the officers had no reason to believe that James Wah Toy went by the nickname "Blackie," the individual mentioned by the informant could have been one of many people with the last name "Toy" on a very large street in a city with a large Chinese population. As in Johnson, the number of potential suspects was unknown, distinguishing Wong Sun from this case.

The statements in Mallory must be read in the context of that decision. Mallory did not turn on the legality of the arrests, but rather the length of time between the arrest and the arraignment. See 354 U. S., at 455. Also, the opinion asserts that there was ample evidence of probable cause to arrest the petitioner. See ibid. Therefore, there was no need to interrogate the defendant extensively before arraigning him. See ibid. The statement regarding multiple suspects, see ibid., is made in the same context. Because other suspects were also arrested, the police must also have had probable cause to arrest them, making delay for the purpose of interrogation unnecessary and illegal. See ibid. Quite simply, "[t]he Supreme Court did not, however, suggest that the arrest of Mallory was illegal." Model Code, supra, at 295, n. 14.

The relatively low standard of probable cause and the importance of further investigation after arrest strongly favor allowing police to arrest multiple suspects of one crime where further investigation is called for. A careful examination of the facts in this case demonstrates that there was probable cause to arrest all three suspects.

III. There was probable cause to arrest
all three occupants of the car.

The fact that police can arrest more than one suspect for a crime, see Part II, supra, does not end the inquiry. Not every case will have facts which support arresting more than one person. There is also an upper limit on the number of people that can be arrested for an offense. The probable cause requirement is not so flexible as to sanction dragnets, like the mass arrest of African-American youths struck down in Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U. S. 721, 722, 728 (1969). When the victim's only description of her assailant is that he was a "Negro youth," id., at 722, the police must do further investigation to narrow the set of suspects before making arrests. Similarly, the fact that all of the occupants of a vehicle may be arrested when an officer discovers a crime there does not allow the police to arrest everyone in an enclosed structure after the commission of a crime. For example, the police cannot arrest everyone in the crowded theater to determine who shouted "fire." Cf. Schenck v. United States, 249 U. S. 47, 52 (1919).

Probable cause requires a narrowing of the universe of suspects to some manageable number before making an arrest. The hypotheticals in the Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure and the Second Restatement of Torts sanction arrests of two suspects for a crime. See supra, at 20-21. This is a floor, not a ceiling for the number of suspects who can be arrested in the appropriate multiple-suspect situation. In the right circumstances, it may be appropriate to arrest ten suspects. See Grano, Probable Cause and Common Sense: A Reply to the Critics of Illinois v. Gates, 17 U. Mich. J. L. Ref. 465, 496 (1984). "It causes us to overlook the success of the police in narrowing their investigation from the universe of all possible suspects, which may include much of the population, to ten individuals. In a modern, mobile society, this should be seen as a rather significant accomplishment." Ibid. The fact that three suspects were arrested is not a barrier to finding probable cause.

Officer Snyder's decision to arrest the three occupants of the vehicle was a reasonable choice that is consistent with the probable cause standard. He had much more than suspicion that one of the three had placed drugs in the car. The five plastic baggies containing what appeared to be (and was) cocaine was placed in the car by someone. Their placement between the rear seat and armrest strongly suggests that one of the current occupants placed the drugs there. See supra, at 8. The $763.00 in the glove compartment reinforces the notion that someone in the car is selling drugs. Officer Snyder had more than enough information to conclude that someone in that car hid the drugs.

What he did not know was who or how many of them committed the crime. While the owner of the car denied having drugs and consented to the search, the reports are filled with the cases of consensual searches incriminating the consenting party. See, e.g., United States v. Drayton, 536 U. S. 194, 198-199 (2002); Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U. S. 33, 36 (1996). The placement of the drugs in the backseat and the money in the glove compartment spread the suspicion, since no passenger was closest to both. With suspicion equally diffused among the three occupants, arresting all of them was the fairest and most effective option.

United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581 (1948) does not change the analysis. An informant told officials that he was to buy counterfeit gas ration coupons from Buttitta. See id., at 583. When officials made the raid, the informant was in the rear seat holding coupons he said he obtained from Buttitta, who was in the driver's seat. See ibid. Di Re was in the passenger seat. All three were taken to the police station and searched, which uncovered more illegal coupons on Di Re. See ibid. The search of Di Re was held illegal because there was no probable cause to arrest him. Id., at 595. Unlike the present case, there was evidence that the two other occupants of the car were involved in the crime, while the agents had no information pointing to Di Re. See id., at 593. Where officers have information that points to some, but not all members of a vehicle, they can only arrest those at whom the information points. Where the suspicion is equally shared, then every suspect should be arrested.

