Opinion of the Court. 333 U.S. forcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime. Any assumption that evidence sufficient to support a magistrate's disinterested determination to issue a search warrant will justify the officers in making a search without a warrant would reduce the Amendment to a nullity and leave the people's homes secure only in the discretion of police officers. Crime, even in the privacy of one's own quarters, is, of course, of grave concern to society, and the law allows such crime to be reached on proper showing. The right of officers to thrust themselves into a home is also a grave concern, not only to the individual but to a society which chooses to dwell in reasonable security and freedom from surveillance. When the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a policeman or government enforcement agent. There are exceptional circumstances in which, on balancing the need for effective law enforcement against the 3 In United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452, 464, this Court said: . . . the informed and deliberate determinations of magistrates empowered to issue warrants as to what searches and seizures are permissible under the Constitution are to be preferred over the hurried action of officers and others who may happen to make arrests. Security against unlawful searches is more likely to be attained by resort to search warrants than by reliance upon the caution and sagacity of petty officers while acting under the excitement that attends the capture of persons accused of crime. . . ." "Belief, however well founded, that an article sought is concealed in a dwelling house furnishes no justification for a search of that place without a warrant. And such searches are held unlawful notwithstanding facts unquestionably showing probable cause." Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20, 33. 10 Opinion of the Court. right of privacy, it may be contended that a magistrate's warrant for search may be dispensed with. But this is not such a case. No reason is offered for not obtaining a search warrant except the inconvenience to the officers and some slight delay necessary to prepare papers and present the evidence to a magistrate. These are never very convincing reasons and, in these circumstances, certainly are not enough to by-pass the constitutional requirement. No suspect was fleeing or likely to take flight. The search was of permanent premises, not of a movable vehicle. No evidence or contraband was threatened with removal or destruction, except perhaps the fumes which we suppose in time would disappear. But they were not capable at any time of being reduced to possession for presentation to court. The evidence of their existence before the search was adequate and the testimony of the officers to that effect would not perish from the delay of getting a warrant. If the officers in this case were excused from the constitutional duty of presenting their evidence to a magistrate, it is difficult to think of a case in which it should be required. II. The Government contends, however, that this search without warrant must be held valid because incident to an arrest. This alleged ground of validity requires examination of the facts to determine whether the arrest itself was lawful. Since it was without warrant, it could be valid only if for a crime committed in the presence of the arresting officer or for a felony of which he had reasonable cause to believe defendant guilty." 5 This is the Washington law. State v. Symes, 20 Wash. 484, 55 P. 626; State v. Lindsey, 192 Wash. 356, 73 P. 2d 738; State v. Krantz, 24 Wash. 2d 350, 164 P. 2d 453; State v. Robbins, 25 Wash. 2d 110, 169 P. 2d 246. State law determines the validity of arrests without warrant. United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581. Opinion of the Court. 333 U.S. The Government, 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. It points out specifically, referring to the time just before entry, "For at that time the agents did not know whether there was one or several persons in the room. It was reasonable to believe that the room might have been an opium smoking den." And it says, that when the agents were admitted into the room and found only petitioner present they had a reasonable basis for believing that she had been smoking opium and thus illicitly possessed the narcotic." 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. It was therefore their observations inside of her quarters, after they had obtained admission under color of their police authority, on which they made the arrest.' Thus the Government is obliged to justify the arrest by the search and at the same time to justify the search by 6 The Government brief states that the question presented is "Whether there was probable cause for the arrest of petitioner for possessing opium prepared for smoking and the search of her room in a hotel incident thereto for the contraband opium, where experienced narcotic agents unmistakably detected and traced the pungent, identifiable odor of burning opium emanating from her room and knew, before they arrested her, that she was the only person in the room." The Government also suggests that "In a sense, the arrest was made in 'hot pursuit.' . . ." However, we find no element of "hot pursuit" in the arrest of one who was not in flight, was completely surrounded by agents before she knew of their presence, who claims without denial that she was in bed at the time, and who made no attempt to escape. Nor would these facts seem to meet the requirements of the Washington "Uniform Law on Fresh Pursuit." Session Laws 1943, ch. 261. 10 Opinion of the Court. the arrest. This will not do. An officer gaining access to private living quarters under color of his office and of the law which he personifies must then have some valid basis in law for the intrusion. Any other rule would undermine "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects," and would obliterate one of the most fundamental distinctions between our form of government, where officers are under the law, and the police-state where they are the law. Reversed. THE CHIEF JUSTICE, MR. JUSTICE BLACK, MR. JUSTICE REED and MR. JUSTICE BURTON dissent. 8 In Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 303, 304, this Court said: "It would not be possible to add to the emphasis with which the framers of our Constitution and this court (in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, in Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, and in Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385) have declared the importance to political liberty and to the welfare of our country of the due observance of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution by these two [Fourth and Fifth] Amendments. The effect of the decisions cited is: that such rights are declared to be indispensable to the 'full enjoyment of personal security, personal liberty and private property'; that they are to be regarded as of the very essence of constitutional liberty; and that the guaranty of them is as important and as imperative as are the guaranties of the other fundamental rights of the individual citizen,-the right, to trial by jury, to the writ of habeas corpus and to due process of law. It has been repeatedly decided that these Amendments should receive a liberal construction, so as to prevent stealthy encroachment upon or 'gradual depreciation' of the rights secured by them, by imperceptible practice of courts or by well-intentioned but mistakenly over-zealous executive officers." 333 U.S. Opinion of the Court. UNITED STATES v. BROWN. CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT. No. 100. Argued January 5-6, 1948.-Decided February 2, 1948. 1. Under the Federal Escape Act, a sentence for escape or attempt to escape while serving one of several consecutive sentences is to be superimposed upon all prior sentences service of which has not been completed and is to begin upon the expiration of the last of the prior sentences. Pp. 18-27. 2. The canon in favor of strict construction of penal statutes is not an inexorable command to override common sense and evident statutory purpose. P. 25. 160 F.2d 310, reversed. Respondent's motion for correction of a sentence imposed upon him for an offense under the Federal Escape Act was overruled by the District Court. 67 F. Supp. 116. The Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the cause to the District Court. 160 F. 2d 310. This Court granted certiorari. 332 U. S. 755. Reversed, p. 27. Robert W. Ginnane argued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Perlman, Assistant Attorney General Quinn, W. Marvin Smith, Robert S. Erdahl and Philip R. Monahan. Elmo B. Hunter argued the cause and filed a brief for respondent. MR. JUSTICE RUTLEDGE delivered the opinion of the Court. The Federal Escape Act requires that a sentence for escape or attempt to escape "shall begin upon the expiration of, or upon legal release from, any sentence under which such person is held at the time of" the escape or |