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FOR IMMEDIATE NEWS RELEASE NEWS RELEASE # 081 FROM : CLERK OF SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA

The Opinion handed down on the 8th day of November, 2002 , is as follows:

PER CURIAM:

2001-K- 0723

STATE OF LOUISIANA v. SAMUEL T. HILLS (Parish of Orleans) ( Simple Possession of Cocaine) The trial court therefore reached the correct result when it denied respondent's motion to suppress the evidence. To this extent, we reverse the decision of the court of appeal. However, in all other respects, the court of appeal adequately treated respondent's remaining assignments of error. We therefore affirm those portions of the court of appeal's opinion, reinstate respondent's conviction and sentence, and remand the case to the district court for execution of sentence. DECISION OF THE COURT OF APPEAL AFFIRMED IN PART AND REVERSED IN PART; CASE REMANDED. CALOGERO, C.J., dissents and assigns reasons. JOHNSON, J., dissents.

11/08/02

SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA

No. 01-K-0723 STATE OF LOUISIANA v. SAMUEL T. HILLS

On Writ of Certiorari to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal

PER CURIAM: In Williamson v. United States, 512 U.S. 594, 599-600, 114 S.Ct. 2431, 2435, 129 L.Ed.2d 476 (1994), the Supreme Court observed that "[t]he fact that a person is making a broadly self-inculpatory confession does not make more credible the confession's non-self-inculpatory parts. One of the most effective ways to lie is to mix falsehood with truth, especially truth that seems particulary persuasive because of its self-inculpatory nature." A statement made by an individual caught red-handed in possession of contraband narcotics, acknowledging possession of the drugs but also identifying his or her supplier, therefore does not possess intrinsic reliability simply because the declarant provides the information in the context of admitting damning facts already known to the police. United States v. Hall, 113 F.3d 157, 159 (9th Cir. 1997)("[The informant's] claim that 'Ron' was his supplier was more in the nature of trying to buy his way out of trouble by giving the police someone 'up the chain,' than a selfinculpatory statement . . . . Once a person believes that the police have sufficient

