McCants v. State

• Decision Date: 23 October 1984
• Docket Number: 1 Div. 840
• Citation: 459 So.2d 992
• Parties: Brenda Ann McCANTS v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 992

459 So.2d 992

Brenda Ann McCANTS v. STATE.

1 Div. 840.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama.

Oct. 23, 1984.

Karen A. Zokoff of Gudac & Zokoff, Mobile, for appellant.

Charles A. Graddick, Atty. Gen., and Jane LeCroy Brannan, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

BOWEN, Presiding Judge.

Brenda McCants was charged and convicted for the possession of marijuana for personal use. Alabama Code 1975, § 20-2-70(a). Sentence was one year's imprisonment in the county jail. The only issue raised on appeal concerns the legality of the search of her purse and the seizure of the marijuana.

On September 22, 1983, Mobile Detective Jack Dove investigated the theft of $300 from Jerry's Delicatessen in Mobile. The owner reported that he had seen McCants and Deborah Hendrix go up the stairs to his office where he had left $300 on his desk. Immediately after the women returned, the owner discovered that his money was missing. The owner told the Detective that no one else had access to his office and the stairs were the only way to get there.

At this time, Dove knew that both women were prisoners of the Alabama Board of Corrections serving in the Supervised Intensive Restitution Program (S.I.R.). McCants had been transferred from Tutwiller Prison to Mobile to participate in the program. She worked at the municipal auditorium during the day and stayed with her mother at night.

After learning that the delicatessen owner wanted to sign warrants for the arrest of McCants and Hendrix, who was also on S.I.R., Detective Dove contacted a director of the S.I.R. program in Mobile to have the two women brought to police headquarters for questioning.

McCants denied any knowledge of the theft. After the interrogation, Dove contacted the Board of Corrections, who requested that McCants be held in the city jail.

Dove "booked" McCants on a hold for the State Penitentiary System. As part of the booking process, he conducted an inventory search of her purse and discovered five partially burned marijuana cigarettes.

Detective Dove testified that he wanted to interview Ms. Hendrix before charging anyone or letting the owner sign a warrant.

Dove stated that he held McCants on "a verbal order from a man in the Penitentiary System to detain her in jail" and booked her on "a hold for the State Penitentiary."

McCants testified that Detective Dove interrogated her and initially told her that he knew that Hendrix actually took the money but that she knew something about it and if she would tell the truth she would not go back to Tutwiller. When McCants denied having any knowledge of the theft, Dove told her that she was lying and that he was going to place her under arrest. During the interrogation and arrest, the "S.I.R. people" were present and "heard the whole thing."

McCants argues that this search was illegal as it was without a warrant and that there was no probable cause for her arrest.

In Alabama, a law enforcement officer may arrest any person where the officer has "reasonable cause" to believe that a felony has been committed. Alabama Code 1975, § 15-10-3. "Probable cause for arrest without a warrant is something less than proof needed to convict and something more than a raw unsupported suspicion; it is a suspicion or belief of guilt that is 'wellgrounded'." Nance v. State, 424 So.2d 1358, 1362 (Ala.Cr.App.1982). "The facts, information and circumstances within the knowledge of the arresting officers need not amount to evidence which would suffice to convict; but the quantum of information which constitutes probable cause--evidence which would warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that a felony had been committed--must be measured by the facts of the particular case." Yeager v. State, 281 Ala. 651, 653, 207 So.2d 125 (1967).

Although Detective Dove's probable cause for any arrest must have been based on the hearsay information he received from the owner of the delicatessen, this informant was an average citizen who found himself to be the victim of a theft. "The veracity of the 'citizen-informant' is easily established, for 'the police should be permitted to assume that they are dealing with a credible person in the absence of special circumstances suggesting that such might not be the case.' " Crawley v. State, 440 So.2d 1148, 1149 (Ala.Cr.App.1983). Moreover, the rigid two-pronged test of Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964), and Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969), was abandoned in Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983), in favor of "the totality of the circumstances analysis that traditionally has informed probable cause determinations." 462 U.S....