Court Opinion

ID: 9661158
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:31:05.023263+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:25.918197
License: Public Domain

WOLLMAN, Justice
(concurring specialty)-
Although I agree with the holding of the majority opinion that defendant voluntarily consented to the search of his residence and vehicle, and therefore join in the affirmance of the conviction, I would hold that the officers had probable cause to arrest defendant. Sheriff Newman testified that he had hired Carlson on the recommendation of Jerry Lindberg, an agent of the state Division of Criminal Investigation, who had told him that Carlson had done a reliable job in the Belle Fourche, South Dakota, area and that he was also working in the Huron area at the time, and on the recommendation of an agent in the Belle Fourche area. Sheriff Newman also testified that Carlson had made drug purchases in eleven other cases prior to the purchase from defendant and that he, Sheriff Newman, had found Carlson’s information to be very reliable. This to me is sufficient information to establish Carlson’s credibility. If we are going to require as a test of credibility a prior conviction based upon a drug informant’s undercover work, we may curtail too severely the number of first-time informants available to law enforcement officers. I do not read Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723, or Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637, as establishing as a test of credibility the requirement that the informant must have given the arresting officer information in prior cases that had resulted in arrests and convictions.
*335The majority opinion holds that the state must establish the voluntariness of defendant’s consent to search by clear and convincing evidence. I do not recall that we have ever imposed this strict a standard of proof in any of our earlier search and seizure cases. In the ordinary consent to search case the United States Supreme Court has required no greater burden than proof by a preponderance of the evidence. United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 94 S.Ct. 988, 39 L.Ed.2d 242. I see nothing in Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416, that establishes a higher standard of proof where consent is obtained following an arrest made without probable cause, and I would not adopt the clear and convincing evidence test in the absence of any compelling reason to do so.