Lenoir v. State
| Decision Date | 09 February 1931 |
| Docket Number | 29147 |
| Citation | 132 So. 325,159 Miss. 697 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | LENOIR v. STATE |
1. INTOXICATING LIQUORS. To search automobile for liquor without warrant, sheriff must have information amounting to probable cause that automobile contains liquor; information that some negroes from Clay county would be down to certain community on certain night in Ford car with liquor held not to furnish probable cause for searching automabile for liquor without warrant; to furnish probable cause for searching automobile without warrant, information must either identify car or occupants.
Before a sheriff can search an automobile for intoxicating liquors without a search warrant, he must have information amounting to probable cause, before the search, that the automobile contains such intoxicating liquors. Information merely that some negroes from Clay county would be down to a certain community on a certain night in a Ford car with liquor is insufficient to comply with the requirements of the Constitution and statutes upon the subject. The information must be specific and either identify the car from other cars or the person must be identified from other persons.
2. CRIMINAL LAW. Conviction under prohibition law must be reversed, where evidence to sustain conviction is obtained by unlawful search.
Where the evidence to sustain a conviction is obtained by an unlawful search, the' conviction must be reversed regardless of whether the liquor was actually found in the car by the search.
APPEAL from circuit court of Noxubee county, HON. J. I. STURDIVANT, Judge.
Jordan Lenoir was convicted of unlawfully possessing intoxicating liquor, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.
Reversed and remanded.
McClellan & Tubb, of West Point, for appellant.
Probable cause is a matter for judicial determination and not for the determination of the officer.
Ford v. City of Jackson, 121 So. 278; McNutt v. State, 108 So. 721; Mapp v. State, 114 So. 825; Early et al. v. State, 121 So. 293; Story v. City of Greenwood, 121 So. 481; Arnold v. State, 120 So. 731; Sellers v. Lofton, 116 So. 104.
The constitution guarantees that all persons shall be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures. To permit the search by officer on vague, indefinite and uncertain information of an unlimited number of persons or things in a given area, or of a certain kind or class, where the information is that one of the persons or things in that area, kind or class, without designating the person or thing or the description thereof, has liquor in his or its possession, would be a violation of the constitutional guarantee.
Edwin R. Holmes, Jr., Assistant Attorney-General, for the state.
The state of facts shown in this record is sufficient to constitute probable cause and therefore, the search without a warrant was legal, and the testimony admissible.
The facts in the instant case are much stronger than the facts in the case of Eacly v. State, 153 Miss. 691, and in that case the court held that the facts constituted probable cause.
Goodman v. State, 130 So. 285.
This court has held in at least two other cases, in which the facts were no stronger than the facts of the instant case, that if the officer has reason to believe that intoxicating liquor is being transported, a search of the vehicle without a warrant is lawful.
Eacly v. State, 153 Miss. 691; Holmes v. State, 146 Miss. 351.
The appellant was indicted and convicted for the unlawful possession of intoxicating liquors, and was sentenced to pay a fine of two hundred fifty dollars and to serve thirty days in jail, from which judgment he appeals here.
The evidence was procured by the sheriff without a search warrant by halting and searching the automobile occupied by the appellant and another. It is contended that the sheriff did not have sufficient information to warrant the search, because the information did not amount to probable cause to believe the defendant had intoxicating liquor. The sheriff's statement as to the information to constitute probable cause is as follows:
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