Salt Lake City v. Trujillo

• Decision Date: 27 May 1993
• Docket Number: No. 920078-CA,920078-CA
• Citation: 854 P.2d 603
• Parties: SALT LAKE CITY, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Teja Alberta TRUJILLO, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Utah Court of Appeals

Page 603

854 P.2d 603

SALT LAKE CITY, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Teja Alberta TRUJILLO, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 920078-CA.

Court of Appeals of Utah.

May 27, 1993.

Richard P. Mauro, Salt Lake City, for defendant and appellant.

Stephen P. Zollinger, Salt Lake City, for plaintiff and appellee.

Before GARFF, GREENWOOD and ORME, JJ.

OPINION

ORME, Judge:

Defendant pled guilty to possession of a controlled substance in violation of Salt Lake City, Utah, Code § 11.24.020 (1987), a class B misdemeanor, but retained her right to appeal the trial court's denial of her motion to suppress. See State v. Sery, 758 P.2d 935, 939 (Utah App.1988). Defendant claims on appeal that the affidavit for the warrant on which the search of her residence was based failed to support a determination of probable cause. Alternatively, she contends that if probable cause for a search existed, neither nighttime nor no-knock authority was justified. We affirm.

FACTS

On March 5, 1991, a magistrate issued a no-knock search warrant pursuant to an affidavit alleging that defendant's residence, located on Salt Lake City's Goltz Avenue, was the locus of ongoing cocaine distribution activities. The warrant specifically authorized permission to search for cocaine, packaging material, drug paraphernalia, currency, records of narcotics sales, and residency papers for alleged illegal aliens living at the premises. The search warrant also authorized police to search the persons of the three residents, one of whom is the defendant in this case. The following day officers executed the warrant by breaking down the door. The search was accomplished during daylight hours, even though the warrant also contained authorization to search at night. Police discovered a small quantity of marijuana, but none of the items described in the warrant.

Because defendant's chief arguments on appeal involve the adequacy of the information supporting the warrant, we recite the information contained in the underlying affidavit in some detail. The investigating officer, Detective Gardiner, supplied the affidavit and based his request for a search warrant upon information obtained through three confidential informants. However, Detective Gardiner personally knew only the first confidential informant (Informant One). He received information from two other informants, Informant Two and Informant Three, through other detectives.

According to the affidavit, Informant One told Detective Gardiner that he had seen two residents of the Goltz Avenue premises, Mario and Garfield, engage in narcotics sales. ¹ The affidavit recounted several instances when Informant One participated in controlled drug buys at the Goltz Avenue residence under Detective Gardiner's supervision. One such instance occurred within seventy-two hours of seeking the search warrant. According to Detective Gardiner's sworn statement, each time Informant One executed a controlled purchase at the residence, the informant was searched, provided with cash, and observed entering. After approximately five minutes, Informant One would exit, provide a quantity of cocaine to Detective Gardiner, and undergo another search. The substance purchased tested positive for cocaine each time. According to the affidavit, Informant One told Detective Gardiner that the cocaine was purchased from defendant's roommates, Mario and Garfield, and that defendant was present during some of the transactions.

In addition to the intelligence he received from Informant One, Detective Gardiner detailed information provided by Informants Two and Three, which he received entirely through interviews with other detectives conducting narcotics investigations. Detective Stephens, a Metro Narcotics Strike Force officer who had been conducting a separate investigation of the Goltz Avenue premises and its residents for about one year, provided information gained from Informant Two. Informant Two told Detective Stephens that Mario and Garfield were illegal aliens who had been dealing large quantities of cocaine from a secluded trailer located in a neighborhood some distance from Goltz Avenue. According to Detective Stephens, Informant Two purchased cocaine from Mario and Garfield. Detective Stephens personally noticed numerous short stay visitors at the trailer. In March 1990, Detective Stephens executed a search warrant in a westside neighborhood. Incident to that search, he interviewed defendant at her residence and noticed narcotics inside.

