United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
Argued October 5, 2001 Decided January 29, 2002
No. 00-3107
United States of America,
Appellant
v.
Ronnie Bookhardt,
Appellee
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Columbia
(No. 00cr00024-01)
Suzanne Grealy Curt, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the
cause for appellant. With her on the briefs were Wilma A.
Lewis, U.S. Attorney at the time the briefs were filed, John
R. Fisher, Thomas J. Tourish, Jr., and Arvind K. Lal,
Assistant U.S. Attorneys. Roscoe C. Howard, Jr., U.S. Attor-
ney, entered an appearance.
A.J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender, argued the cause
and filed the briefs for appellee. Tony W. Miles, Assistant
Federal Public Defender, entered an appearance.
Before: Ginsburg, Chief Judge, and Sentelle and
Garland, Circuit Judges.
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge Garland.
Garland, Circuit Judge: This appeal turns on the question
of whether, if a police officer arrests a defendant on a ground
that proves invalid, the arrest is nonetheless lawful if the
same officer had probable cause to arrest the defendant for a
different offense. We answer that question in the affirma-
tive, and, accordingly, reverse the district court's suppression
of evidence discovered in a search incident to the arrest of
defendant Ronnie Bookhardt.
I
On November 19, 1999, Detective Caesar Casiano, a mem-
ber of the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department,
was driving an unmarked car on Washington's Southeast
Freeway. As Casiano was traveling in the far left lane, he
was forced onto the highway's shoulder by Bookhardt's car.
Reentering the road, Casiano observed Bookhardt driving at
high speed and weaving in and out of traffic without using
turn signals. Although (as Casiano subsequently testified) he
was prepared to let Bookhardt get away, Bookhardt exited at
the same ramp as Casiano, and Casiano pulled him over at a
stoplight.
When Casiano asked Bookhardt for his driver's license,
Bookhardt replied that he did not have it with him; he gave
the officer his Social Security number instead. Upon radio-
ing a police dispatcher, Casiano learned that Bookhardt's
license had expired on October 14, 1999--approximately one
month before. Casiano then informed Bookhardt that he was
under arrest for driving with an expired license. Incident to
that arrest, Casiano searched Bookhardt's car and found two
guns, one under the driver's seat and the second under a
floormat on the driver's side. A grand jury subsequently
indicted Bookhardt for unlawful possession of a firearm by a
convicted felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. s 922(g).
Pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12(b)(3),
Bookhardt moved to suppress the use of the guns as evidence.
His motion did not discuss the arrest for driving with an
expired permit. Instead, Bookhardt argued that the initial
traffic stop was unlawful because Detective Casiano lacked
probable cause to believe that he had committed a traffic
violation, and contended that the guns should be suppressed
because they were discovered as a result of the unlawful stop.
Following a hearing, the district court denied Bookhardt's
motion. The court found Casiano's testimony to be credible,
ruled that he had had probable cause to stop Bookhardt for
reckless driving and to arrest him for driving with an expired
license, and held that the discovery of the guns was the
product of a lawful search incident to that arrest.
At the time of the district court's ruling, neither the parties
nor the court realized that, although driving with a license
expired for more than ninety days is a criminal offense under
District of Columbia law, D.C. Code s 40-301(d), driving with
a license expired for ninety days or less is not criminal, id.
s 40-301(d-1).1 The prosecutor learned of the ninety-day
exception before the jury was sworn on the morning of trial
and promptly informed the court and defense counsel, who
renewed Bookhardt's motion to suppress. The court found
that Casiano had had probable cause to arrest Bookhardt for
reckless driving.2 It ruled, however, that since the detective
had chosen instead to arrest Bookhardt for driving with the
expired license, and since it was now apparent that the arrest
on that charge was invalid, the search of the car incident to
arrest was also invalid and its fruits must be suppressed.
Because the guns found in Casiano's search were essential to
proof of the firearms offense for which Bookhardt was indict-
ed, their suppression effectively ended the prosecution.
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1 Recodified in 2001 as D.C. Code s 50-1401.01(d) & (d-1).
2 As discussed infra Part IV, reckless driving is a criminal offense
in the District of Columbia. See D.C. Code s 40-712(b) & (c),
recodified in 2001 as D.C. Code s 50-2201.04(b) & (c).
