Case Title: State v. Blais

Citation: 163 Vt 642, 665 A.2d 569

Docket Number: 

State: vermont

Court: Vermont Supreme Court

Date: 1995-06-19T00:00:00Z

Document:
STATE_V_BLAIS.94-148; 163 Vt 642; 665 A.2d 569

[Filed 19-Jun-1995]


                               ENTRY ORDER

                      SUPREME COURT DOCKET NO. 94-148

                             MARCH TERM, 1995


State of Vermont                     }          APPEALED FROM:
                                     }
                                     }
     v.                              }          District Court of Vermont,
                                     }          Unit No. 1, Windsor Circuit
Jeffrey Blais                        }
                                     }          DOCKET NO. 805-9-93Wrcr


                    In the above-entitled cause, the Clerk will enter:

          The State brings this interlocutory appeal from a district
court judgment, which suppressed testimonial and physical evidence
acquired following defendant's warrantless arrest on the ground there was 
no probable cause for the arrest.  We affirm.

          The trial court made the following findings.  In a "fly-over,"
state police officers observed what they suspected was marijuana growing
in a thickly wooded area between a corn field and a campground.  Two
police officers went to the area, via a thirty-to-forty-foot path from
the campground, and found about eighty-five marijuana plants, in a
clearing, along with gardening tools and fertilizer.  One officer
followed another path out of the clearing to a brook, where he found a
hose. The officers left the plot, and one officer returned the next day
to indicate its location to two other officers.  They saw no one on
either day.  On the third day, the officers installed two ground sensors,
one located on the entrance path and the second located in the plot.  The
monitors did not work that day; they were too sensitive and alerted
frequently when it rained.

          On the fourth day, the officers experienced the same problems
with the monitors but then adjusted them for sensitivity.  After three
hours, they handed surveillance over to two other officers who hid behind
a knoll thirty-to-forty feet from the plot.  About one hour later, the
sensor on the path alerted and then the sensor in the plot alerted, and
continued to alert every five minutes.  One-half hour after the first
alert, defendant came down the path toward the officers and was arrested
at gunpoint.

          Defendant moved to suppress all evidence acquired following his
arrest on the ground that the police violated the Fourth Amendment to the
United States Constitution and Chapter 1,

 

Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution because they lacked probable cause
to arrest him.  The trial court held that there was no probable cause to
arrest defendant, and the State brings this interlocutory appeal.

          Defendant contends that we must give deference to the trial
court's determination that the law enforcement officials had no probable 
cause for his arrest.  He relies on State v. Maguire, in which we applied
this standard of review in considering the challenge to probable cause
for issuing a search warrant.  146 Vt. 49, 53,