United States v. Reynaldo Gilberto Jiminez-Badilla

On this appeal from a judgment of conviction of violation of Title 21 U.S.C. § 174 (receiving, concealing and transportation of heroin) after a guilty verdict by a jury, appellant raises three issues.

(1) Whether the arrest of appellant without an arrest warrant was upon probable cause.

(2) Whether certain items of evidence seized at the time of the arrest without a search warrant and introduced in evidence at the trial, were legally seized.

(3) Whether appellant’s motion for a mistrial should have been granted.

The facts concerning the arrest and seizures, as shown by the record on the motion to suppress, are substantially as follows:

Special Agent Fluhr, Federal Bureau of Narcotics, testified that on September 19, 1969, at 9:30 a. m., a certain informant, with whom the agent had no prior dealing, placed a phone call from the agent’s Phoenix office to Nogales, State of Sonora, Mexico; that the agent overheard this phone call; that the informant spoke to an individual by the name of Hector Ambriz and asked Ambriz to send to Phoenix a quantity of heroin and was told by Ambriz that the heroin would be arriving that day, late that evening, and that the informant would know the…