Thereafter, the government filed a notice of appeal pursuant
to 18 U.S.C. s 3731, the statute that governs appeals by the
United States in criminal cases.
II
Before reaching the question of whether the car search was
lawful, we must first address Bookhardt's motion to dismiss
this appeal on the ground that the government failed to file,
in a timely fashion, the certification required by s 3731.
That section provides, inter alia, that:
An appeal by the United States shall lie to a court of
appeals from a decision or order of a district court
suppressing or excluding evidence ... in a criminal
proceeding, not made after the defendant has been put in
jeopardy ..., if the United States [A]ttorney certifies to
the district court that the appeal is not taken for purpose
of delay and that the evidence is a substantial proof of a
fact material in the proceeding.
....
The appeal in all such cases shall be taken within
thirty days after the decision, judgment or order has
been rendered and shall be diligently prosecuted.
The provisions of this section shall be liberally con-
strued to effectuate its purposes.
18 U.S.C. s 3731 (emphasis added). In this case, the district
court's order granting the motion to suppress was entered on
September 13, 2000. The government's notice of appeal was
filed October 12, 2000, within the thirty-day window provided
by the statute. The required certification, however, was not
filed until November 2, 2000, approximately three weeks after
the notice of appeal. Bookhardt contends that the govern-
ment's certification was untimely and that the appeal should
therefore be dismissed.
Section 3731 does not expressly state whether the govern-
ment must file its certification by the time the notice of
appeal is filed, by the end of the thirty-day period in which
the appeal may be taken, or by some other time. Although
several circuits have inferred from the purposes underlying
the section that certification should be made at the time the
notice of appeal is filed,3 this circuit has never decided the
question. Nor need we do so today. As the government has
represented that from this point forward its policy will be to
file the s 3731 certification on or before the date it files the
notice of appeal, we do not expect this issue to arise again.
Appellant's Opp'n to Appellee's Mot. to Dismiss at 4 n.2.
More important, for the reasons stated below, it is not
necessary to decide the question in order to resolve the
appeal presently before us.
Assuming that the government filed its certification late, its
tardiness is necessarily fatal only if it is a jurisdictional bar to
consideration of the government's appeal. Although the stat-
ute expressly makes the filing of the certification a prerequi-
site to appeal, see 18 U.S.C. s 3731 (providing that "an appeal
by the United States shall lie ... if the United States
[A]ttorney certifies...." (emphasis added)), it says nothing
about the consequences of failing to file in a timely fashion--a
not surprising state of affairs given, as noted above, that the
statute does not mention a filing deadline for certification at
all. Every circuit to consider the issue has concluded that
untimely filing is not a jurisdictional bar.4 Instead, while
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3 See, e.g., United States v. Smith, 263 F.3d 571, 578 (6th Cir.
2001) (holding that the certification requirement "is intended to
ensure a conscientious pre-appeal analysis by the responsible prose-
cuting official," and that "[t]he purpose of the certification is clearly
defeated when the government files its certification after initiating
an appeal") (internal quotation marks omitted); see United States v.
Salisbury, 158 F.3d 1204, 1207 (11th Cir. 1998); United States v.
Bailey, 136 F.3d 1160, 1163 (7th Cir. 1998); United States v. Miller,
952 F.2d 866, 875 (5th Cir. 1992); see also United States v. Hanks,
24 F.3d 1235, 1238 (10th Cir. 1994) (suggesting that the certification
should be filed within the thirty-day period allowed for filing the
notice of appeal).
4 See United States v. Smith, 263 F.3d 571, 578 (6th Cir. 2001);
United States v. Romaszko, 253 F.3d 757, 760 (2d Cir. 2001); In re
Grand Jury Subpoena, 175 F.3d 332, 337 (4th Cir. 1999); United
emphasizing that s 3731 requires a " 'conscientious pre-
appeal analysis by the responsible prosecuting official,' "
United States v. Smith, 263 F.3d 571, 577 (6th Cir. 2001)
(quoting United States v. Carrillo-Bernal, 58 F.3d 1490, 1494
(10th Cir. 1995)), courts have treated untimely certification as
a filing irregularity under Federal Rule of Appellate Proce-
dure 3(a)(2), for which the remedy is a matter of the court's
discretion. Such treatment is appropriate, as Rule 3(a)(2)
states that "[a]n appellant's failure to take any step other
than the timely filing of a notice of appeal does not affect the
validity of the appeal, but is ground only for the court of
appeals to act as it considers appropriate, including dismiss-
ing the appeal."
