Opinion ID: 1574468
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Audio and Video Recordings

Text: Sherman next contends that the circuit court erred in denying his motion to suppress the audio and video recordings of cocaine deliveries in his revocation proceeding. He claims that, pursuant to article 2, section 15 of the Arkansas Constitution, the audio and video recordings should have been suppressed because a state actor obtained them inside his residence without a warrant. [2] The record reflects that a confidential informant purchased cocaine from Sherman inside his home and recorded the delivery transactions on November 3, 2006, December 5, 2006, and December 27, 2006. The December recordings were conditionally admitted, and the DVD was played as evidence to support the violations alleged in the revocation petition; a malfunction in the November recording prevented its admission. The circuit court concluded that, based on the reasoning in Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206, 87 S.Ct. 424, 17 L.Ed.2d 312 (1966), using an informant to enter and record illegal transactions violates neither the Fourth Amendment nor the Arkansas Constitution. Specifically, the circuit court found: The defense, in the motion to suppress, contends that by these entries, by what I'm going to call a secret agent of the Blytheville Police Department, that violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, Article Two, Section 15 [of the Arkansas Constitution]. .... Recognizing that the Arkansas Supreme Court has found that Article Two, Section Fifteen of the Arkansas Constitution provides more protection to the home than the Fourth Amendment, I have considered whether this conduct is prohibited by the Arkansas Constitution. I cannot find any convincing reason or authority to suggest that the taping or transmitting of a conversation consented to by a party to the conversation, inside a suspect's home, would violate the Arkansas Constitution, if the agent were legally present in the home. I can't see any substantial difference in taping a conversation and simply reporting it. .... I believe that our supreme court would follow the reasoning of Lewis . Even in view of greater protection our supreme court provides the home. To rule otherwise would completely immunize illegal transactions occurring within a person's home. Apart from the devastating impact on law enforcement efforts to investigate narcotics transactions, it only makes sense if a person uses their home as a commercial center, the activities conducted therein would be entitled to less protection. Ultimately, the issue in search and seizure cases is the reasonableness of the conduct involved. In that context, even if it's deceitful and even if the person is a secret agent of the police and, which is not disclosed to the homeowner, then I find that that is a distinction that the Arkansas Court would make. In Lewis , the Court held that the Fourth Amendment was not violated when an undercover officer entered a defendant's home with consent, even though the consent was obtained by deception. The undercover narcotics officer misrepresented his identity to the defendant, stated his willingness to purchase narcotics, and was invited into the defendant's home where an unlawful narcotics transaction was consummated. The Court wrote: Without question, the home is accorded the full range of Fourth Amendment protections. See Amos v. United States, 255 U.S. 313 [41 S.Ct. 266, 65 L.Ed. 654] (1921); Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145, 151, n.15 [67 S.Ct. 1098, 91 L.Ed. 1399] (1947). But when, as here, the home is converted into a commercial center to which outsiders are invited for purposes of transacting unlawful business, that business is entitled to no greater sanctity than if it were carried on in a store, a garage, a car, or on the street. A government agent, in the same manner as a private person, may accept an invitation to do business and may enter upon the premises for the very purposes contemplated by the occupant. Of course, this does not mean that, whenever entry is obtained by invitation and the locus is characterized as a place of business, an agent is authorized to conduct a general search for incriminating materials[.] Lewis, 385 U.S. at 211, 87 S.Ct. 424. In the instant case, Sherman invited the confidential informant and willingly allowed her to enter his home. There is nothing in the record to suggest that the informant, acting as an agent for the police, conducted a search for incriminating materials. Sherman invited the informant in for the purpose of conducting illegal business, in this case, purchasing cocaine. While inside the home, the informant made recordings of their transactions. The United States Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless use of undercover agents equipped with concealed devices to record conversations with suspects. See United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745, 91 S.Ct. 1122, 28 L.Ed.2d 453 (1971). The question before this court is whether the admission of the recordings is prohibited under article 2, section 15 of the Arkansas Constitution. While the search-and-seizure language of article 2, section 15 of the Arkansas Constitution is very similar to the words of the Fourth Amendment, our constitution, state statutes, and criminal rules have clearly embraced a heightened privacy protection for citizens in their homes against unreasonable searches and seizures. State v. Brown, 356 Ark. 460, 156 S.W.3d 722 (2004). We recognize that we lack authority to extend the protections of the Fourth Amendment beyond the holdings of the United States Supreme Court, but we do have the authority to impose greater restrictions on police activities based upon our own state law. Id. In the Brown case, this court held that, although the Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not