State v. Wiley

• Decision Date: 16 March 1973
• Docket Number: No. 43098,43098
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Earthia WILEY, Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 667

205 N.W.2d 667

295 Minn. 411

STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Earthia WILEY, Appellant.

No. 43098.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

March 16, 1973.

Daniel R. Shulman, Minneapolis, for appellant.

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

Heard and considered en banc.

PER CURIAM.

Defendant, Earthia Wiley, was found guilty by a jury of unlawful possession of marijuana ¹ and appeals from the judgment of conviction. Cited as error, among other things, are the claimed inadequacy of the search warrant, the procedures used in the Rasmussen hearing, various evidentiary rulings, and the sufficiency of the evidence. We affirm.

The investigation leading to defendant's arrest for unlawful possession of marijuana was initiated on October 14, 1970, when a Minneapolis housing inspector told the police that he had seen suspected marijuana in a garage located at 4717 Fourth Avenue South in Minneapolis. In response to the housing inspector's report, two members of the Minneapolis Narcotics Squad went to the garage and, looking through a window and open garage doors, observed a large quantity of suspected marijuana and an automobile. It was subsequently determined that the automobile was jointly registered to defendant and a Mrs. Patsy M. Harley, the owner of the house at 4717 Fourth Avenue South.

On October 22, 1970, an unnamed informant told members of the narcotics squad that defendant smoked and sold marijuana and that the informant had observed marijuana in the house, the garage, and on defendant's person. He also furnished the police with a sample of marijuana allegedly from a bedroom in the house at 4717 Fourth Avenue South. The police subjected this to a Valtox test, and it showed positive for marijuana.

On the basis of this information, the police obtained a warrant authorizing them to search defendant, his car, the garage, and the house for drugs and 'items of identification to show constructive possession of above contraband such as rent receipts, utility bills, personal letters and other personal ID.' Pursuant to this warrant, the police, on October 23, 1970, stopped and searched defendant and his automobile at the intersection of Lake Street and Clinton Avenue in Minneapolis. Defendant resisted the search and was arrested for refusal to comply with a court order, but no drugs were found in the car or on his person.

The police then took defendant to 4717 Fourth Avenue South to search the house. When the police arrived, they awakened Mrs. Harley, ² who was asleep in one of the bedrooms. In a dresser drawer in this bedroom, the police found several containers of marijuana and various items bearing defendant's name, including a selective service card, credit cards, letters, and identification cards. The drawer also contained a paperback book bearing the words on its cover, 'Earthia Wiley--don't touch this book--personal and private.' Besides the book, the identification items, and the marijuana, the drawer contained only a handkerchief and a man's sock. Additional marijuana was found in other parts of the house and in the garage. After the search and seizure, the police again arrested defendant, this time for possession of marijuana, and gave him Miranda warnings. On the way downtown to the police station, when asked by an officer where he was the night before, defendant stated he was 'out selling reefer' and laughed.

After notice to defendant that the state intended to introduce evidence of statements in the nature of confessions or admissions and evidence obtained by the search and seizure, a Rasmussen hearing was held. The Rasmussen court granted defendant's motion to suppress any verbal statements made by him prior to the Miranda warnings; it denied defendant's motion to suppress statements made after the Miranda warnings; it denied defendant's motion to suppress evidence obtained as a result of the search on October 23, 1970; it found probable cause for the search warrant based on the police officers' corroboration of information received from an informant; and it denied defendant's motion to require the state to reveal the identity of that informant.

At trial the defense was that, although there was marijuana in the house, it was not under defendant's dominion and control and that, in fact, he did not live at 4717 Fourth Avenue South. Most of defendant's arguments before this court go to the admissibility of evidence used by the state to show defendant's constructive possession of the marijuana, which was the essential element in proving the charge against defendant.

1. Defendant contends that his admission of a possessory interest in the house in which marijuana was found should have been excluded from evidence because the prosecution had not at a pretrial Rasmussen hearing disclosed the admission, State ex rel. Rasmussen v. Tahash, 272 Minn. 539, 141 N.W.2d 3 (1965), and had not undertaken to show that the admission was made voluntarily, Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). The contention is unfounded.

Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908 (1964), which the rules we established in Rasmussen were designed to effectuate, mandated that at some stage in the criminal trial proceedings the trial court must provide for an in camera preliminary examination as to the voluntariness of a confession offered by the prosecution, it being the purpose of such hearing to resolve evidentiary conflicts and to reject confessions which the court found to have been involuntarily made.

The voluntariness of this defendant's admission is not as a matter of fact challenged, and the circumstances under which it was made did not make the Miranda rules in any way applicable. The admission was made on October 20--three days before defendant was arrested for the offense of possessing marijuana--in the course of a police response to a reported 'domestic argument.' Mrs. Harley, a friend of defendant's, had called the police, asking them to evict defendant from the premises. Upon their arrival, defendant told the police officers to leave the premises, stating: '(Y)ou better get out of my house * * * because I pay rent here and I live here, and I didn't call you here.'

The familiar rules of Miranda were stated in the specific circumstances of an individual 'subjected to custodial police interrogation' and were designed to accord such individual his Fifth Amendment privilege 'not to be compelled to incriminate himself.' Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 439, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1609, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, 704 (1966). ³ Defendant did not assert that he was coerced into making the admission, and any implication that the police compelled defendant to tell them to 'get out of my house' would be utterly incredible. He was not in custody, and he was not under police interrogation. There is nothing to suggest that his statement was other than spontaneous or, in the Miranda sense, the statement of an indignant individual keenly aware of his rights to direct the police officers to leave his home.

2. Defendant objected to the admission of his welfare identification card which was seized at the time of the police search on October 23 but was not listed in the police inventory of items seized and was not disclosed in the pretrial Rasmussen hearing. The defendant was entitled to a determination at the Rasmussen hearing of whether there was a proper seizure of the card. Because he did not have that opportunity, it should not have been admitted into evidence. We are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, however, that its erroneous introduction into evidence was without prejudice to defendant. The welfare identification card was one of several identification items found in the same dresser drawer in which the marijuana was found. Its value was purely cumulative, supporting no inference other than those amply supported by the other identification items. Moreover, there could be no constitutional objection to the seizure of the welfare card different from those raised to the seizure of other identification items.

3. Defendant also cites as error the admission of his statement that he was 'out selling reefer' on the grounds that the Rasmussen hearing court made insufficient findings of fact that the statement was constitutionally obtained by the police. The state's intention to use this statement had been disclosed to defendant and its admissibility litigated in the Rasmussen hearing. However, defendant argues that the judge's ruling that all statements made after the Miranda warnings were admissible did not satisfy the requirements of State ex rel. Rasmussen v. Tahash, Supra, and Jackson v. Denno, Supra, for a pretrial ruling on the admissibility of inculpatory statements.

In essence, defendant argues that the court's finding that all statements made after the Miranda warnings were admissible was an insufficient ruling on the asmissibility of any particular statement without a specific finding of the time each statement was made; i.e., a ruling as to whether each particular statement was made before or after the Miranda warnings. Although defendant correctly cites the controlling rule that all issues of fact are to be decided by the Rasmussen court, ⁴ in this case there was no conflicting testimony introduced at the hearing. The testimony was undisputed that the Miranda warnings were given defendant after his arrest at the house and that defendant's statement that he was 'out selling reefer' was made after the arrest while he was being transported downtown. Defendant offered no evidence to the contrary. There simply was no factual dispute for the court to settle. Therefore, the Rasmussen court's factfindings were sufficient.

4. Defendant's next group of objections go to the validity of the search warrant pursuant to which the marijuana and identification...