In this case the government did file a timely notice of
appeal, and, accordingly, its failure arguendo to file the
accompanying certification in a timely manner "does not
affect the validity of the appeal," but rather leaves us with
discretion to act as we "consider[ ] appropriate." Fed. R.
App. P. 3(a)(2). As to how to exercise that discretion, the
Sixth Circuit has recently observed:
[C]ourts typically consider a variety of factors, including:
when the certificate was filed; the reason for the failure
to timely file it; whether the government did in fact
engage in a conscientious pre-appeal analysis; whether
the government acknowledges that the certification re-
quirement should be taken seriously; any delay or preju-
dice to the defendant; whether the appeal raises impor-
tant legal issues needing appellate clarification; and
whether the appeal should be heard in the interest of
justice, or for any other significant reason.
Smith, 263 F.3d at 578 (internal quotation marks omitted).
We have no need to assess the relative import of these
__________
States v. Gantt, 194 F.3d 987, 997 (9th Cir. 1999); United States v.
Salisbury, 158 F.3d 1204, 1206 (11th Cir. 1998); United States v.
Bailey, 136 F.3d 1160, 1163 (7th Cir. 1998); United States v.
Carrillo-Bernal, 58 F.3d 1490, 1492-93 (10th Cir. 1995); United
States v. Miller, 952 F.2d 866, 875 (5th Cir. 1992).
factors, as each weighs in favor of permitting the govern-
ment's appeal to go forward in the instant case.
First, the government filed the required certification only
three weeks after filing the notice of appeal, without any
complaint or prompting by either the defendant or the court.5
Second, the government has represented that it did not file
earlier because it was unaware of any requirement to do so.
The government's representation on the point is credible
given that the statute does not contain an express timing
requirement, that this circuit has never before addressed the
question, and that Bookhardt's experienced counsel has con-
ceded that he, too, was unaware of such a requirement. Mot.
for Leave to Late File Mot. to Dismiss Appeal at 1.
Nor is there any reason to doubt the government's repre-
sentation that it engaged in a conscientious pre-appeal analy-
sis and that this analysis yielded the conclusion that an appeal
under s 3731 was warranted. Appellant's Opp'n to Appel-
lee's Mot. to Dismiss at 14.6 The suppressed evidence was
__________
5 Bookhardt did not file his motion to dismiss until September 24,
2001, almost eleven months after the government filed its s 3731
certification.
6 Bookhardt contends that a reason to doubt does arise from the
government's request for a thirty-day extension of this court's
briefing schedule, made after its filing of the s 3731 certification, on
the ground that the government needed additional time to complete
its evaluation of whether to pursue the appeal, including time to
obtain authorization from the Solicitor General. See U.S. Attor-
ney's Manual s 9-2.170(A)(2) (providing that any appeal of a deci-
sion adverse to the government must be approved by the Solicitor
General). But there is nothing inconsistent between the United
States Attorney's certification that an appeal meets the threshold
requirements of s 3731--that it is not taken for purpose of delay
and that the suppressed evidence is substantial proof of a material
fact--and the need for additional time to determine whether the
case meets other criteria that the Department of Justice may
impose on government appeals in criminal cases. Nor is there
anything in s 3731, which requires certification by "the United
States [A]ttorney," that compels the United States Attorney to
essential, not merely "material," to the government's case,
and, as we discuss below, the contention that it was wrongly
suppressed is sufficiently reasonable to eliminate any concern
that the appeal was taken "for purpose of delay." Moreover,
the government acknowledges that the certification require-
ment must be taken seriously, id. at 5, as confirmed by the
fact that it filed the certification within three weeks of the
notice of appeal, without any suggestion from the defendant
or the court that the certification was missing or late. The
defendant, who has been free on bond pending this appeal,
has been unable to articulate any way in which that three-
week hiatus--which did not delay resolution of the appeal at
all--prejudiced him.7 Finally, although the legal issue at
stake here may not be of transcendent importance, it surely is
significant and apparently is in need of some clarification.
