State v. Griggs

• Citation: 306 Mont. 366,2001 MT 211,34 P.3d 101
• Decision Date: 23 October 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-818.,00-818.
• Parties: STATE of Montana, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Jayson J. GRIGGS, Defendant and Respondent.
• Court: Montana Supreme Court

34 P.3d 101

2001 MT 211

306 Mont. 366

STATE of Montana, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Jayson J. GRIGGS, Defendant and Respondent.

No. 00-818.

Supreme Court of Montana.

Submitted on Briefs June 14, 2001.

Decided October 23, 2001.

Joseph P. Mazurek, Montana Attorney General, John Paulson, Assistant Montana Attorney General, Helena, MT; Marty Lambert, Gallatin County Attorney, Todd Whipple, Deputy Gallatin County Attorney, Bozeman, MT, For Appellant.

Herman A. Watson III, Bozeman, MT, For Respondent. Justice JAMES C. NELSON delivered the Opinion of the Court.

¶ 1 The State appeals an Order issued by the Eighteenth Judicial District Court, Gallatin County, that granted Jayson J. Griggs's (Griggs) motion to suppress evidence seized from his residence pursuant to a search warrant.

¶ 2 We affirm.

¶ 3 The State raises the following issue:

Did the District Court correctly conclude that, after considering the information contained in the search warrant application, the issuing judge did not have a substantial basis upon which to find that probable cause existed for the issuance of the search warrant?

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

¶ 4 The facts of the case are generally not in dispute, and only those germane to the resolution of the issue presented are recited herein.

¶ 5 On January 27, 2000, Detective Steven Crawford of the Bozeman Police Department, who was assigned to the Missouri River Drug Task Force, received a call from an anonymous person at 10:49 a.m.

¶ 6 The caller informed the detective that the Defendant Griggs was growing and distributing illegal mushrooms. The "operation," allegedly observed by the caller, consisted of approximately 20 mushrooms growing in two glass aquariums, and approximately five jars that contained harvested mushrooms. The caller also observed the presence of vermiculite in a sack in the same room where the mushrooms were growing. Vermiculite is a mined granular substance used in horticultural products and is often sold straight to be mixed with soil or is sold pre-mixed in potting soils. The mushroom operation was described as being located in the "first room on the left" down a hallway in Griggs's single-wide trailer home. The caller alleged that Griggs grew the mushrooms and then traded them for marijuana.

¶ 7 In addition to the information regarding the mushrooms, the caller also supplied the detective with a physical description of Griggs, the address of Griggs's residence, that Griggs used to be in the Army and may be in the National Guard, that he was a "sharpshooter," that he possessed several firearms, that he drove a black Ford Ranger pickup truck, and had recently improved the wood trim on his single-wide trailer home.

¶ 8 The anonymous tip came from out of state, approximately one month after the operation was allegedly observed by the caller.

¶ 9 Ten minutes after receiving the call, the detective located a "Jayson Griggs" in the phone book, and confirmed that this individual's address was within a trailer park located in Bozeman that matched the address given by the caller.

¶ 10 The detective discussed this information with a Gallatin County Sheriff's deputy, Don Peterson, who stated that he knew Griggs. Apparently, Peterson and Griggs had served together in the same National Guard unit. The deputy confirmed the fact that Griggs had been a sharpshooter in the Army. The deputy also informed the detective that during the summer of 1999, Griggs had told Peterson that he had used marijuana and steroids. The context of this alleged "admission" was not supplied in the application.

¶ 11 The detective also ran a driver's license check, which confirmed the physical description of Griggs supplied by the caller as well as the address.

¶ 12 That afternoon the detective and the deputy drove by the address and confirmed that the trailer appeared to have new trim. During the "drive-by," the detective also observed a Ford Ranger parked in front of the trailer that matched the description provided by the caller as well as the information gleaned from a vehicle registration check.

¶ 13 Crawford incorporated the foregoing information into a search warrant application. On that same day, a search warrant was issued by a district court judge, and was executed the following day, which resulted in the seizure of contraband, and Griggs's arrest. ¶ 14 On May 23, 2000, Griggs was charged with possession of dangerous drugs with intent to distribute, and production or manufacturing of dangerous drugs. On July 12, 2000, Griggs filed a motion to suppress, arguing that the search warrant application was issued without sufficient probable cause.

