Page:Brief for the United States, Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963).djvu/25

 held that there was nothing in the fact of petitioner Toy's arrest which required him to send the agents to Yee and hence that the finding of narcotics at Yee's house could not be deemed the fruits of the illegal arrest. Similarly, this new information, which led to proof against petitioner Wong Sun and circled back to Toy as well, was held not to be the fruit of the arrest of Toy.

The government agrees with the court of appeals that the evidence introduced at the trial was detached from and not the product of the arrests. However, as pointed out in the government's brief in opposition, it is our initial position that that issue need not be reached because we believe that the judgments below may be sustained upon the ground that the arrests were lawful emergency arrests based upon probable cause. We discuss first our reasons for believing that the arrests were lawful, before turning to the grounds relied upon by the court of appeals.

It is the position of the government that, in the circumstances of this case, the petitioners were lawfully arrested. In the case of Toy, reasonable grounds for an immediate arrest without warrant arose from the combined impact of two elements: first, the specific designation of Toy as a source of supply of narcotics by a man deemed reliable by a federal narcotics agent, and, second, the flight by Toy when confronted