Under these circumstances, we conclude that it is "appro-
priate," Fed. R. App. P. 3(a)(2), and in the interest of justice
to hear this appeal. Accordingly, even assuming that the
government's certification was not timely filed, we deny de-
fendant's motion to dismiss the appeal.
III
In considering an appeal from a decision of a district court,
we review de novo the court's conclusions regarding questions
of law, United States v. Weaver, 234 F.3d 42, 46 (D.C. Cir.
2000), as well as its determinations of probable cause, Ornelas
v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 699 (1996). We review the
district court's "findings of historical fact only for clear error
and ... give due weight to inferences drawn from those
facts," id., as well as to the court's determination of witness
credibility, United States v. Christian, 187 F.3d 663, 666
(D.C. Cir. 1999).
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obtain approval from the Solicitor General before filing a certifica-
tion.
7 Cf. Smith, 263 F.3d at 580 (noting that "[a]lthough pre-trial
release is a deprivation of liberty, [the defendant] has not shown
substantial prejudice beyond that deprivation").
The government contends that the warrantless search of
the passenger compartment of Bookhardt's car, which yielded
the two guns that were suppressed in this case, was lawful
under the well-established "search incident to arrest" excep-
tion to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. See
New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 460 (1981).8 The validity of
a search grounded upon that exception depends on the lawful-
ness of the arrest, which in turn requires probable cause to
believe that a crime has been committed. See Christian, 187
F.3d at 667. As the government concedes, although Detec-
tive Casiano arrested Bookhardt for driving with an expired
license, he did not have probable cause to do so because it is
not a crime under District of Columbia law to drive with a
license that has been expired for ninety days or less. See
Appellant's Br. at 12, 16 (conceding that Bookhardt could not
lawfully be arrested on the expired license charge); see also
id. at 9 n.7 (acknowledging for purposes of appeal that, at the
time of the arrest, Casiano was aware that Bookhardt's
license had expired on October 14, 1999). Accordingly, the
remaining questions are: (1) whether Bookhardt's arrest was
lawful if the detective had probable cause to believe that
Bookhardt had committed a different crime (reckless driving),
and (2) whether Casiano did in fact have such probable cause.
We consider the first question in this Part and the second in
Part IV below.
More than twenty-five years ago, this court stated that "an
arrest will be upheld if probable cause exists to support
arrest for an offense that is not denominated as the reason
for the arrest by the arresting officer." United States v.
Joyner, 492 F.2d 655, 656 (D.C. Cir. 1974). In that case, we
held that even if Florida police had wrongly arrested the
defendant for an out-of-state crime, the arrest (and therefore
the use of evidence obtained incident thereto) was lawful
because they had probable cause to arrest him for violations
__________
8 As the Court further held in Belton, a search incident to arrest
" 'is not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth
Amendment, but is also a "reasonable" search under that Amend-
ment.' " 453 U.S. at 459 (quoting United States v. Robinson, 414
U.S. 218, 235 (1973)).
of Florida law. Id. In so holding, we cited a case of even
earlier vintage, Bell v. United States, in which we had held
that "[t]he question is not what name the officer attached to
his action; it is whether, in the situation in which he found
himself, he had reasonable ground to believe a felony had
been committed and that the [defendants] had committed it."
254 F.2d 82, 86 (D.C. Cir. 1958). In Bell, we ruled that
despite the fact that the offense for which the defendants had
been arrested, "investigation of housebreaking," was not a
crime, the fact that probable cause existed to arrest the
defendants for a felony was sufficient to render the arrest
lawful. Id. at 86-87.9
Other circuits have similarly concluded that, even if proba-
ble cause does not support arrest for the offense charged by
the arresting officer, an arrest (and search incident thereto) is
nonetheless valid if the same officer had probable cause to
arrest the defendant for another offense.10 This result is
__________
9 At oral argument, Bookhardt sought to distinguish between an
arrest like his own, where the crime charged was not actually a
crime, and an arrest in which the charged offense was a crime but
the officer lacked probable cause to believe it had been committed.
We see no reason why such a distinction should be important, since
an arrest in either circumstance is equally invalid and the only
question under our precedents is whether another, valid ground for
arrest exists. Moreover, the above recitation of the facts in Bell,
which involved a charged offense that was not an offense at all,
makes clear that the distinction the defendant seeks to draw would
not assist him in distinguishing this circuit's precedents.
