State v. Jones

• Decision Date: 20 September 1985
• Docket Number: No. S-486,S-486
• Citation: 706 P.2d 317
• Parties: STATE of Alaska, Petitioner, v. Casey L. JONES, Respondent.
• Court: Alaska Supreme Court

Page 317

706 P.2d 317

54 USLW 2230

STATE of Alaska, Petitioner, v. Casey L. JONES, Respondent.

No. S-486.

Supreme Court of Alaska.

Sept. 20, 1985.

David Mannheimer, Asst. Atty. Gen., Anchorage, Norman C. Gorsuch, Atty. Gen., Juneau, for petitioner.

Fleur Roberts, Law Offices of Dick L. Madson, for respondent.

Before RABINOWITZ, C.J., and MATTHEWS, COMPTON and MOORE, JJ.

OPINION

MOORE, Justice.

Casey Jones was convicted of possession of cocaine, AS 17.10.010, and tampering with physical evidence, AS 11.56.610(a)(4). On appeal, he contended that the police obtained the evidence against him by an illegal search and seizure in violation of his rights under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 14 of the Alaska Constitution. He claimed that the search was illegal because the search warrant was not based on a sufficient showing of probable cause. The court of appeals agreed with Jones and reversed his conviction. Jones v. State, 681 P.2d 364 (Alaska App.1984). We affirm the court of appeals' decision under Article I, Section 14 and Article I, Section 22 of the Alaska Constitution. ¹

I. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

Based on information obtained from a juvenile that defendant Casey Jones was selling cocaine, the Fairbanks police applied for a warrant to search Jones' apartment. The affidavit supporting the warrant application contained the following statement:

1. That your affiant is a detective with the City of Fairbanks Police Department.

2. That B.V., a juvenile, whose name may be obtained through proper motion to the court, told your affiant that on June 12, 1982, B.V. went with another individual to Casey Jones' apartment located in Story Apartments at 119 Bridget Street in Fairbanks where B.V.'s companion purchased one half gram of cocaine.

3. B.V. stated to your affiant that he has been to Jones' apartment ten to fifteen times when he or his companions have purchased cocaine from Jones in the past few months.

4. That B.V. pointed out the entrance to Jones' apartment as the door on the northwest corner of the building at 119 Bridget Street, a multi-unit apartment building, said door leading down to Jones' apartment. The name Story Apartments appears on the front of the building. B.V. stated that Jones has a set of triple-beam scales that he uses for measuring cocaine in the apartment.

5. Officer Frank Colletta of the Metro Unit in Fairbanks told your affiant today that the entrance as described by B.V. is the entrance to Casey L. Jones' apartment.

6. That in my experience with the Metro Unit in Fairbanks, records of drug transactions, substantial U.S. currency and drug paraphernalia are often present in the residences of persons who sell cocaine.

7. Your affiant has eighteen months experience investigating drug cases with Metro Team, Fairbanks.

After the execution of this search warrant, Jones was indicted for possession of cocaine, sale of cocaine and tampering with physical evidence. He was subsequently convicted of possession of cocaine and tampering with physical evidence. The court of appeals reversed his conviction, because it believed that the affidavit provided insufficient information "to enable a magistrate to independently determine probable cause under either current federal law, see Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983), or former law as enunciated in Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969), and Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964)." Jones at 365.

II. THE GATES TOTALITY OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES APPROACH

In Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723, the magistrate issued a search warrant based on the following affidavit:

Affiants have received reliable information from a credible person and do believe that heroin, marijuana, barbituates and other narcotic and narcotic paraphernalia are being kept at the above described premises for the purpose of sale and use contrary to the provisions of the law.

Id. at 109, 84 S.Ct. at 1511, 12 L.Ed.2d at 725. The Supreme Court reversed the defendant's conviction because the affidavit did not provide a sufficient basis for a finding of probable cause. The Court required that:

The magistrate must be informed of some of the underlying circumstances from which the informant concluded that the narcotics were where he claimed they were, and some of the underlying circumstances from which the officer concluded that the informant ... was "credible" or his information "reliable".

Id. at 114-15, 84 S.Ct. at 1513-14, 12 L.Ed.2d at 729. Therefore, the two-pronged test required that the affidavit establish (1) the informant's basis of knowledge, and (2) the informant's credibility or the reliability of his information.

