Court Opinion

ID: 9582143
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:22:59.138082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:28.710499
License: Public Domain

Birdsong, Judge.
Johnny Junior Jones appeals from a conviction for possession of marijuana. The police officers involved in a questioned search and arrest received a call from a confidential police informant at approximately 6 or 6:30 p.m. The informant, who had given reliable information in the past, told Detective Boyd that Johnny Junior Jones would be traveling from Moultrie that evening in a black Oldsmobile "442” with gold stripes, on his way to pick up five pounds of marijuana at 9 p.m. in Tallahassee, Florida, and would then return to Moultrie. The informant told the officers he had just received this information from a friend who was supposed to buy some of this marijuana, but the informant did not identify that person, nor was the person identified at trial. At 7:30, the officers positioned themselves along the Tallahassee-Moultrie highways, Highways 133 and 319, and at 10:30 p.m., the officer stationed on Highway 133, Deputy Causey, saw the described vehicle heading towards Moultrie and followed it. Deputy Causey ran a tag check, and the information he received was that that tag number was issued to Gail Jones; Deputy Causey knew Gail Jones and knew she *22was married to Johnny Junior Jones. At this point, Causey turned on his flashing blue lights; Jones stopped his car at a hospital parking lot, got out of the car, and walked to the police car and was advised by the officer, who was stalling until the other officers could arrive, that they were looking for a stolen car that matched that description, and that Detective Boyd wanted to talk to him. While Deputy Causey was talking to Jones with his back to Jones’ car, he heard a door open and turned to see the passenger of Jones’ car walking toward the hospital with a brown paper bag under his arm. The officer called to the passenger, Gary Folsom, to stop and get back into the car which Folsom did. Detective Boyd arrived within ten minutes of the stop and advised Jones they had information he was transporting marijuana. The detective told Jones they had no right to search the car without Jones’ consent, and that Jones did not have to give his consent, whereupon Jones said, "You can look in the vehicle. I’ve been set up,” or words to that effect. At that time, Jones agreed to sign a consent search form, but when a form was finally obtained from another officer who arrived at the scene, Jones stated he would not sign anything, but said the officers could go ahead and look in the car, and said, "The stuff is in the front seat; go ahead and get it out.” The car was searched, and marijuana was found in a brown paper bag on the passenger’s side of the car. Appellant and Gary Folsom were placed under arrest.
Appellant enumerates as error on appeal, the failure of the trial court to grant his motion to suppress, the failure to grant a directed verdict for appellant in that the state failed to rebut the defense of entrapment, the admission in evidence of testimony concerning a threat allegedly made by appellant to a third party, and that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the conviction. Held:
1. Appellant contends that the search is invalidated because the police did not have a search warrant and did not have probable cause to arrest the appellant and search the automobile incident to such arrest; that the search was performed incident to an unlawful arrest; and that the state failed to establish that the police officers obtained appellant’s voluntary consent to the search.
The stop and search of the vehicle without a warrant was based on probable cause. The informant in this case was known to the police to be reliable, having given information leading to drug arrests on at least five occasions. He told Detective Boyd that he got his information from a friend who was supposed to buy some of the transported marijuana; the description the "friend” gave of the planned criminal activity was in sufficient detail, as to the person involved, time, place, and physical description to indicate to the *23officers that the information furnished via their informant was more substantial than a casual rumor or accusation based on Jones’ general reputation, Draper v. United States, 358 U. S. 307, 313 (79 SE 329, 3 LE2d 327); see Spinelli v. United States, 393 U. S. 410, 416 (89 SC 584, 21 LE2d 637). The information was "of the sort which in common experience may be recognized as having been obtained in a reliable way,” Spinelli, supra, at 393 U. S. 417-418. The officers here, "when confronted with such detail, could reasonably infer” that the information was obtained in a reliable way, Spinelli, supra, p. 417; Shaner v. State, 153 Ga. App. 694 (1980). It was therefore not essential that the reliability of the informant’s information be further established, see Shaner v. State, supra. When in pursuing the information, the officer saw a car fitting the exact description given, which turned out to be in fact the car registered in the name of the wife of the person accused and described, which was driven in the precise place and time frame described, the officer had "personally verified every facet of the information given [to the police by the informant] except whether [Jones] had accomplished his mission and had the [marijuana in the car]. And surely, with every other bit of [the] information being thus personally verified, [the police] had 'reasonable grounds’ to believe that the remaining unverified bit of [the informant’s] information — that [Jones] would have the [marijuana in the car] — was likewise true.” Draper v. United States, 358 U. S. 307, 313, supra. The officers had probable cause and reasonable grounds to believe that Jones was transporting marijuana in his car. Draper, supra, p. 314; the stop and search of the car in these circumstances was valid. See Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 (45 SC 280, 69 LE 543, 555). Even if the circumstances