Opinion ID: 1706654
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: Around midnight Nov. 30, 1989, the New Orleans Police Department responded to a call that a man had been stabbed and was lying wounded inside a residence on White Street. Officers arriving at the scene encountered Nona Brady, who told them that the victim, Gregory Jacobs, had been stabbed at the home of another girlfriend. Ms. Brady took the officers to Jacob's body which was lying in a hallway in the center of the apartment. She told the officers that Jacobs had collapsed there after entering the apartment through the front door. After confirming that Jacobs was dead, the officers summoned detectives from the department's homicide division. Homicide detective Marco Demma arrived on the scene at approximately 12:30 a.m. His investigation of the premises revealed that there were no bloodstains near the front door through which Ms. Brady claimed Jacobs had entered the apartment. Detective Demma noticed, however, that there were bloodstains in the kitchen at the rear of the apartment and around the apartment's rear door. He also noticed a button lying on the kitchen floor. These bloodstains in the kitchen area led Demma into the hallway where Jacob's body was located. The body was positioned in such a way that Jacob's head was lying in the open doorway of the apartment's bathroom. Demma observed a blood-splattered towel in the bathroom sink. He also noticed that there were bloodstains on the door of a linen closet adjacent to the sink. Demma opened the closet and discovered a pair of scissors and a shirt, both stained with blood. In the course of his investigation, Demma seized the button found on the kitchen floor, the bloody towel found in the bathroom sink, the scissors and bloody shirt discovered in the linen closet and bloodstain samples taken from various places in the apartment. A neighbor later informed officers that Ms. Brady had been wearing this blood-stained shirt when she came to the neighbor's home for help. Based on the contradictions between Ms. Brady's story and the evidence indicating that Jacobs had been stabbed inside the apartment, Detective Demma placed Ms. Brady under arrest and took her to the stationhouse for interrogation. The grand jury subsequently returned an indictment charging Brady with second degree murder. After entering a plea of not guilty, Brady filed a motion to suppress the items of evidence mentioned above. The trial court suppressed the shirt button found on the kitchen floor, the scissors and blood-stained shirt discovered in the linen closet and the bloody towel taken from the bathroom sink. The trial court denied the motion to suppress the blood samples taken from various places in the apartment. Upon the State's application for review, the Court of Appeal found that the trial court had erred in suppressing the button and the bloody towel. The court of appeal reasoned that those items had been properly seized under the plain view exception to the warrant requirement. The court of appeal upheld the suppression of the scissors and the blood-stained shirt: Although the officers had a prior justification for being in the area of the bathroom, attending to the body of the victim, it cannot be said that the officers discovered these items in `plain view' because Det. Demma had to open the door to the closet in order to find them. State v. Brady, 569 So.2d at 114.