Eugene Spurlock v. United States

Appellant was arrested without warrant by federal narcotics agents on February 25, 1960, at the Portland, Oregon, airport after arriving there by airplane. He was then searched and a quantity of narcotic drugs was recovered from his possession. A motion to suppress evidence was denied. He was tried and found guilty, the narcotics recovered by the search being introduced in evidence over his objection. Upon this appeal from judgment of conviction appellant contends that the arrest was made without probable cause and that the search and seizure were unlawful since they were not incidental to a lawful arrest.

This contention we must reject upon the authority of Draper v. United States, 1959, 358 U.S. 307 , 79 S.Ct. 329 , 3 L.Ed.2d 327 . In that case probable cause was supplied by a special employee of the Bureau of Narcotics at Denver who had previously given accurate and reliable information to the federal narcotics agents. The informant told the agent that the defendant had taken up residence in Denver and was supplying narcotics to several addicts in that city. Later the informant told the agent that the defendant had gone to Chicago by train to secure heroin and that he would…