10 See, e.g., Barna v. City of Perth Amboy, 42 F.3d 809, 819 (3d
Cir. 1994) (holding that "[p]robable cause need only exist as to any
offense that could be charged under the circumstances"); United
States v. Kalter, 5 F.3d 1166, 1168 (8th Cir. 1993) (upholding arrest
because, although the police lacked probable cause to arrest the
defendant for violation of the concealed-weapon statute that was the
actual reason for the arrest, they had probable cause to arrest him
for violating a separate ordinance requiring that a gun be carried in
a locked container); United States v. Atkinson, 450 F.2d 835, 838
(5th Cir. 1971) (declining to decide whether an arrest for false
pretenses was legal because the officer had probable cause to arrest
consistent with the Supreme Court's holding, in Whren v.
United States, that the existence of probable cause must be
determined objectively from the facts and circumstances
known to the officers at the time of the arrest without regard
to the "actual motivations" or "[s]ubjective intentions" of the
officers involved. 517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996). In Whren, police
officers purportedly stopped a car for a traffic violation,
subsequently arresting the occupants on narcotics charges
after observing a bag of drugs. The defendants alleged that
the traffic violation was merely a pretext, and suggested that
the officers' real motivation for the stop was to search for
drugs. The Supreme Court held that even if the traffic stop
was a pretext for the search, the officers' subjective intent
was irrelevant; under the Fourth Amendment, the stop was
lawful because there was probable cause to believe the driver
had committed a traffic violation. Id. at 812-13, 819.11 So
too, here. Notwithstanding Casiano's subjective intent to
arrest Bookhardt for driving with an expired license, the
arrest was lawful if Casiano had probable cause to believe the
defendant guilty of reckless driving.
Bookhardt argues that Whren is inapplicable to this case
because he does not contend that Detective Casiano arrested
him on a pretext, but rather out of the detective's ignorance
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the defendant for operating a vehicle with an invalid license tag);
Klingler v. United States, 409 F.2d 299, 303-06 (8th Cir. 1969)
(upholding arrest because, although the police lacked probable
cause to arrest the defendant for vagrancy, the charged offense,
they had probable cause to believe that he had committed robbery);
see also Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure s 1.4(d) (3d ed.
1996) (collecting cases); cf. United States v. Dhinsa, 171 F.3d 721,
725 (2d Cir. 1998) (upholding traffic stop on the basis of an observed
traffic violation, notwithstanding detectives' reliance on a different
ground).
11 In Arkansas v. Sullivan, the Court made clear that Whren
applies not only to civil traffic stops, but to criminal traffic arrests
as well. 121 S. Ct. 1876, 1878 (2001) (reversing suppression of
drug-related evidence and holding that it is irrelevant whether a
traffic-violation arrest was a pretext for a drug search, as long as
there was probable cause for the traffic arrest).
of the relevant D.C. Code provision. We fail to see, however,
why the police should be in a better position if they prevari-
cate about the reason for arresting a defendant than if they
make an honest mistake of law. As long as Casiano had an
objectively valid ground upon which to arrest Bookhardt, the
fact that he articulated an invalid one does not render the
arrest unlawful. Cf. United States v. Dhinsa, 171 F.3d 721,
725 (2d Cir. 1998) ("A fair reading of Whren ... leads to the
conclusion that an observed traffic violation legitimates a stop
even if the detectives do not rely on the traffic violation.").
Indeed, were we to hold otherwise, we would do no more than
create an incentive for the police "to routinely charge every
citizen taken into custody with every offense" they can think
of, "in order to increase the chances that at least one charge
would survive"--yielding no additional protection of civil lib-
erties while adding considerably to the burden placed upon
both defendants and police. United States v. Atkinson, 450
F.2d 835, 838 (5th Cir. 1971) (quoted with approval in Wayne
R. LaFave, Search and Seizure s 1.4(d), at 111 n.29 (3d ed.
1996)).12
Although the district court agreed that Detective Casiano
had probable cause to arrest Bookhardt for reckless driving,
it declined to rely on that ground to validate the search,
holding that Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113 (1998), rather
than Whren, was the applicable Supreme Court precedent.