Finally, Detective Gardiner possessed information from Informant Three, which he received through Sgt. Suarez. According to the affidavit, Informant Three had told Sgt. Suarez that in September of 1990, defendant was distributing cocaine from the Goltz Avenue residence, which the informant described accurately as being a basement apartment located on the east side of a four-plex. Informant Three also told Sgt. Suarez that two illegal aliens lived with defendant, one of whom was named Garfield.

Detective Gardiner also recited several actions taken, in addition to the controlled buys, by which he corroborated information provided by Informant One. Included among these efforts were: (1) a computer and police record search that verified Garfield and defendant lived at the Goltz Avenue residence, (2) an interview with the apartment owner to verify that defendant in fact rented the apartment, (3) a police record check to verify that Garfield was defendant's boyfriend, and (4) a police record search to verify that Informant One's description of defendant matched photographs on file.

Detective Gardiner was the only witness at the hearing on defendant's motion to suppress. Although defense counsel's questioning initially uncovered apparent inconsistencies between the affidavit and the facts as Detective Gardiner knew them to be at the time he prepared the affidavit, his testimony eventually resolved the inconsistencies. In particular, counsel asked about the statement in the affidavit that Informant One "told your affiant that [Informant One] has observed Garfield and Mario engage in the sales of narcotics." Detective Gardiner acknowledged that sentence did not make specific reference to the Goltz Avenue residence. Upon further questioning, however, Detective Gardiner recounted specific details concerning controlled buys Informant One in fact accomplished at the residence, which buys were described in the affidavit. According to Informant One's statements to Detective Gardiner, which were recited in the affidavit, the controlled buys were made from Garfield and Mario, with defendant present in some instances. In context, then, Informant One's observations of narcotics sales by Garfield and Mario might fairly be read as pertaining to the Goltz Avenue residence. But even if other off-site sales are alluded to in the general reference, the key recitation is with respect to recent controlled buys at the Goltz Avenue residence from Garfield and Mario.

Defendant's claims on appeal distill into the following arguments: (1) the affidavit was insufficient to establish probable cause, (2) the circumstances as described in the affidavit failed to justify no-knock or nighttime authorization, and (3) the evidence should be suppressed because the police used false statements to secure the warrant. ² Because we conclude, in our discussion of the first argument, that the affidavit contained no false statements, we do not separately address the third argument.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

Defendant argues that we should apply a standard affording no special deference to the magistrate, along the lines suggested in State v. Weaver, 817 P.2d 830, 835-36 (Utah App.1991) (Orme, J., concurring). The Weaver concurrence speaks of policy and jurisprudential reasons which, in the author's view, lend credence to defendant's assertion that appellate courts should review magistrates' determinations of probable cause nondeferentially.

Establishing the appropriate standard of review normally constitutes a policy decision aimed at allocating power to determine an issue between trial and appellate courts. ³ State v. Thurman, 846 P.2d 1256, 1265-67 (1993). In Utah, our Supreme Court has primary responsibility for establishing applicable standards of review by virtue of its authority to manage the appellate process. Id. Unless otherwise mandated by Congress or the Supreme Court, state courts possess authority to determine the appropriate standard of review when considering challenges to state trial court determinations made under federal law. Id.

The United States Supreme Court has opined that "[a] magistrate's 'determination of probable cause should be paid great deference by reviewing courts.' " Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 236, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2331, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983) (quoting Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 419, 89 S.Ct. 584, 590, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969)). The Gates Court based its preference for the deferential standard on its belief that a de novo review "is inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment's strong preference for searches conducted pursuant to a warrant." Gates, 462 U.S. at 236, 103 S.Ct. at 2331. The Court feared that a hypertechnical review of probable cause affidavits would motivate police officers to circumvent the probable cause requirement and instead "resort to warrantless searches, with the hope of relying on consent or some other exception to the Warrant Clause that might develop at the time of the search." Id. Accordingly, the Court believed that the deferential standard "better serves the purpose of encouraging recourse to the warrant procedure." Id. Moreover, this deferential standard has clearly been mandated by the United States Supreme Court for purposes of review under the Fourth Amendment. Massachusetts v. Upton, 466 U.S. 727, 732-34, 104 S.Ct. 2085, 2087-88, 80 L.Ed.2d 721 (1984) (reversing Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts where court "erred in failing to grant any deference to the decision of...