Title: State v. Dunavant

State: oregon

Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court

Document:

444 P.2d 1 (1968)
STATE of Oregon, Respondent,
v.
Lorance Urban DUNAVANT, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Oregon. Department 1.
Argued and Submitted June 5, 1968.
Decided July 24, 1968.
Oscar D. Howlett, Portland, argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellant.
*2 Jacob B. Tanzer, Asst. Chief Deputy Dist. Atty., Portland, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief was George Van Hoomissen, Dist. Atty., Portland.
Before PERRY, C.J., and McALLISTER, O'CONNELL, DENECKE and RODMAN, JJ.
RODMAN, Justice pro tem.
The defendant appeals his burglary conviction on the grounds that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress certain evidence seized pursuant to a search warrant and in receiving it in evidence at his trial. The substantial question in this case is whether the magistrate had probable cause to issue a search warrant based on the following affidavit presented to him.
The determination of probable cause for issuance of a search warrant is the function of the issuing magistrate. Our role is to assure that minimum state and federal constitutional criteria have been met by the magistrate in the finding of probable cause. Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 80 S. Ct. 725, 4 L. Ed. 2d 697 (1960).
This court may consider only the information brought to the magistrate's attention. Just as a search and seizure cannot be justified by its fruits, a warrant cannot be justified by facts known to the affiant but not found in his affidavit. Aguilar v. State of Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S. Ct. 1509, 12 L. Ed. 2d 723 (1964); Giordenello v. United States, 357 U.S. 480, 78 S. Ct. 1245, 2 L. Ed. 2d 1503 (1958); ORS 141.030.
Since Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S. Ct. 1684, 6 L. Ed. 2d 1081 (1961), the United States constitutional prohibition against the use of illegally seized evidence has been enforceable against the states, and in Ker v. State of California, 374 U.S. 23, 83 S. Ct. 1623, 10 L. Ed. 2d 726 (1963), the Supreme Court of the United States *3 held that the standard of reasonableness is the same under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Likewise, the standards for obtaining a search warrant are the same under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Aguilar v. State of Texas, supra.
Rosencranz v. United States, 356 F.2d 310 (First Cir.1966), contains a concise statement of those standards for determining the probable cause:
Applying those standards to the case at bar we are of the opinion that the affidavit is fatally defective. The most serious shortcoming is that a vital allegation is hearsay from an anonymous source, unsupported either by other facts that would make it creditable, or by a statement from the affiant that he has reason to believe the source to be reliable.
That allegation is:
The state does not claim that this was an observation of the affiant or that a reading of the entire affidavit would reasonably support the conclusion that it was the personal observation of the affiant; and, in any event, we are not permitted to presume the affidavit was made on the personal knowledge of the officer. Giordenello v. United States, supra. Rather, the state asks us to assume that the officer received the information from an employee of the S & H Green Stamp Redemption Center, and that such a person would be reliable in reporting a matter connected with his employment. The evidence adduced at the hearing on the motion to suppress revealed that it was, in fact, the manager of the redemption center who informed the police, but this was not made known to the magistrate and cannot be considered by us.
The defendant's possession of stolen property at the redemption center is the only link between him and the burglary and the only allegation that could give rise to a belief that stolen property was present at his residence. Without this, the affidavit and the resulting warrant must fail.
The rule that a search warrant affidavit may be based on hearsay is qualified by the requirement that there be in the affidavit a substantial basis for crediting the hearsay. Jones v. United States, supra; United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 85 S. Ct. 741, 13 L. Ed. 2d 684 (1965); Rugendorf v. United States, 376 U.S. 528, 84 S. Ct. 825, 11 L. Ed. 2d 887, reh. den., 377 U.S. 940, 84 S. Ct. 1330, 12 L. Ed. 2d 303 (1964); Aguilar v. State of Texas, supra; State v. Tacker, 241 Or. 597, 407 P.2d 851, 10 A.L.R.3d 355 (1965).
The affidavit in Tacker, supra, bears some similarities to the one now under scrutiny. There the third person informants described the stolen property to the affiant and stated its location in the premises. Police officers in Kelso, Washington, advised the affiant that property of that description had been taken in a Kelso burglary. In the case at bar someone informed the affiant that the defendant had been in possession of certain property; someone advised him that property of that description had been taken in a burglary.
However, there are also substantial and crucial differences:
1. In the Tacker affidavit there is mutual corroboration between the informants' report and the Kelso police report, in that each stated that the described property had been taken during a particular burglary. This is lacking in the Dunavant affidavit. See Jones v. United States, supra.
2. The identified informants in the Tacker case each gave the affiant the same information, thereby furnishing some cross-corroboration of their individual statements. This, too, is lacking in the instant case.
3. The Tacker informants stated that they had personally seen the stolen property. In the present case the magistrate could not know whether the person or persons who informed the affiant related their personal observations or only what some third person may have told them.
4. In Tacker, the Kelso police report had internal reliability and required no corroboration to establish the facts contained in the report. In Ventresca, supra, the court said:
We can only speculate here as to the source of the affiant's information. He may have received all of it, some of it, or none of it from fellow police officers.
5. The stolen property in the Tacker case was seen by the informants in the residence *5 against which the search warrant was directed. The precise location within the premises was disclosed to the officer swearing to the affidavit. In the affidavit under consideration the only connection between the facts recited and premises to be searched was that the defendant lived there. Further, the affidavit affirmatively showed that at least part of the stolen property was not in the premises.
6. Finally, while perhaps not as significant as the above, the Dunavant affidavit affirmatively reveals that at least six days before the warrant issued the defendant was actively engaged in disposing of the loot, rendering it less likely that any was present when the magistrate was asked to authorize a search. See Annotation, 100 A.L.R.2d 525, on "Search Warrant: sufficiency of showing as to time of occurrence of facts relied on," as affected by nature of unlawful activity.
Rugendorf v. United States, supra, was found to be persuasive authority for this court in upholding the affidavit in State v. Tacker, supra. The affidavit in the Rugendorf case, however, bears little resemblance to the instant one. There the facts were set out in detail. The affiant, an FBI agent, identified by name each of the FBI agents and police officers who furnished information; all of the confidential informants were described as individuals who had supplied the FBI with reliable information in the past; each fact recited was identified with the policeman or informant who had supplied it.
In holding a complaint insufficient to give validity to an arrest warrant, the United States Supreme Court in the Giordenello case said of the complaint:
The same deficiencies were found in an arrest warrant affidavit in Aguilar v. State of Texas, supra, and the court quoted with approval the above language as applicable to a state search and seizure case.
We must make the same finding as to the affidavit in the case at bar. The lower court erred in refusing to suppress and in receiving evidence produced by the search. The judgment is reversed and the case remanded for a new trial.