In Knowles, the Court held that an officer may not conduct a
search incident to arrest when, although the officer has
probable cause to make an arrest, he issues a citation instead
of arresting the defendant. Knowles found that neither of
the two historical justifications for the search-incident-to-
__________
12 Bookhardt also argues that even if Whren does apply, it still
requires the government to show that there was probable cause to
believe he was "driving with an expired licence," albeit based upon
objective circumstances rather than the officer's subjective belief.
Appellee's Br. at 14. This formulation, however, misapprehends
Whren because, contrary to the rule in that case, it focuses on the
officer's subjective motivation for making the arrest--that is, his
belief that Bookhardt had violated the prohibition on driving with
an expired license.
arrest exception--the need to disarm the subject in order to
take him into custody and the need to preserve evidence for
later use at trial--applies when a defendant is not actually
arrested and taken into custody. Id. at 116-19. The key
point in Knowles, therefore, was not that the officer had a
lawful ground for arrest upon which he did not rely, but that
he did not arrest the defendant at all. When an officer does
take a defendant into custody, the historical justifications for
the search-incident-to-arrest exception apply regardless of
whether the officer articulates the wrong reason for making
the arrest.13 Accordingly, because Casiano did take Book-
hardt into custody, Knowles is without application to this
case,14 and the car search must be upheld if the detective had
probable cause to arrest the defendant.
IV
Bookhardt argues that even if a lawful arrest for violating
the reckless driving statute would have rendered the search
of his car valid, his arrest was unlawful because there was no
probable cause to believe he had violated the statute. This
argument is readily dismissed.
The D.C. Code makes reckless driving a criminal offense,
D.C. Code s 40-712(c), and provides that:
Any person who drives any vehicle upon a highway
carelessly and heedlessly in willful or wanton disregard
__________
13 In United States v. Robinson--a case in which the defendant,
much like Bookhardt, was arrested for the offense of driving while
his license was revoked--the Court also made clear that the applica-
bility of these historical justifications need not be litigated on a
case-by-case basis. "The authority to search the person incident to
a lawful custodial arrest," the Court held, "does not depend on what
a court may later decide was the probability in a particular arrest
situation that weapons or evidence would in fact be found upon the
person of the suspect." 414 U.S. at 235; accord Belton, 453 U.S. at
461.
14 Accord United States v. McLaughlin, 170 F.3d 889, 891 & n.2
(9th Cir. 1999) (holding Knowles inapplicable to cases in which
defendants are arrested).
of the rights or safety of others, or without due caution
and circumspection and at a speed or in a manner so as
to endanger or be likely to endanger any person or
property, shall be guilty of reckless driving.
Id. s 40-712(b).15 Detective Casiano's testimony, credited by
the district court, established that Bookhardt drove at a high
rate of speed, greater than that of the surrounding traffic,
that he wove in and out of lanes without signaling, and that
he forced Casiano's vehicle off the road, nearly causing a
collision. Whether or not the defendant actually exceeded
the speed limit, Bookhardt's misconduct was serious and
more than sufficient to establish both that he drove "careless-
ly and heedlessly in willful ... disregard of the ... safety of
others," and that he drove "without due caution and circum-
spection ... in a manner so as to endanger ... any person."
See Swailes v. District of Columbia, 219 A.2d 100, 102 (D.C.
1966) (holding that "it is possible to drive well within the
prescribed speed limit and still be a menace to the safety of
others" under an earlier but identical version of the reckless
driving statute). Hence, there is no doubt that Casiano had
probable cause to arrest Bookhardt for the crime of reckless
driving.
V
We conclude that, notwithstanding the government's failure
to file its s 3731 certificate contemporaneously with its notice
of appeal, this case is properly before us. We further hold
that if a police officer arrests a defendant on a ground that
ultimately proves invalid, the arrest is nonetheless lawful if
the same officer had probable cause to arrest the defendant
for a different criminal offense. Finally, we find that the
officer who arrested defendant Bookhardt had probable cause
to do so for the offense of reckless driving. Because Book-
hardt's arrest was therefore lawful, the search incident to
that arrest was lawful as well, and the evidence obtained as a
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15 Recodified in 2001 as D.C. Code s 50-2201.04(b) & (c).
result of the search is admissible at defendant's trial. Ac-
cordingly, the order of the district court suppressing that
evidence is
Reversed.