Case Name: STATE of Louisiana v. Nick C. Di BARTOLO
Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1973-03-26
Citations: 276 So. 2d 291
Docket Number: No. 52419
Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Nick C. Di BARTOLO.
Judges: HAMLIN, C. J., dissents.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 276
Pages: 291–297

Head Matter:
STATE of Louisiana v. Nick C. Di BARTOLO.
No. 52419.
Supreme Court of Louisiana.
March 26, 1973.
Rehearing Denied May 7, 1973.
George M. Leppert, New Orleans, for defendant-appellant.
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Harry H. Howard, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jim Garrison, Dist. Atty., Louise Korns, Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.

Opinion:
BARHAM, Justice.
The defendant, Di Bartolo, having waived trial by jury, was convicted upon his trial by the judge of possession of heroin, a violation under R.S. 40:962, as amended by Acts 1951, No. 30, § 1, and was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in Louisiana State Penitentiary. He has appealed and reserved nine bills of exceptions to rulings of the trial court. Bill of Exceptions No. 1 and Nos. 4 through 9 were not briefed by the appellant and are therefore deemed abandoned. See State v. Edwards, 261 La. 1014, 261 So.2d 649 (1972), and cases cited therein.
In Bill of Exceptions No. 2, reserved when the trial court overruled defense counsel's motion to suppress the evidence, the defendant contends that the heroin and narcotics paraphernalia seized from him were obtained as a result of a constitutionally impermissible search and seizure. We agree that the search and seizure were illegal, and we therefore reverse the defendant's conviction and sentence. No other bills of exceptions need be discussed.
The pertinent facts are as follows: On the afternoon of April 29, 1970, at approximately 3:00 p. m., two New Orleans police officers, Officers Varnado and De Long, were patrolling along Baronne Street when they observed several men, whom they rec ognized to be narcotics addicts, standing in a driveway talking to a woman in the second-story window of an apartment house located at 2106 Baronne Street. After some discussion between them, the officers and the men left the apartment building location.
Upon returning to the address about 10 minutes later, the officers observed the defendant, whom they had never seen before, leaning out of the same window and noticed that he "ducked" out of sight upon observing the police car. The officers "felt strongly" that narcotics were being dealt from the upstairs window and decided to investigate the apartment building, feeling that " we had no time to get a search warrant ', The officers parked their car on the other side of the block, jumped the fence, and tried to gain admittance at the door of the building. Finding the door locked and receiving no response to their knock, the officers walked to the side of the building and discovered a large window with steps below it. The glass window was open, but there was a screen in place on the window, which the officers swung out or pulled out in order to gain admittance. The officers stepped into the first-floor hallway, walked up the stairs to the second floor, and there saw, through the open door of Apartment 8, the woman whom they had earlier observed at the window now seated on a bed counting money. The officers talked to the woman, and, during the course of this discussion, the defendant stepped out of Apartment 7 and was observed to be carrying narcotics paraphernalia in his right hand. The policemen thereupon arrested the defendant, took him back into Apartment 7, searched his person, and recovered 44 glas-sine envelopes containing heroin from his pocket.
In his per curiam to Bill of Exceptions No. 2 the trial judge held: "The Court felt that the police had a right to conduct a surveillance of the premises in order to obtain the application for a search warrant and while doing so the defendant was seen in possession of a narcotic outfit and arrested in a public hallway in a building." (Emphasis supplied.)
While the officers could use the public ways to conduct a surveillance of the premises, we cannot agree that they had a right to conduct a surveillance on the premises in the manner in which they did. There did not exist circumstances which would supply probable cause to arrest anyone or probable cause to conduct a search without a warrant in the locked building. It was not until the officers' encounter with the defendant in the second-floor hallway after their illegal entry that any probable cause appeared.