The U.S. Supreme Court modified the Aguilar test in Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637. For the first prong requiring basis of knowledge, the Court allowed some detailed tips from informants to be self-verifying.

In the absence of a statement detailing the manner in which the information was gathered, it is especially important that the tip describe the accused's criminal activity in sufficient detail that the magistrate may know that he is relying on something more substantial than a casual rumor circulating in the underworld or an accusation based merely on an individual's general reputation.

Id. at 416, 89 S.Ct. at 589, 21 L.Ed.2d at 644. In addition, independent police corroboration of details in the informant's tip could establish the informant's credibility or the reliability of his information under the second prong. Id. at 417, 89 S.Ct. at 589, 21 L.Ed.2d at 644.

In construing provisions of the Alaska Constitution similar to the United States Constitution, we give careful consideration to the holdings of the United States Supreme Court, although we are not bound by them. State v. Glass, 583 P.2d 872, 876 (Alaska 1978). Thus, we have followed the Aguilar-Spinelli analysis in cases involving both the Fourth Amendment and Article I, Section 14 of the Alaska Constitution. See, e.g., Keller v. State, 543 P.2d 1211 (Alaska 1975) (adopting under our state constitution Aguilar-Spinelli's requirement that an affidavit establish both informant's basis of knowledge and his veracity), Harrelson v. State, 516 P.2d 390, 394-95 (Alaska 1973) (rejecting in part United States v. Harris, 403 U.S. 573, 91 S.Ct. 2075, 29 L.Ed.2d 723 (1971) and requiring affidavit to specify the underlying circumstances to allow a magistrate to independently assess an informant's veracity).

In Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983), the United States Supreme Court abandoned the Aguilar-Spinelli two-pronged test in favor of a "totality of the circumstances" approach. Under this approach,

[t]he task of the issuing magistrate is simply to make a practical, common-sense decision whether, given all the circumstances set forth in the affidavit before him, including the "veracity" and "basis of knowledge" of persons supplying hearsay information, there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place.

103 S.Ct. at 2332, 76 L.Ed.2d at 548. The sole task of a reviewing court is simply to ensure that the magistrate had a substantial basis for concluding that probable cause existed. Id. The state asks us to apply the Gates test under the state as well as the federal constitution to uphold the search warrant in this case. We decline this request. As the Washington Supreme Court stated regarding the Gates test:

Prior reliance on federal precedent and federal constitutional provisions [does] not preclude us from taking a more expansive view of [the state constitution] where the United States Supreme Court determines to further limit federal guaranties in a manner inconsistent with our prior pronouncements.

State v. Jackson, 102 Wash.2d 432, 688 P.2d 136, 140-41 (1984). ² Similarly, we may construe Alaska's constitutional provisions such as Article I, Section 14 as affording additional rights to those granted by the United States Supreme Court under the federal constitution. State v. Glass, 583 P.2d at 876 n. 12.

The Supreme Court offered several reasons for abandoning the Aguilar-Spinelli test. The Court asserted (1) that probable cause is a fluid concept involving an assessment of probabilities in a particular factual context, rather than a neat set of legal rules, 103 S.Ct. at 2328, 76 L.Ed.2d at 544; (2) that the "basis of knowledge" and "veracity" elements of the Aguilar-Spinelli test should not be accorded independent status "so that a deficiency in one may be compensated for, in determining the overall reliability of a tip, by a strong showing as to the other, or by some other indicia of reliability," id. at 2329, 76 L.Ed.2d at 545; (3) that affidavits are normally drafted by nonlawyers and "issued on the basis of nontechnical, common-sense judgments of laymen," id. at 2330, 76 L.Ed.2d at 546; (4) that a court's scrutiny of the sufficiency of an affidavit should not take the form of de novo review, id. at 2331, 76 L.Ed.2d at 547; (5) that if courts subject affidavits to greater scrutiny, police may 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.; and (6) that rigorous application of the Aguilar-Spinelli requirements will impede the task of law enforcement, diminishing the value of anonymous tips in police work. Id. at 2331-32, 76 L.Ed.2d at 547-48.

These propositions do not persuade us that we should abandon the Aguilar-Spinelli test under Article I, Section 14 of the Alaska Constitution. As for proposition (1), the two-pronged test has not reduced probable cause to a neat, artificial set of legal rules. "Rather, the two-pronged test simply provided a structure for probable cause...