¶ 15 On October 6, 2000, after the matter was briefed by the parties, the District Court granted Griggs's motion to suppress. The court concluded that the judge issuing the search warrant did not have a substantial basis to find that probable cause existed to issue the warrant.¹ The court further concluded that the anonymous tip was insufficiently corroborated by investigating officers to provide the issuing judge with enough evidence to create a fair probability that illegal activity was occurring in Griggs's home. Further, the court determined that the information supplied by the deputy concerning Griggs's past drug use was not only stale, but also did not tend to corroborate that the alleged criminal activity was occurring.

¶ 16 The State appealed the District Court's order.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶ 17 Our standard of review of a ruling on a motion to suppress where the facts are not in dispute is to determine whether the district court's conclusions of law are correct as a matter of law. State v. Devlin, 1999 MT 90, ¶ 7, 294 Mont. 215, ¶ 7, 980 P.2d 1037, ¶ 7. This Court's review is plenary as to whether the district court correctly interpreted and applied the law. Devlin, ¶ 7 (citation omitted).

¶ 18 As a reviewing court, we too must look solely to the information given to the impartial magistrate and to the four corners of the search warrant application. See State v. Crowder (1991), 248 Mont. 169, 173, 810 P.2d 299, 302

. We have often stated, however, that in so doing we must refuse to review a search warrant application sentence by sentence; rather, we must examine the entire affidavit to determine whether the issuing magistrate had a substantial basis to conclude that probable cause did or did not exist. See State v. Hulbert (1994), 265 Mont. 317, 323, 877 P.2d 25, 29 (citation omitted).

DISCUSSION

¶ 19 Recently, in State v. Reesman, we stated that a defendant may challenge whether "the law enforcement officer's independent corroboration or investigation was sufficient within the context of a court's totality of the circumstances analysis," but added that this corollary ground was not at issue. See State v. Reesman, 2000 MT 243, ¶ 36, 301 Mont. 408,

¶ 36, 10 P.3d 83, ¶ 36.

¶ 20 Here, the issue is squarely before this Court.

¶ 21 That further independent corroboration by officers of the anonymous caller's information was required is not contested, although the detective in this instance mischaracterized the informant as a "concerned citizen," which led to a minor dispute between the parties. As established in Reesman, which was handed down while this matter was before the District Court, an anonymous informant's information regarding criminal activity always requires law enforcement corroboration in order to supply a reviewing magistrate with the sufficient substantial basis for a probable cause determination. See Reesman, ¶ 28 (citing State v. Rinehart (1993), 262 Mont. 204, 211-12, 864 P.2d 1219, 1223-24). Information supplied by a "concerned citizen" on the other hand-one whose identity is known, who personally observes the alleged criminal activity, and who openly risks liability by accusing another person of criminal activity-may not need further law enforcement corroboration under our analysis in Reesman. See Reesman, ¶ 34 (citations omitted); Illinois v. Gates (1983), 462 U.S. at 233-34, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2330, 76 L.Ed.2d 527.

¶ 22 Here, the District Court concluded that there "was no independent police investigation which corroborated [the anonymous caller's] statements about the mushroom grow operation" and therefore the detective did not "corroborate any criminal activity." Thus, "there was not a substantial basis for concluding that probable cause for the issuance of the search warrant existed."

¶ 23 The State contends that the foregoing conclusions reached by the District Court were in error, namely because the further law enforcement investigation required under the standards set forth in Reesman do not necessarily require corroboration of any criminal activity at all.

¶ 24 The State argues that under this Court's analysis of this issue in Reesman, as well as under the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Illinois v. Gates and other controlling or persuasive case law, police corroboration, when required, need not extend to any of the incriminating information concerning alleged criminal activity supplied by an informant. The State contends, therefore, that the failure to corroborate any of the information concerning the alleged criminal activity here does not constitute a make-or-break threshold under our totality of the circumstances test. See Reesman, ¶ 24 (setting forth totality of the circumstances test). In other words, the police "corroboration" as described herein—verifying concededly innocuous and non-criminal information—was sufficient for the original issuing judge to make a probable cause determination in light of the totality of the information supplied in the warrant application. The State's rationale, it seems, is that if the police confirm that the informant is telling the truth about innocent details, the reviewing magistrate may then assume that the informant is telling the truth about the totality of the information, specifically the highly detailed but nevertheless uncorroborated incriminating...