evidence to convict him, his statement that another person is more important to his criminal enterprise than he gains little credibility from its inculpatory aspect."). Nevertheless, particularized circumstances may render the statement reliable. We found those circumstances present in State v. Mosley, 412 So.2d 527, 531-32 (La. 1982), in part because the defendant named his marijuana supplier immediately and voluntarily, "perhaps spontaneously," after his own arrest, with little time or opportunity to fabricate a story, and in part because the defendant identified a specific individual, including his address and personal characteristics, as opposed to giving the police "several names or vague descriptions [making it] more likely that he was relying on rumor and concealing his actual source." In the present case, on far different facts, we also find that the circumstances under which respondent was identified as a supplier of cocaine vouched for the reliability of the information provided by the declarant and that the court of appeal erred in concluding otherwise when it set aside the trial court's denial of respondent's motion to suppress. On June 8, 1996, Sergeant Steven Gaudet, acting on a tip from a confidential informant that "James" was dealing cocaine in front of an abandoned house in the 2100 block of LaSalle Street in New Orleans, established a surveillance of that location with Officers Lampard and Schnapp. The officers observed a hand-to-hand transaction between two men standing not in front of the abandoned home but across the street on the sidewalk in front of the gate to a chain link fence marking the perimeter of a two-story, wood-framed building on the corner of LaSalle Street and Jackson Avenue. The officers immediately placed the two men, James Scott and Howard Bryant, under arrest. Bryant had a single bag of cocaine in his possession; Scott had a total of 19 bags of cocaine on his
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person. According to the police testimony at the hearing conducted on respondent's motion to suppress the evidence, while Officer Lampard was in the process of handcuffing Scott and advising him of his rights, Scott informed the officers that he did not want to go to jail and that the cocaine he had in his possession had been given to him by a Samuel Hills to sell. Scott told the officers that Hills was wearing a white baseball cap, a blue and white striped shirt and blue shorts. Scott also began motioning behind him with his head to the apartment above him, indicating that Hills resided there, and advised the officers that his supplier had more cocaine stashed on the premises. Sergeant Gaudet looked up and observed respondent, who fit Scott's description, duck his head out of the doorway to the second story apartment on at least three occasions, "as if he were monitoring our activities." Gaudet testified that he did not know either Scott or Bryant but it appeared to the officer that, "given [his] position," Scott was telling him the truth. Shortly thereafter, the officers saw two young males exit the apartment and enter a black Nissan Sentra parked on the street. A woman also left the apartment, sat briefly in the Nissan occupied by her two sons, and then returned upstairs. Moments later, the officers observed respondent, in the company of the woman, at the head of the winding iron stair case which connected the second-story apartment to the ground. It appeared to the officers that respondent was attempting to leave, and Gaudet and Lampard stopped him and his female companion on the stairs, advised respondent that he was under investigation for a possible narcotics violation, and read him his rights pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). The officers then returned respondent and his female companion to the apartment where they
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confined them in the kitchen while they performed a protective sweep of the premises. In the meantime, Officer Schnapp retrieved the two boys from the Nissan and handcuffed them to the fence outside the apartment. He then brought the boys back up to the apartment to rejoin respondent and their mother in the kitchen. According to Officer Schnapp, respondent stated that he did not want his family to go to jail and directed the officer to a plastic bag containing 25 smaller bags of cocaine hidden underneath the stairway outside. Sergeant Gaudet subsequently prepared an application for a search warrant and returned with a drug-sniffing dog. He discovered two small bags of cocaine and a small bag of marijuana in an ice bucket on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen and $8500 in cash hidden behind a stereo. The state charged respondent by bill of information with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute in violation of La.R.S. 40:967(A)(1). After the trial court denied respondent's motion to suppress the evidence, a jury found him guilty of simple possession of cocaine. La.R.S. 40:967(C)(2). The court sentenced him as an habitual offender to 20 years imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of probation or suspension of sentence. On appeal, the Fourth Circuit reversed respondent's conviction and sentence. State v. Hills, 00-0124 (La. App. 4th Cir. 2/14/01), 786 So.2d 983 (Byrnes, J., dissenting). The majority on the panel concluded that the officers had effectively arrested respondent without probable cause when they confined him and the other members of his family in the kitchen area of the apartment while they made a protective sweep of the premises and then waited for a search warrant to conduct a more thorough search. "Considering the totality of the circumstances," the majority observed, "we find that it cannot be said that James Scott's statement, together with the observation of
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actions by the defendant and members of his household, furnished police probable cause to believe that the defendant had committed a crime." Hills, 00-0124 at 19. The majority further found that the illegal arrest tainted the subsequent discovery of the 25 bags of cocaine in the stairway outside of the apartment and the results of the subsequent search of the premises conducted under the warrant. Id., 00-0124 at 20. In dissent, Chief Judge Byrnes argued that "the police had reason to believe that Hills was part of the illegal drug trafficking taking place . . . and they had probable cause to detain and arrest Hills." Hills, 00-0124 at 5 (Byrnes, C.J., dissenting). We agree with the premise of the majority on the court of appeal panel that even spontaneous statements not made as the result of police interrogation may be suppressed as the fruit of an illegal arrest or seizure if they are not sufficiently attenuated from the primary illegality to represent the exercise of free will. State v. Fisher, 97-1133, pp. 11-12 (La. 9/9/98), 720 So.2d 1179, 1185-86. We also assume for present purposes that by seizing respondent on the steps of the staircase outside of his apartment, informing him that he was the target of a narcotics investigation, advising him of his Miranda rights, returning him to the apartment and holding him in custody while their investigation proceeded, the police had exercised the degree of restraint ordinarily associated with a formal arrest, although a formal arrest had not yet been made. Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 322, 114 S.Ct. 1526, 1529, 128 L.Ed.2d 293 (1994). Nevertheless, we also agree with the dissent that probable cause existed for the de facto arrest of respondent. That a statement made by an individual in James Scott's position, naming others involved in an offense, is not truly self-inculpatory and therefore not intrinsically reliable, does not mean "that one who knows the
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police are already in a position to charge him with a serious crime will not lightly undertake to divert the police down blind alleyways." 2 Warren R. LaFave, Search and Seizure,

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