The separation of the drugs and money also diminishes the innocence of all three occupants. Placing the drugs and money in these separate areas would be difficult for one occupant to do without the knowledge or cooperation of at least one other passenger. Officer Snyder's threat to arrest all three if someone did not own up to the drugs, see Pringle v. State, 805 A. 2d 1016, 1019 (Md. 2002), must be understood in this context. The admonition was not just an inducement to confess, but also an effort to get any innocent passengers who had knowledge of the crime to incriminate the guilty. The Maryland Court of Appeals' characterization of this good police work as exploitation, see id., at 1031, is both inaccurate and unfair.

Once his questioning failed to discover the culprit, Officer Snyder's options were limited. A Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968) frisk had little prospect of discovering any further information since the perpetrator already kept the drugs and money away from his person. If he let the suspects go, then there was little chance of solving the crime. The only alternative would be to check the baggies of cocaine for fingerprints in the hope that the perpetrator's fingerprints were already in a fingerprint database. Obtaining fresh fingerprints from the suspects would be very difficult, since it is unlikely that Officer Snyder carried a fingerprinting kit with him. Since taking them to the stationhouse for fingerprinting without probable cause raises serious Fourth Amendment issues, see Davis, 394 U. S., at 728, arrest is the most reasonable means to solve the crime.

Not every crime can be solved, but a crime in which suspicion has been narrowed so closely should be solved. The equally shared suspicion between the three, the failure of any members of the trio to give more information, and the inability to solve the crime without an arrest and more investigation all underscore the reasonableness of the arrest. This reasonableness supports the conclusion that the arrests were based upon probable cause.

Amicus does not advocate a separate reasonableness test for probable cause. Probable cause is the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness standard, and any additional balancing test is an unnecessary complication. See Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 213 (1979). But the reasonableness of Officer Snyder's actions is still relevant to the constitutionality of the arrests.

The imprecise probable cause standard, see Ornelas v. United States, 517 U. S. 690, 695 (1996), "is a fluid concept-turning on the assessment of probabilities in particular factual contexts . . . ." Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213, 232 (1983). It is applied in a nontechnical manner under "the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act." Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 175 (1949). The evidence is examined " 'not in terms of library analysis by scholars, but as understood by those versed in the field of law enforcement.' " Gates, supra, at 232 (quoting United States v. Cortez, 449 U. S. 411, 418 (1981)). Probable cause allows officers to make reasonable mistakes without violating the Fourth Amendment. Hill v. California, 401 U. S. 797, 804 (1970). Since whatever error Officer Snyder may have made for arresting the three for the crime was reasonable, there was probable cause. The objective "reasonable officer" standard is relevant to this inquiry.

Probable cause protects several constitutional interests. It protects liberty since suspicionless searches and arrests are inconsistent with this value. See Henry v. United States, 361 U. S. 98, 102 (1959). Privacy is similarly protected. See ibid. Probable cause also limits police discretion. "To allow less would be to leave law-abiding citizens at the mercy of the officers' whim or caprice." Brinegar, 338 U. S., at 176. The arrests in this case are consistent with these values.

As discussed above, the arrests were far from suspicionless. There was ample reason to believe that one or more of the three was involved in drug dealing. This type of suspicion also limits an officer's discretion. There was no dragnet like the one condemned in Davis. The Maryland Court of Appeals' contention that upholding this arrest could lead to mass arrests such as all the occupants of a movie theater, see Pringle, 805 A. 2d, at 1027, n. 12, is specious. If there is one certainty about the probable cause standard, it is that every case must be examined upon its own facts. See, e.g., Ornelas, 517 U. S., at 696; Gates, 462 U. S., at 232; Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 59 (1968). Under probable cause "[o]ne simple rule will not cover every situation." Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143, 147 (1972). Therefore, "because the mosaic which is analyzed for a reasonable-suspicion or probable-cause inquiry is multi-faceted, 'one determination will seldom be a useful precedent for another.' " Ornelas, supra, at 698 (quoting Gates, supra, at 238, n. 11). While there are exceptions to this rule, see ibid., arresting three suspects will not dictate upholding the arrest of a much larger number of individuals. See Ornelas, supra, at 698. Probable cause is thus particularly ill-suited to the Maryland court's slippery slope argument. While the number of potential arrestees may at some point attenuate the suspicion sufficiently to defeat probable cause, that determination must be made on a case-by-case basis.

Officer Snyder's good police work should not be punished through the exclusion of Pringle's confession. ⁽⁵⁾ Upholding the search will not grant police license to make mass arrests. Instead, it recognizes the importance of the arrest to investigation and the flexibility of the probable cause standard when confronted with multiple suspects. Upholding the arrests allows probable cause to continue to maintain the balance between individual rights and public safety.

CONCLUSION

The decision of the Maryland Court of Appeals should be reversed.

May, 2003

Respectfully submitted,

Charles L. Hobson

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5. Because Pringle's arrest was supported by probable cause, amicus does address the issue of whether his confession was the product of an illegal arrest under Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590 (1975).