require knowledge of the right to refuse consent as a prerequisite to a showing of voluntary consent, the failure of law enforcement officers to advise a defendant that he or she has the right to refuse consent to the search violates his or her rights as guaranteed by article 2, section 15 of the Arkansas Constitution. Id. Though it is clear that this court may deviate from federal precedent in providing greater protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, we only do so when such a deviation is justified. Our considerations in deciding whether to deviate from federal precedent were set forth in State v. Brown : Without question, a slavish following of federal precedent would render this court's opinions merely a mirror image of federal jurisprudence, which would carry with it a certain abrogation of our duty to interpret our own state constitution and follow our own state law. Yet, we admit to a concern about deviating too much from federal precedent based solely on our state constitution. A proper balance must be struck between the two. Id. at 470, 156 S.W.3d at 729. The State contends that Sherman has not shown through his reliance on recent Arkansas cases involving warrantless intrusions by coercive law-enforcement officers that this case, involving an invited illegal-business guest, and the sanctity of the home as preserved by the Arkansas Constitution, requires suppression of the recordings. This court, relying on United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745, 91 S.Ct. 1122, 28 L.Ed.2d 453 (1971), affirmed the admission of recordings of illegal transactions where the informant knew that the transactions were being recorded and helped with the documentation, while the defendant consented to none of it. See Hoback v. State, 286 Ark. 153, 689 S.W.2d 569 (1985). In Smithey v. State, 269 Ark. 538, 602 S.W.2d 676 (1980), this court agreed with the holding in White that [o]ne contemplating illegal activities must realize the risk that his companions may be reporting to the police and that there is no distinguishing between probable informers on one hand and probable informers with transmitters on the other. Id. at 543-44, 602 S.W.2d at 679 (quoting White, 401 U.S. at 752, 91 S.Ct. 1122). This court concluded that Smithey had no constitutional right to protection of taped conversations with informants and that the Arkansas Constitution require[d] no different result. Smithey, 269 Ark. at 544, 602 S.W.2d at 679. We recognize that Hoback and Smithey were decided prior to the Brown decision, and we also note that these cases did not involve intrusions into the home. We must determine whether, under the facts of this case, Sherman should be afforded more protection under our constitution than he is allowed under the federal constitution. We answer in the negative. In State v. Brown , we held that a home dweller must be advised of his or her right to refuse a request to consent to search in order to validate a consensual search under the Arkansas Constitution. The State points out that the Brown case differs from the instant case because in Brown , the home dweller thought she had no choice but to allow entry to three drug-task force officers, whereas, in the instant case, there was no coercion. Indeed, Sherman voluntarily consented to the informant's entry into his home so that he could sell her illegal drugs. Further, while the Arkansas Constitution protects a person's right to privacy in his or her home, in the instant case, Sherman's home was not merely his home; rather, he had converted his home into a commercial center where unlawful business was transacted. In such cases, the heightened protection of privacy against unlawful intrusion into a citizen's home that this court adopted in State v. Brown does not apply. Sherman invited the informant into his home to conduct the illegal transaction. Even though the transaction took place in his home, it was not reasonable for Sherman to believe that the person to whom he sold cocaine would not share the information with others. Moreover, as the State points out, Sherman has not shown any constitutional significance between the presence of the informant with eyes and ears open, the observations of whom can be written down and testified to in court, and the use of electronic surveillance to efficiently gather the exact same evidence. See White, supra . We hold that the circuit court did not err at the revocation hearing in denying Sherman's motion to suppress the audio and video recordings of cocaine deliveries. In sum, we hold that the circuit court did not err in denying Sherman's motions to suppress. Under Arkansas Code Annotated section 5-4-309(d) (Repl. 2006), a circuit court may revoke a defendant's suspended imposition of sentence at any time prior to the expiration of the period of suspension if it finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant has inexcusably failed to comply with a condition of his or her suspension. In the revocation proceeding, the State had the burden of proving that Sherman violated the terms of his suspension as alleged in the petition by a preponderance of the evidence, and this court will not reverse that decision unless it is clearly against the preponderance of the evidence. See, e.g., Davis v. State, 368 Ark. 351, 246 S.W.3d 433 (2007). Here, the State presented evidence that Sherman committed various new drug crimes. While Sherman challenged the admission of the evidence, he did not assert that the evidence was insufficient to support a revocation of his suspended imposition of sentence. Indeed, one of the terms of Sherman's suspension was that he not use, sell, distribute, or possess any controlled substance. The State presented sufficient evidence of violations of his suspended imposition of sentence. The circuit court's decision to revoke was not clearly against the preponderance of the evidence. Affirmed.