The Region - News from Feb. 19, 1987

A federal appeals court reversed the 1983 cocaine conspiracy conviction of a Colombian citizen, ruling that federal agents should have obtained an arrest warrant before capturing the man in his Long Beach hotel room. Prosecutors argued that many arrests have been made without an arrest warrant because federal agents do not always have time to telephone a federal judge or magistrate and obtain one. But in ordering a new trial for Hector Alvarez, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 decision that federal drug agents had as long as two hours to obtain a warrant before arresting him. Without such a warrant, much of the incriminating evidence against Alvarez was illegally seized, the judges said. The ruling reversed decisions made during the trial by then-U.S. District Judge Malcolm M. Lucas, who is now California’s chief justice.