had not risen to the level of probable cause to search without warrant, we hold further that Jones consented to the search. Appellant testified that he consented to the search only after he was lead to believe that the consent search form authorized the search without his consent, and further, that he refused to sign the form. We find no merit in appellant’s contentions. The trial court found that the detention of appellant was legal, being based on articulable facts and founded suspicion that appellant possessed contraband, and we agree(Radowick v. State, 145 Ga. App. 231,236 (244 SE2d 346)). The detention did not become an illegal arrest so as to invalidate appellant’s consent to search, particularly in view of the additional corroborative evidence that the passenger attempted to escape the scene with a large brown paper bag. Radowick, supra, pp. 238-239. The trial court found further that appellant’s consent *24to search was freely and voluntarily given; the evidence as a whole supports this conclusion. Appellant’s own explanation that he consented to a search only after he was lead to believe that the consent form authorized the search without his consent, is consistent with the conclusion that he did consent, and inconsistent with the fact that he refused to sign the form and thereby evinced a freedom from coercion and persuasion, and an understanding of his control over the matter of a written consent search form. The trial judge was authorized by evidence in this case to find that the oral consent of the appellant was not the product of coercion, duress, or deceit, and that it was freely and voluntarily given. Code v. State, 234 Ga. 90, 95 (214 SE2d 873); Radowick, supra, p. 239. Appellant’s implicit contention that he consented because he thought he had been "set up” shows nothing except that, at the most, he perceived a futility and inevitability in his exigent circumstances unaided by any act on the part of the police except that of stopping the appellant, and in this fact alone as a matter of law we cannot find any coercion, overt or subtle. See Radowick, supra, p. 240.
2. Appellant’s defense of entrapment is that he was induced to enter the drug transaction by Gary Folsom, the passenger, and by a second individual named Gregg Hall, who appellant said had to be the informant because no one else knew of the scheme. Appellant testified that Folsom and Hall made all the arrangements for the purchase without his knowledge, and that he had recent information Hall was working on other drug "busts” in the area. This testimony does not raise the issue of entrapment requiring a rebuttal. Jones stated that the idea or scheme was arranged and proposed to him by Folsom and Gregg Hall, who both came to his house early in the evening of the arrest. He first refused to go, primarily because he was tired from working all day and because his wife did not want him to leave the house, but also because it would have been illegal. Folsom and Hall repeatedly asked appellant to go pick up the marijuana and appellant finally agreed to go because of the good sum of money that he would make. Appellant testified that this whole conversation, from the time Folsom and Hall first proposed the scheme until appellant agreed to go, took no more than twenty minutes. Hall backed out of the trip, and appellant drove to Tallahassee with Folsom in appellant’s car. This testimony is not consistent with the "undue persuasion, incitement or deceitful means” necessary to comprise an entrapment defense under Code § 26-905. Although appellant "demurred somewhat” in complying with the scheme, this was by his own admission primarily because he was tired, and in fact it *25took only twenty minutes and the promise of money to overcome his reluctance. Appellant’s testimony does not show he was induced, by undue persuasion, or deceitful means, in an overall design of law enforcement people, to do what he otherwise had no predisposition to do and would not have done. See Garrett v. State, 133 Ga. App. 564, 566 (211 SE2d 584); Brooks v. State, 125 Ga. App. 867 (189 SE 2d 448). Appellant’s testimony falls short of evincing those circumstances which have been found to raise the entrapment defense. See, e. g.,Hughes v. State, 152 Ga. App. 80 (262 SE2d 245) (1979); Harpe v. State, 134 Ga. App. 493, 495-597 (214 SE2d 738).
Argued September 10, 1979
Decided March 18, 1980.
G. Keith Murphy, for appellant.
H. Lamar Cole, District Attorney, Dwight H. May, Assistant *26District Attorney, for appellee.
*25In any case, appellant’s testimony was rebutted by the passenger Folsom, who denied having arranged the scheme with Gregg Hall, denied any involvement with Gregg Hall, and denied having seen Gregg Hall at all on the day of the arrest. Folsom testified that the idea and the plan were appellant’s and that he, Folsom, just went along by invitation; this is consistent with the fact that the trip was made in appellant’s car, with appellant driving. Even had appellant’s testimony raised an entrapment issue, it was sufficiently rebutted by Folsom’s testimony to preclude a directed verdict of acquittal in appellant’s favor. See Hall v. State, 136 Ga. App. 622 (222 SE2d 140).
3. The enumeration of error concerning the trial court’s admission of an alleged threat by appellant is not supported by argument or citation of authority and is deemed abandoned. Abrams v. State, 223 Ga. 216 (6) (154 SE2d 443); O’Kelley v. Hayes, 132 Ga. App. 134, 135 (207 SE2d 641).
4. Appellant urges that the state failed to present sufficient evidence to carry the burden of proof to convict the appellant. We are satisfied that the evidence was sufficient in this case to sustain the conviction. Marshall v. State, 143 Ga. App. 249, 252 (237 SE2d 709). A reasonable trier of fact could rationally have found from this evidence proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307 (99 SC 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979).

Judgment affirmed.

Deen, C. J., Quillian, P. J. McMurray, P. J., Shulman, Banke, Carley and Sognier, JJ., concur. Smith, J., dissents.