State v. Baldwin

• Court: North Carolina Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: MARTIN.
• Citation: State v. Baldwin, 588 S.E.2d 497, 161 N.C. App. 382 (N.C. App. 2003)
• Decision Date: 02 December 2003
• Docket Number: No. COA02-1594.,COA02-1594.
• Parties: STATE of North Carolina v. Eddie Darnell BALDWIN.

588 S.E.2d 497

161 NC App. 382

STATE of North Carolina v. Eddie Darnell BALDWIN.

No. COA02-1594.

Court of Appeals of North Carolina.

December 2, 2003.

Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General Grady L. Balentine, Jr., for the State.

Jeffrey Evan Noecker, Wilmington, for defendant appellant.

MARTIN, Judge.

Eddie Darnell Baldwin appeals from judgments entered upon his conviction by a jury of trafficking in cocaine by possession, trafficking in cocaine by transportation, conspiracy to traffick in cocaine, possession with intent to sell or deliver marijuana, and maintaining a dwelling for the purpose of keeping or selling controlled substances.

The evidence at trial tended to show that in July 2001, United States Postal Inspector Charles Thompson was notified by his counterpart in Phoenix, Arizona that a suspect package was being sent through the mail to 1233 Union Grove Church Road, Freemont, North Carolina. After Thompson intercepted the package in Raleigh, drug dogs picked the suspect package out of a line-up with other packages. Once Thompson obtained a federal search warrant to seize and open the package, he found three bricks of cocaine, potpourri, air fresheners and newspapers inside. Although Thompson was not qualified as an expert in chemical or scientific testing, he performed a field test on the substance in the package and determined it was cocaine.

Thompson then contacted law enforcement officers in Wayne County to develop a controlled delivery plan for the package. The package was resealed with an electronic monitoring device inserted inside to alert officers if and when the package was opened. Sergeant Daniel Peters of the Goldsboro Wayne County Drug Squad obtained an anticipatory search warrant of the delivery address. The pertinent part of the warrant stated:

Once the package has been deliver [sic] and accepted by the occupants of the address the search warrant will be served to search for the package and the participants of the crime. This warrant is anticipatory and bases [sic] on the delivery of the Express Mail Package, if for any reason the package is not delivered or is rejected by the occupants of the residence the warrant will not be served.

After other law enforcement officers were stationed around the house to assist, Thompson approached the house with the package addressed to Sean Smith. A black male came out of the house as Thompson approached and indicated, when asked, that he was Sean Smith. The man took the package and went back inside the house. At trial, Thompson identified the man as defendant, Eddie Baldwin.

Within a few minutes of his receipt of the package, Baldwin came out of the house with the package, placed it in the trunk of a Pontiac Bonneville that was parked in the yard and then returned to the house. About an hour later, defendant again came out of the house, removed the package from the Pontiac and placed it in the back seat of a Toyota Camry, also parked in the yard. Another black male came out of the house and got into the driver's seat of the Toyota. Although there was still no indication from the monitoring device that the package had been opened, officers approached the car. As they approached, the driver took off in the Toyota across a soybean field and wrecked into a ditch. The driver ran into the woods and was never found, but officers were able to retrieve the unopened package from the Toyota. While officers were in pursuit of the driver of the Toyota, two other officers approached the house and demanded that all occupants come out. After the defendant came out of the house and was placed under arrest, one officer searched the house to make certain there was no one else inside. Other officers then entered and conducted a thorough search of the house, seizing plastic bags with white powder, guns, marijuana, surveillance equipment, and mail.

I.

Defendant argues the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence seized pursuant to the anticipatory search warrant. First, defendant contends the trial court failed to state any findings of fact in its order denying the motion to suppress. Although the general rule is that the trial court must make findings of fact and conclusions of law after hearing a motion to suppress, findings are not required if there is no material conflict in the evidence at the suppression hearing. State v. Parks, 77 N.C.App. 778, 781, 336 S.E.2d 424, 426 (1985), disc. review denied, 316 N.C. 384, 342 S.E.2d 904 (1986). In the present case, there was no dispute regarding the events of the search or the items seized. Because the conflict was in the interpretation of the scope of the search warrant and not a conflict in the evidence, the trial court was not required to make findings of fact.