It is axiomatic that an arrest made without a warrant and without probable cause is invalid. Probable cause ex-isfs if the facts and circumstances known to the officer warrant a prudent man in believing that the offense has been committed. Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98, 80 S.Ct. 168, 4 L.Ed.2d 134 (1959). See State v. Wood, 262 La. 259, 263 So.2d 28 (1972), and C.Cr.P. Art. 213. The quantum of information which constitutes probable cause must be measured by the facts of the particular case. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). A court, in determining probable cause, takes into account the total atmosphere of the case. United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 68 S.Ct. 222, 92 L.Ed. 210 (1948). We cannot conceive, in the case sub judice, that probable cause existed merely because the police officers suspected that narcotics were being dealt with in the apartment building.
It is equally well established that a search conducted without a warrant and without probable cause is invalid, even though a valid warrantless search may be made incident to a lawful arrest. Here we are not dealing with a search made pursuant to a lawful arrest or a warrantless search made on the basis of probable cause. The officers' action in illegally entering the locked apartment building-clearly taints their subsequent observations and actions within the building and renders the arrest illegal and the evidence seized incident thereto inadmissible in the defendant's prosecution.
In McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 69 S.Ct. 191, 93 L.Ed. 153 (1948), Justice Jackson in his concurring opinion stated : " Having forced an entry without either a search warrant or an arrest warrant to justify it, the felonious character of their entry, it seems to me, followed every step of their journey inside the house and tainted its fruits with illegality. " We believe that this is the proper view to be taken in this case.
We reject the arguments that the defendant's arrest in the hallway adjoining the apartment where he was a guest was effected in a public area in which the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy, and that the officers' observation of narcotics paraphernalia in the defendant's hand, in "plain view", rendered the arrest of the defendant legal and the subsequent search incident to a lawful arrest. It is well settled that reliance on the "plain view" doctrine must depend on the officer's right to be in the location from which the view is obtained. United States v. McKlemurry, 461 F.2d 651 (5th Cir 1972); United States v. Davis, 423 F.2d 974 (5th Cir. 1970), and cases cited therein. In this case it is abundantly clear tha,t the officers involved had no such right. The fact that the location where the arrest took place was a hallway, not an integral part of the apartment which the defendant was visiting, does not vitiate the defendant's right to reasonably expect privacy from government intrusion. Cf. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). The hallway was adjacent to the apartment involved, and the testimony adduced at the hearing on the motion to suppress reveals that a tenant or guest would have to enter the hallway to gain access to the bathroom facilities which served the second-floor apartments. This fact appears to somewhat diminish the public nature of the hallway in which the arrest occurred. Furthermore, apparently the building was kept locked and only tenants who had keys and guests whom they admitted could gain entrance to the building.
It is thus clear that the defendant's arrest and conviction were secured by means which violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and that the conviction, so obtained, may not stand.
Accordingly, the conviction and sentence are hereby reversed.
HAMLIN, C. J., dissents.
SANDERS, C. J., dissents with written reasons.
SUMMERS, J., dissents for the reasons assigned by the Chief Justice.
. Officer Varnado subsequently testified, at the hearing- on the motion to suppress, that their purpose in investigating the building was to " see what the lay of the land was".
. In McDonald, the officers illegally entered the building where the defendant lived by breaking into the landlady's bedroom via a window.
. The fact that the defendant was a guest and not a tenant does not affect his right to challenge the legality of the officers' actions since any person legitimately on premises where a search occurs has a right to challenge the validity of the search. Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960).
.The writer of this opinion notes ex proprio motu that the bill of information uses the words which customarily preface most charges — that is, "did wilfully and unlawfully" — , but fails to charge that the defendant intentionally or knowingly possessed a narcotic drug. We have held repeatedly under former R.S. 40:962 that knowledge is an essential element of the crime of possession of a narcotic drug. The present penal provision for possession, R..S. 40:966, requires knowledge as an ingredient of the crime. Since we have found merit in Bill of Exceptions No. 2, and since the defendant did not object to the form of the information, the majority pretermits the question of the validity of the information in this case. However, two cases docketed on our March-April calendar raise the question of whether an indictment which fails to charge that the accused knowingly and intentionally possessed narcotics is sufficient to sustain a conviction. See No. 62827, State v. George "Scottie" Scott, and No. 53070, State v. McArthur Davis. It would be well for the State as well as the defendant to note the court's determination in those cases.