Case Name: STATE of Louisiana, Respondent, v. Morris W. COX and Rose Ann Garrett, Relators
Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1975-11-03
Citations: 330 So. 2d 284
Docket Number: No. 56098
Parties: STATE of Louisiana, Respondent, v. Morris W. COX and Rose Ann Garrett, Relators.
Judges: SANDERS, C. J., dissents and will assign written reasons.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 330
Pages: 284–293

Head Matter:
STATE of Louisiana, Respondent, v. Morris W. COX and Rose Ann Garrett, Relators.
No. 56098.
Supreme Court of Louisiana.
Nov. 3, 1975.
Dissenting Opinion Nov. 14, 1975.
Dissenting Opinion Nov. 18, 1975.
On Rehearing March 29, 1976.
Anthony J. Bruscato, Bruscato & Loom-is, Monroe, for defendants-relators.
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., J. Carl Parkerson, Dist. Atty., Brian E. Crawford, Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-respondent.

Opinion:
TATE, Justice.
The defendants Morris Cox and Rose Garrett were convicted of possession of marijuana, La.R.S. 40:966, and sentenced respectively to ninety and thirty days in the parish jail in addition to fines of $300. We granted certiorari to review substantial contentions of trial error, 312 So.2d 872 (1975), and we now reverse and remand for a new trial.
Trial was had on an information charging four defendants with possession of marijuana on November 23, 1974: two girls, Miss Garrett and Miss Almond; and two young men, Cox and Anderson. At the present trial, Cox and Miss Garrett were found guilty and Anderson acquitted. At a later trial, Miss Almond was convicted.
The Issues
Certain marijuana was seized by the officers as a result of a search of Miss Garrett's apartment authorized by a search warrant. She attacks the validity of the search, as illegally based (a) on an affidavit insufficient on its face to justify it and (b) on false information misrepresented by the affiant who secured the warrant.
Certain other marijuana was seized from Cox's automobile, parked outside the Garrett apartment, as a result of a warrantless search. Cox attacks this warrantless search as illegal.
1.
The incidents giving rise to this charge occurred as follows:
Based on an affidavit by Officer Kelly, a search warrant was issued to search a described apartment in which Miss Garrett and Miss Almond lived. The affidavit was issued on the basis of information allegedly given to Kelly by a confidential informant (described as reliable on the basis of past information found proven as true by other independent sources and as a result of prior searches made on the basis of warrants secured based on information from the informant proven as reliable by the searches).
According to the affidavit, the informant supplied the information to Officer Kelly as based on his own personal knowledge: "Within the last 48 hours your affiant [Officer Kelly] has been contacted by a reliable confidential informant. The informant stated the following: Within the last 48 hours the informant has been on the premises of a residence [particularly described], . . . While on said premises the reliable confidential informant observed a quantity of marijuana being at least several ounces in open view and in the possession of one white female known to the reliable confidential informant as Rose Ann Garrett, in the possession of one white male known to the reliable confidential informant as Morris Cox, and in the possession of another white female known to the reliable confidential informant as Pat Almond."
2.
The Defendant Garrett's Contentions
We reject Miss Garrett's attack on the facial insufficiency of the affidavit of probable cause upon the search warrant was based. We believe the affidavit adequately sets forth facts which afforded the issuing magistrate a factual basis both to find the informant credible and the information given by him credible. State v. Humble, 309 So.2d 138 (La.1975); State v. Paciera, 290 So.2d 681 (La.1975).
However, we believe her conviction must be set aside and a new trial granted because the trial court, under the circumstances shown, incorrectly prevented her from attacking the credibility of the af-fiant, Officer Kelly. Her assignment of error in this regard is well-founded.
She filed a motion to suppress the product of the search, alleging, inter alia, "that the information was not furnished to Detective Pat Kelly by any informer and that Detective Kelly either intentionally or unintentionally misrepresented the facts in executing the oath in support of the search warrant." In support of this allegation, she produced evidence from the defendants that the only persons in the apartment during the 48 hours described by the confidential informer were the four defendants, with the only outsider present at any time during that interval being a Stephen Fury. Fury denied that he was the informer.
Officer Kelly was then recalled to the stand. He admitted that Fury was not his informant. The trial court denied further questioning on the issue of the truthfulness of Kelly's statement that he had been furnished the information sworn to by a confidential informer. The trial court held that Miss Garrett had made an insufficient affirmative showing that there was a genuine issue that Officer Kelly had sworn untruthfully that he had been furnished the information set forth as obtained from a confidential informer.
This ruling was erroneous.
The credibility of the affiant's informant or the correctness of the information furnished by the informer may not be attacked on a motion to suppress. State v. George, 273 So.2d 34 (La.1973); State v. Anselmo, 260 La. 306, 256 So.2d 98 (1971), as interpreted by State v. Giordano, 284 So.2d 880 (La.1973) and State v. Melson, 284 So.2d 873 (La.1973).