Defendant also contends that the motion to suppress should have been denied because at the time of the search, the package was not present in the house and, therefore, the search exceeded the scope of the warrant executed. An anticipatory search warrant, by definition, is "not based on present probable cause, but on the expectancy that, at some point in the future probable cause will exist." State v. Smith, 124 N.C.App. 565, 571, 478 S.E.2d 237, 241 (1996). In order to eliminate the opportunity for government agents to use their own discretion, the court in Smith established three requirements that must be observed before a search is executed pursuant to an anticipatory search warrant:

(1) The anticipatory warrant must set out, on its face, explicit, clear, and narrowly drawn triggering events which must occur before execution may take place; (2) Those triggering events, from which probable cause arises, must be (a) ascertainable, and (b) preordained, meaning that the property is on a sure and irreversible course to its destination; and finally, (3) No search may occur unless and until the property does, in fact, arrive at that destination.

Id. at 577, 478 S.E.2d at 245. In Smith, the Court opined that once the anticipatory search warrant met these three requirements, the nexus between "the criminal act, the evidence to be seized and the identity of the place to be searched" was assured. Id. When a warrant is executed after the triggering event occurs, probable cause has been established. State v. Phillips, ___N.C.App.___, 586 S.E.2d 540 (2003). Once there is probable cause that a crime has been committed and the evidence of that crime likely will be found during the search, the object of the search warrant does not need to be present. Smith, 124 N.C.App. at 571, 478 S.E.2d at 241; see U.S. v. Becerra, 97 F.3d 669 (2nd Cir.1996) (holding an anticipatory search warrant, whose triggering event is the delivery of a package, is not invalidated because the package is taken off the premises).

Defendant concedes that the anticipatory search warrant met the first two prongs of the requirement. The warrant clearly established explicit triggering events on its face which were definable and preordained. Although defendant argues that the State did not meet the requirements of Smith since the package was no longer in the house when the search occurred, the third prong of Smith requires only that the package arrive at the location specified on the warrant. It is undisputed that the package was delivered, accepted, and taken into the house by the defendant; therefore the third prong of Smith was met. Since the anticipatory search warrant met the three requirements of Smith, once the package arrived, the nexus between the package and the residence was established. Even though the package was no longer on the premises, delivery of the package linked the house to criminal activity inside, giving rise to probable cause for the search. In addition, since the warrant specifically allowed the officers to search the premises of 1233 Union Grove Church Road to find and seize cocaine generally and to identify the participants of the crime, the officers' thorough search of the premises was within the scope of the warrant. Therefore, we hold the trial court correctly denied defendant's motion to suppress evidence seized pursuant to the anticipatory search warrant.

II.

Defendant next contends the trial court committed plain error in admitting the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) lab report and other evidence regarding the nature of the substance in the package. Plain error is "always to be applied cautiously and only in the exceptional case where, after reviewing the entire record, it can be said the claimed error is a `fundamental error, something so basic, so prejudicial, so lacking in its elements that justice cannot have been done.'" State v. Odom, 307 N.C. 655, 660, 300 S.E.2d 375, 378 (1983) (citation omitted).

N.C. Gen.Stat. § 90-95(g) (2001) provides that an SBI laboratory report is admissible in a criminal proceeding without further authentication as evidence of the nature, quality, and amount of the substance analyzed if (1) the State notifies the defendant of its intent to admit the report into evidence at least 15 days prior to trial and provides a copy of the report to the defendant, and (2) the defendant fails to notify the State at least five days before trial that he objects to the introduction of the report into evidence. The record in the present case is unclear as to whether the State notified defendant, as required, of its intent to admit the report. There is reference in the transcript, albeit vague, that the State filed a Notice of Intention to Introduce Evidence at Trial on 9 November 2001, well in advance of the May 2002 trial, but that reference does not indicate what evidence the State intended to introduce at trial. Defendant contends that had the nature of the substance not been improperly admitted, the jury's verdict as to trafficking in cocaine by possession would have been different. However, during the trial, the defendant stipulated that "the cocaine is the cocaine, that it weighs what it...