What is the test for probable cause in criminal arrest?

In ascertaining whether there was probable cause for the arrest, we rely on an objective rather than a subjective standard and look to the facts known to the agents at the time of arrest rather than to their characterization or stated basis for their behavior. ". . . the test for probable cause does not involve speculation about the outcome of a trial on the merits of the charge on which defendant is told he is being arrested, but rather upon an assessment of whether the knowledge of the arresting officer at the time of arrest would be sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the person arrested had committed or was committing an offense." United States v. Atkinson, 450 F.2d 835, 838 (5th Cir. 1971) (emphasis supplied). When the "crime under which the arrest is made and a crime for which probable cause exists are in some fashion related," the arrest is valid. Mills v. Wainwright, 415 F.2d 787, 790 (5th Cir. 1969).

This is not to say that a court will indulge in "ex post facto extrapolations of all crimes that might have been charged on a given set of facts at the moment of arrest . . . for such an exercise might permit an arrest that was a sham or fraud at the outset, really unrelated to the crime for which probable cause to arrest was actually present

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to be retroactively validated." 450 F.2d at 838. Nor will such an arrest be valid when it was merely a ploy used to afford agents or police the time and opportunity to investigate and amass facts sufficient to constitute probable cause. Atkinson, supra; Mills, supra; Staples v. United States, 320 F.2d 817 (5th Cir. 1963); Moss v. Cox, 311 F.Supp. 1245 (E.D.Va.1970).

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