Case Title: Prince v. State

Citation: 

Docket Number: 388, 2006

State: delaware

Court: Delaware Supreme Court

Date: 2007-02-27T00:00:00Z

Document:
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE 
 
ALLAN J. PRINCE, 
 
 
§  
 
 
 
 
 
 
§   No. 388, 2006 
 
Defendant Below,  
 
§  
 
Appellant,  
 
 
§  Court Below—Superior Court 
 
 
 
 
 
 
§   of the State of Delaware, 
 
v. 
 
 
 
 
§   in and for New Castle County 
 
 
 
 
 
 
§   Cr.A. No. 
STATE OF DELAWARE, 
 
§  
 
 
 
 
 
 
§  
 
Plaintiff Below, 
 
 
§  
 
Appellee. 
 
 
 
§  
 
 
 
 
 
    Submitted:  January 17, 2007 
 
 
 
 
       Decided:  February 27, 2007 
 
Before STEELE, Chief Justice, HOLLAND and BERGER, Justices. 
 
 
This 27th day of February 2006, it appears to the Court that: 
(1)  
The defendant-appellant, Allan J. Prince (“Prince”), filed an 
appeal from the Superior Court’s judgments of conviction for Trafficking in 
Heroin and Possession with Intent to Deliver Controlled Substances.  For 
Trafficking in Heroin, Prince was sentenced to five years of Level V 
imprisonment, with five days credit, suspended after three years, for two 
years of Level IV halfway house supervision.  The Level IV supervision is 
suspended after six months for eighteen months at Level III supervision.  For 
Possession with Intent to Distribute Heroin, Prince was sentenced to three 
years of Level V imprisonment, suspended after one year for eighteen 
months at Level III supervision.  For Maintaining a Dwelling for Keeping 
 
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Controlled Substances, Prince was sentenced to two years of Level V 
imprisonment, suspended after serving six months for eighteen months at 
Level III supervision.  For Resisting Arrest, Prince was ordered to pay a fine 
of $200, and sentenced to twelve months of Level V imprisonment, 
suspended for twelve months of Level I supervision.   
(2)  
Prince filed a motion for the suppression of 478 bags of heroin 
(totaling almost ten grams), $1700 in cash, a 1992 Lexus and all other 
evidence seized from his residence at 707 W. Fourth Street, Apt. A.  
According to Prince, the trial court erred by failing to suppress the evidence 
found at his residence.   
(3) 
In this appeal, Prince argues that his convictions should be 
reversed because the warrant to search his residence was granted pursuant to 
stale information.  Prince also claims that the police would not have had 
cause to interview him, had they not improperly searched his house, and 
consequently, the admissions made in his interview should also be excluded 
as “fruit of the poisonous tree.”1  We find no merit to his appeal.  
Accordingly, we affirm.  
(4)  
On January 6, 2005, Wilmington police received a tip from 
Delaware Crime Stoppers that Prince was selling drugs from a certain 
                                          
 
1 Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963). 
 
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apartment on West Fourth Street.  The informant alleged personal 
knowledge and gave Crime Stoppers a detailed physical description of 
Prince, two known aliases of him, and his home and cellular telephone 
numbers. 
(5) 
During the week of January 16, 2005, the police opened an 
investigation into Prince’s activities, and confirmed details of the tip, 
including Prince’s age, address, home telephone number and known aliases, 
through a Delaware Justice Information System computer check.  Through 
this check the police learned that Prince was on probation and obtained a 
copy of his mug shot.  At this time, the police also began intermittent 
surveillance of Prince’s residence.   
  
(6) 
On January 21, 2005, the police witnessed Prince leave his 
residence, walk a block and get into a car occupied by two women.  The car 
circled the block once, and Prince got out and returned to his residence.  The 
two women drove away.  Suspecting that they had just witnessed a drug sale, 
the police stopped the women and recovered four bags of heroin from the 
driver.  The driver told the police she had just bought the heroin from a 
dealer she knew only as “Black.”  Shown Prince’s photograph by the police, 
the driver identified him as the dealer, “Black.” 
 
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(7) 
Based upon the tip from Crime Stoppers and the information 
gathered from the surveillance of Prince’s residence, the police obtained a 
warrant to search his apartment on January 27.  During the search, police 
found 478 bags of heroin with a total weight of just under ten grams and 
$1,700 in cash.  While police were obtaining a search warrant, the officers 
on surveillance saw Prince leave the residence and drive away.  Aware that 
Prince lacked a valid driver’s license, police arrested him for violating his 
probation by driving without a license.  Prince gave a full confession, when 
he was questioned later about the drugs and money found in his apartment.   
 
(8) 
The trial court rejected Prince’s claim that the information 
contained in the warrant affidavit was stale by the time the warrant was 
issued and executed.  The trial judge ruled that the police moved with 
reasonable dispatch in investigating and confirming the original tip and, 
three weeks later, obtaining and executing the warrant.  The legal principles 
applicable to a staleness inquiry are set forth in this Court’s decision in 
Jensen v. State:  “probable cause to justify the issuance of a warrant must be 
manifest at the time the warrant is sought to make the search….It is not 
sufficient that at some prior time there existed circumstances that would 
have warranted the search in question.”2   
                                          
 
2 Jensen v. State, 428 A.2d 105, 111 (Del 1984). 
 
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(9) 
Whether the warrant affidavit “meets the test of temporal 
proximity is determined on an ad hoc basis in light of the circumstances of 
each case.”3  The circumstances of this case are not in dispute.  The police 
received a tip from Crime Stoppers on January 6.  Two weeks later, on 
January 21, 2006, the police surveillance uncovered further evidence of 
Prince’s drug dealing.  Six days after that, on January 27, 2006, the police 
applied for, and were granted, a search warrant for Prince’s residence.  
(10) Considering the totality of the evidence in this case, the 
Superior Court held that the magistrate issuing the search warrant reasonably 
concluded that the passage of six days between the evidence of Prince’s sale 
of heroin on January 21, and the application for the warrant on January 27, 
did not render the evidence supporting probable cause stale.  In Windsor v. 
State, this Court held that the passage of nine days between learning the 
location of drugs and procuring a search warrant did not render the 
information stale.4  Accordingly, we hold that Prince’s first claim is without 
merit. 
 
(11) Prince’s second claim is that all evidence seized must be 
suppressed because it is the fruit of an illegal search, and the search was 
sufficiently connected to the seizure of the evidence such that the evidence 
                                          
 
3 Id. 
4 Windsor v. State, 676 A.2d 909 (Table), 1996 WL 145800 (Del. Supr.). 
 
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cannot be purged of its primary taint. Prince also claims that the admissions 
from his interview with the police should also be suppressed as they were 
also directly derived from the illegal search.  Prince’s second claim of error 
is predicated upon a determination by this Court that his first claim is 
meritorious.  Because we have already held that Prince’s first claim is 
without merit, a fortiori, we also conclude that his second claim is without 
merit.  
 
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that the judgments of the 
Superior Court are AFFIRMED.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
BY THE COURT: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
/s/ Randy J. Holland 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Justice