State v. Cox, 42780

• Decision Date: 04 August 1972
• Docket Number: No. 42780,42780
• Citation: 200 N.W.2d 305,294 Minn. 252
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Joe Louis COX, Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 305

200 N.W.2d 305

294 Minn. 252

STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Joe Louis COX, Appellant.

No. 42780.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Aug. 4, 1972.

Syllabus by the Court

1--2. Police officers had probable cause for the warrantless arrest of defendant for criminal homicide. Notwithstanding the hearsay character of information supplied by reliable informants, the information was contemporaneously confirmed by other information known to the police, the whole of which constituted a probable-cause determination of reasonable and prudent men. The search incident to the arrest, which produced the incriminating homicide weapon within the room in which the handcuffed defendant was arrested, was not impermissible in scope. The evidence was sufficient to sustain the jury's verdict of guilty of first-degree manslaughter.

C. Paul Jones, Public Defender, Doris O. Huspeni, Asst. Public Defender, Minneapolis, for appellant.

Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, George M. Scott, County Atty., Henry W. McCarr, Jr., and David Roston, Asst. County Attys., Minneapolis, for respondent.

Heard before KNUTSON, C.J., and ROGOSHESKE, PETERSON, and KELLY, JJ.

PETERSON, Justice.

Defendant, Joe Louis Cox, charged with first-degree murder and convicted of the lesser included offense of first-degree manslaughter, appeals from the judgment of conviction on the grounds that the trial court erred in refusing to suppress certain evidence which police allegedly obtained in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights and that the evidence was insufficient to support the jury's verdict. We affirm.

1. Defendant's claim that police violated his Fourth Amendment rights is twofold: (a) That police did not have probable cause to arrest him and (b) that the search incident to his arrest was excessive in scope.

(a) On July 20, 1969, shortly after 8:30 a.m., Nicholas Morales, a Mexican, died at North Memorial Hospital as a result of a gunshot wound after having been brought to the hospital from a one-car accident at 26th Avenue and Emerson Avenue North in Minneapolis. At 11:45 a.m. that morning Detective Gerald Shoemaker of the Minneapolis Police Department, Homicide Division, responding to a report concerning Morales' death, began an investigation which culminated some 23 hours later in the warrantless arrest at defendant in an upper duplex at 1307 6th Street North, Minneapolis, known as Gussie Demery's tippling house.

During the course of his investigation, Detective Shoemaker received key information from two informants, who told him that a Joe or Joe Cox who worked at Gussie Demery's tippling house had shot a Mexican that morning. One of the informants James Stanley Gibson, who ran a bar across the street from Gussie's and who in the past had furnished Shoemaker with accurate information, told Shoemaker that he had heard from someone else that a man named Joe, who worked at Gussie's, had shot a Mexican that morning. Gibson also said that he knew that Joe drove a white Mustang then parked outside of Gussie's. The other informant, one Zachary Burton (also known as Zachary Taylor), told Shoemaker that he had gone to Gussie's to buy wine and had been told by a person unknown to him that Joe Cox ('Joe, the fellow that ran the tippling house') had shot a Mexican that morning. Although Shoemaker had not received information from Burton on other occasions, he knew Burton and thought him trustworthy and reliable, partly because Burton held down a full-time job. ¹

Defendant argues with force that, regardless of the reliability and trustworthiness of Gibson and Burton, their information implicating him was nonetheless unreliable because it was based on unreliable hearsay and rumor. This argument would merit more consideration if it appeared that Detective Shoemaker had based his probable-cause determination solely on his conversations with Gibson and Burton. But Shoemaker's conversations with these two informants were not the sole factual basis for his probable-cause determination, their information being confirmed in an impressive way by his total fund of independent knowledge.

Significantly, Shoemaker, after talking with Burton, learned from another detective in the department that an unidentified informant had told him that Burton had actually been at Gussie's at the time of the shooting. From this information Shoemaker reasonably could infer that Burton's statement implicating defendant was based, if not on first-hand knowledge gained through his own observation, at least on something more than mere gossip or casual rumor.

Significantly, and as a result of his careful and thorough investigation, Shoemaker knew the following facts substantially tending to corroborate the information furnished by Gibson and Burton:

(1) He knew of his own knowledge that Morales was Mexican.

(2) The knew that Morales had not been shot while in his automobile. The path of the bullet, as established by the medical examination, suggested otherwise, as did the fact that no expended cartridges or bullets could be found in Morales' automobile.

(3) He knew from the fact that the fully-loaded automatic pistol found in Morales' car was cocked that Morales must have been involved in some kind of armed confrontation.

(4) He knew that Morales had been shot a short time before he died and that tippling houses were open at that hour.

(5) He knew from Morales' friends that the defendant frequented Gussie Demery's tippling house, and he knew of his own knowledge that Morales was employed as a part-time bartender in that immediate vicinity.

(6) He knew that Guessie's was on the second floor so that someone at Gussie's could have shot Morales from an elevated position, such as the top of the stairs, which would have been consistent with the medical finding about the path of the bullet.

(7) He checked and found that the white Mustang reportedly owned by defendant and parked outside Gussie's was registered in the named of Joe L. Cox.

(8) He knew that Cox had been convicted in Minnesota of robbery, a crime of violence. ²

(9) He knew from other sources that on the night after the shooting and before any arrest had been made, no one had left or entered Gussie's despite the fact that on a typical night more activity at a tippling house could have been expected.

We recently summarized in State v. Bruno, Minn., 196 N.W.2d 459 (1972), the standards which govern our review of a police officer's on-the-spot assessment of probable cause for a warrantless arrest. As there stated, we must decide each case on its own facts, guided not by any magic formula but by the standard of reasonableness. In applying this standard we should not be overly technical and should accept the officer's probable-cause determination if reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, would under the same circumstances make the same determination.

Considering Detective Shoemaker's probable-cause assessment in this light, we hold that he did not act without probable cause in arresting defendant. We conclude the his professionally thorough investigation uncovered facts which provided him with a substantial basis for believing that the information given him by the two named informants was based on something more than dubious hearsay or casual rumor.

(b) Defendant contends, in addition, that the arresting officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights in that the search incident to his arrest exceeded the permissible scope declared in Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969).

The United States Supreme...