Garner v. State
| Decision Date | 05 January 1968 |
| Citation | 423 S.W.2d 480,220 Tenn. 680,24 McCanless 680 |
| Parties | , 220 Tenn. 680 Clyde GARNER, Plaintiff in Error, v. STATE of Tennessee, Defendant in Error. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
Joe C. Davis, Lexington, for plaintiff in error.
George F. McCanless, Atty. Gen., and Robert H. Roberts, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, for defendant in error.
David P. Murray, Dist. Atty. Gen., Jackson, prosecuted the case in the trial court.
This appeal comes from the Criminal Court of Henderson County. The parties will be referred to herein as they appeared in the lower court; that is, plaintiff in error Clyde Garner as defendant, and defendant in error as the State.
The defendant was convicted of violating the Tennessee liquor law. He was fined $500.00 and sentenced to serve ninety days in jail. The State's proof consisted of testimony of the officers who conducted a search of the defendant's nightclub; and the introduction of the proceeds of that search--a number of bottles of whiskey and beer.
The only question for this Court, on appeal, is whether or not the search warrant used to produce the liquor introduced into evidence was valid.
The defendant urges that the search warrant was invalid, because it failed to describe the person to be searched. Throughout the affidavit, and again in the search warrant, the owner of the premises is referred to as 'John Doe,' and not as the defendant Clyde Garner. In this respect, it must be noted that the premises were particularly described in the warrant. The defendant's person was never searched; the search being limited to the area inside the club.
In answering the question above commented on, this Court is to say whether or not a warrant for the search of premises is invalid by reason of describing the name of the person owning or operating the place to be searched as 'John Doe,' when the informant of the officer procuring the warrant knew the name of the actual owner or operator.
So far as the principles of criminal procedure are involved, this issue was faced and answered by the Court in Seals v. State (1928) 157 Tenn. 538, 11 S.W.2d 879, as follows:
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'Since, in the case at bar, there was no search of the person of the plaintiff in error, but only a search of premises occupied by him, the search could not be declared unlawful or in violation of the constitutional rights of the owner, either because of the absence of his name in the warrant or because of an affirmative error in stating his name.'
That holding was followed in Robertson v. State (1949) 188 Tenn. 471, 221 S.W.2d 520; Renner v. State (1948) 187 Tenn. 647, 216 S.W.2d 345; and Collins v. State (1947) 184 Tenn. 356, 199 S.W.2d 96. Text...
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