However, as Giordano and Melson held, upon proper allegations and showing of a genuine issue of the falseness of the affidavit, allegations made therein by the af-fiant may be traversed as untruthful on the affiant's part. These decisions point out the constitutional and statutory reasons which cannot permit untrue ex parte allegations made by an affiant to be exempt from judicial inquiry. Misrepresentation by an affiant cannot justify the invasion of an individual's home or his privacy when there is in fact no true probable cause for the invasion, as required by our state and federal constitutions.
The testimony produced by Miss Garrett made a prima facie showing, under appropriate allegations of her motion, that the affiant had sworn falsely that an informer had been present in the apartment and had seen the marijuana illegally possessed. Testimony introduced on her behalf negatived the presence and possibly the existence of such an informer.
Her contention that her home was invaded on the basis only of suspicion, in violation of the state and federal constitutions, was shown to have at least prima facie validity. She should not have been barred from further development of the facts surrounding the seeming untruthfulness of the affiant's affidavit and the consequent illegality of a warrant secured by untruthful allegations. Further, if the affiant-witness had been permitted to answer the questions indicated, perhaps a truthful basis for the information of his affidavit might have been disclosed and justified as constitutional the search based upon the warrant thereby secured.
The conviction of Miss Garrett must be reversed, and her case remanded for a new trial.
3.
The Defendant Cox's Contention
Marijuana was seized from the defendant Cox's motor vehicle without a warrant under the following circumstances:
The search warrant was secured between three and four o'clock in the afternoon. At 12:40 a.m. in the morning, Kelly and four other police officers drove up to search the apartment of the two girls. No one was home. The officers saw a Ford van parked in the yard outside the apartment house.
The van was owned by the defendant Cox. The officers knew the van belonged to Cox, a former state policeman. The windows of the van were up.
The officers approached the van, saw Cox and Anderson inside, and told them to get outside. The officers frankly admitted that they intended to detain Cox and Anderson until the girls showed up, as Cox testified, so as to prevent them from going away and possibly informing the girls not to come. The officers admitted that, at this time, they had no basis for arresting Cox and Anderson, and that they had no arrest warrant for Cox or search warrant for his van.
Cox testified that Officer Breaux told him he would have to search the van and that, if Cox had anything in the van, it would make it a lot easier if he just gave it to Breaux. Cox then took a bag of marijuana from under the carpet and gave it to the officer.
Three of the officers testified that Breaux first told Cox he did not have to permit a search, and that Cox then consented to it, reaching in and handing Breaux the bag. Nevertheless, we do notice that Officer Breaux admitted that he had told Cox, "Do you have anything in there you are wanting to declare to keep us from having to, you know, make much of a mess?" Breaux testified, however, that he made this observation after Cox had already consented to the search (i.e., not before, as Cox testified).
The state does not cite any authority by which the officers had a right to arrest Cox, without a warrant, simply because he was parked in his own automobile outside his girlfriend's house. Although the search warrant gave them a right to search the girl's apartment, it did not justify a search of the van parked outside, State v. Massey, 310 So.2d 557 (La.1975), nor did they have any probable cause to do so or to search or arrest Cox himself, State v. Saia, 302 So.2d 869 (La.1974).
Whatever right the police had for temporary questioning of Cox in a public place, La.C.Cr.P. art. 215.1, it did not extend to the right to detain him until the girls arrived; and, further, no basis for reasonable suspicion is shown (or even claimed) that he had or was about to commit any crime, as required by the statute even for such temporary questioning. Neither is any probable cause shown or even claimed to arrest without a warrant for the unverified misdemeanor allegedly reported by the unidentified informer. La.C.Cr.P. art. 213.
The arrest (detaining) of Cox without a warrant is clearly illegal and unauthorized by the law of Louisiana and of the United States. The "consent" to search was the fruit of this illegal arrest and cannot justify the admission into evidence the product of such a coerced search. The Fourth Amendment's protection of Americans in the security of their persons and property against unlawful action by state officers prevents admission into evidence of the product of an illegal arrest, as the United States Supreme Court recently held unanimously in Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed. 2d 416 (1975). See also Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). Similar provisions in our state constitutions provide like guarantees, with like effects for arbitrary violations of the rights of individuals by officials of government. La.Const. of 1921, Art. I, Section 7; La.Const. of 1974, Art. I, Section 5.
The motion to suppress filed by the defendant Cox should have been sustained. His conviction on the basis of evidence thus illegally obtained must be reversed.
Decree
For the reasons assigned, the convictions of the defendants for the misdemeanor charged must be reversed, and their cases remanded for new trials.
Reversed and remanded for new trials.
SANDERS, C. J., dissents and will assign written reasons.
SUMMERS, J., dissents and will assign written reasons.
MARCUS, J., dissents.