State v. Saddler
| Decision Date | 17 December 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 20030439.,20030439. |
| Citation | 104 P.3d 1265,2004 UT 105 |
| Parties | State of Utah, Plaintiff and Petitioner, v. Anthony A. Saddler, Defendant and Respondent. |
| Court | Utah Supreme Court |
This opinion is subject to revision before final publication in the Pacific Reporter.
Mark L. Shurtleff, Att'y Gen., Jeffrey S. Gray, Asst. Att'y Gen., Brendan P. McCullagh, Salt Lake City, for plaintiff.
Linda M. Jones, Shannon N. Romero, Salt Lake City, for defendant.
¶1 The State of Utah challenges a court of appeals ruling on defendant Anthony A. Saddler's motion to suppress evidence of drug crimes that police detective Bill McCarthy seized from Saddler's residence pursuant to a search warrant. The court of appeals reversed the district court's denial of Saddler's motion and held that Detective McCarthy's affidavit supporting the search warrant did not adequately support a probable cause determination. We reverse.
¶2 On July 15, 2000, Detective Bill McCarthy of the West Valley City Police Department obtained a warrant to search the home of Anthony Saddler for marijuana, cocaine, and items related to the distribution of drugs. In requesting the warrant, McCarthy presented an affidavit to the district court that contained information McCarthy had obtained from a confidential informant. It also included details of McCarthy's efforts to corroborate that informant's information. In executing the warrant, the police found Saddler in possession of marijuana, cocaine, and other materials related to drug distribution. Saddler was subsequently charged with cocaine possession and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.
¶3 Saddler filed a motion to suppress the evidence found in his home, arguing that the evidence was obtained with an unlawful search warrant. The district court denied the motion, and Saddler entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving the right to appeal the district court's ruling. On appeal, the court of appeals reversed the district court's ruling on the motion to suppress. State v. Saddler, 2003 UT App 82, ¶ 1, 67 P.3d 1025.
¶4 To determine whether Detective McCarthy's affidavit supported a determination of probable cause, the court of appeals invoked the totality-of-the-circumstances test from the United States Supreme Court's decision in Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983). Saddler, 2003 UT App 82 at ¶ 9. However, the court of appeals stated that when the primary support for a warrant is information obtained from an informant, the totality-of-the-circumstances analysis "requires us to consider the three factors articulated by this court in Kaysville City v. Mulcahy, 943 P.2d 231, 235-36 (Utah Ct. App. 1997)." Saddler, 2003 UT App 82 at ¶ 10 (citations omitted). Those three factors consist of (1) the "informant's veracity, reliability and basis of knowledge," (2) whether "the informant gave enough detail about the observed criminal activity," and (3) whether "the police officer independently confirms the informants' information." Id. at ¶¶ 11, 20, 22 (internal quotations omitted).
¶5 In its analysis, the court of appeals determined that the affidavit failed to satisfy any of the three Mulcahy factors. In reviewing the first factor, the court of appeals concluded that although McCarthy's confidential informant had a sufficient "basis of knowledge" that Saddler was involved in criminal activity because the informant had personally observed Saddler's criminal acts, id. at ¶ 12, the informant was unreliable in light of the fact that he had participated in unlawful activities with Saddler and was unknown to the police. Id. at ¶¶ 13-18. Furthermore, the court of appeals determined that the second element of the three-factor test was not satisfied because McCarthy did not provide a detailed description of the informant's statement in his affidavit, but merely made conclusory statements about what the informant allegedly said. Id. at ¶ 21. Finally, the court held that the third factor, the officer's corroboration of the informant's statements, was not met, again determining that McCarthy's statements in the affidavit about his corroborative efforts were conclusory in nature and lacked sufficient detail to justify credibility.
¶6 The State now brings the matter before this court through a petition for writ of certiorari, arguing that McCarthy's affidavit is sufficient to support a finding of probable cause under the Gates test because the confidential informant is more reliable than the anonymous informant in Gates, and the police were able to corroborate not only innocent details, as in Gates, but also instances of specific criminal activity. In addition, the State contends that the court of appeals misapplied the Gates totality-of-the-circumstances standard, arguing that the court of appeals' three-factor test from Mulcahy is too technical and compartmentalized.
¶7 We review the court of appeals' assessment of the magistrate's probable cause determination for correctness and ask whether the court of appeals erred in concluding that the magistrate did not have a substantial basis for his probable cause determination. State v. Norris, 2001 UT 104, ¶ 14 n.2, 48 P.3d 872. In so doing, we must "afford the magistrate `great deference' and consider the affidavit relied upon by the magistrate `in its entirety and in a common sense fashion.'" Id. (quoting State v. Thurman, 846 P.2d 1256, 1260 (Utah 1993). We have also stated that "[e]xcessive technical dissection of an informant's tip or of the nontechnical language in the officer's affidavit is ill-suited to this task." State v. Hansen, 732 P.2d 127, 130 (Utah 1987).
¶8 First, we turn to the court of appeals' use of the three-factor test in its probable cause analysis. The three-factor test originated in Kaysville City v. Mulcahy, 943 P.2d 231 (Utah Ct. App. 1997). That case involved an informant who called a police dispatcher to report a drunk driver. Mulcahy, 943 P.2d at 233. The court addressed the question of whether the tip provided reasonable suspicion sufficient for a police officer to stop the vehicle. Id. at 234. The court "gleaned from Utah cases three factors to consider in determining the reliability and sufficiency of the informant's report." Id. at 235. The three-factor test analyzed (1) the reliability of the informant, (2) "whether the informant gave enough detail about the observed criminal activity to support a stop," and (3) "whether the police officer's personal observations confirm the [information in] the informant's tip." Id. at 236. The court of appeals found that the informant's tip passed the three-factor test and, therefore, provided sufficient reasonable suspicion to justify a stop. Id. at 238.
¶9 Subsequently, the court of appeals interpreted Mulcahy as mandating the three-factor analysis in other Fourth Amendment contexts. See, e.g., State v. Valenzuela, 2001 UT App 332, ¶ 15, 37 P.3d 260 (); City of St. George v. Carter, 945 P.2d 165, 169 (Utah Ct. App. 1997) (). In Valenzuela, the court of appeals reasoned that there was "nothing to prohibit extending the use of [the Mulcahy] factors to determinations of probable cause in the context of information supplied by an informant." 2001 UT App 332 at ¶ 16. Shortly thereafter, in State v. Deluna, 2001 UT App 401, 40 P.3d 1136, the court of appeals extended the three-factor analysis to the search warrant context, stating that where "information obtained from informants is the primary source for the search warrant, an analysis of the totality of the circumstances requires us to consider the three factors articulated by this court in Kaysville v. Mulcahy." Id. at ¶ 11 (emphasis added). Based on this line of cases, the court of appeals used the same three-factor test in determining that McCarthy's affidavit did not support a finding of probable cause. Saddler, 2003 UT App 82 at ¶ 9.1
¶10 We note that the court of appeals has developed this three-factor analysis in the absence of any direction from us. Nonetheless, we find that such an exacting analysis is ill-suited to conducting a commonsense probable cause determination for at least two reasons. First, " Gates, 462 U.S. at 235 (quoting United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 108 (1965)). Additionally, "given the informal, often hurried context in which it must be applied, the `built-in subtleties' of [a formal test] are particularly unlikely to assist magistrates in determining probable cause." Id. at 236 (citation omitted).
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