Court Opinion

ID: 9584580
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:50:16.942941+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:08:43.425571
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
I agree with my brother’s dissent, which would hold that the right to appeal was preserved (Division 2) and that the State failed to show that there was probable cause to search Parker’s person at the time and in the manner in which it was done.
1. Clearly, the court was indicating assent to the appeal. Defendant’s counsel had made two requests, one for the right of appeal and the other for a transcript. The latter was obviously for the pursuit of appeal. The court simply assented to both requests: “That’ll be all right.” There would be no purpose to prompting the expense of transcript preparation if an appeal was not permitted. Moreover, it is evident beyond conjecture that both parties understood the court’s affirmative assent to apply to appeal. The State makes no issue of it whatsoever. As in Springsteen v. State, 206 Ga. App. 150 (424 SE2d 832) (1992), we would be exalting form over substance if we concluded that the court did not expressly approve the reservation of the issue. Highly technical adherence to procedural requirements, creating a narrow window for the exertion of procedural rights (such as the right to appeal the alleged deprivation of federally protected personal *192security in this case), displays a gap between law and justice.
2. Parker was searched by officer Bryant when he, along with the other two occupants, exited the vehicle as directed. The officers were all males, and apparently Parker was the only one physically searched. At least one of the two women, Weldon, was visually searched. She was the only one who had been named by the informant, who said she and one or two others, possibly Tracy (last name unknown), the owner of the vehicle, would arrive with a quantity of LSD. Parker was in the back seat, and the two women were in the front seat. Tracy Adair, who was driving and who owned the car, gave permission to search it. The evidence suggests that Parker was searched before or while the car was being searched, indicating that the reason for searching him was not that all other locations of the expected LSD had been excluded.
Officer Bryant was asked if he conducted a pat-down search of Parker’s person, and he responded that he searched him, after having him place his hands on top of the vehicle, and found what he believed to be LSD in his pants pocket. There was no pat-down for weapons. Self-protection was never articulated as the purpose of the search. The informant had targeted Wendy Weldon in particular and did not suggest that someone else might have the LSD.
The question is whether there was probable cause for the police to intrude upon Parker’s personal security. Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 62 (IV) (88 SC 1889, 20 LE2d 917) (1968). “Before [a police officer] places a hand on the person of a citizen in search of anything, he must have constitutionally adequate, reasonable grounds for doing so.” Id. at 64. As in Sibron, the only goal for the search was to find drugs, and there was no probable cause established for believing at the time Parker was searched that LSD was on his person “Such a search violates the guarantee of the Fourth Amendment, which protects the sanctity of the person against unreasonable intrusions on the part of all government agents.” Id. at 65-66. “[A] person, by mere presence in a suspected car, [does not lose] immunities from search of his person to which he would otherwise be entitled.” United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581, 587 (68 SC 222, 92 LE2d 210) (1948). Neither the information received from the informant, nor its corroboration by the occurrence of the informant’s prediction, nor what transpired as the event unfolded, gave probable cause to believe that the passenger in the back seat of the vehicle, an unnamed cooperative male, had LSD on his person.