Courts:
Arkansas
Supreme
Court
Says
Get
a
Warrant!
10/28/05
The Arkansas Supreme Court has upheld a lower court decision throwing out the evidence in a methamphetamine case because police failed to obtain a warrant before searching the house. While the ruling demonstrates the tenderness with which appeals courts treat lower court rulings on evidentiary matters, most of which are decided in favor of prosecutors, it also shows that Arkansas' highest court is unwilling to relax traditional standards for search and seizure even in meth cases. The case began when Greenwood Police Officer Will Dawson received a tip that a woman had purchased iodine, an ingredient in home meth-cooking, at a local feed store. Dawson testified that he obtained her license plate number and subsequently determined where she lived. He went to the house, where he said he smelled a chemical odor. He then went to the front door, looked through the window, and saw three people sitting at a table along with what appeared to be meth ingredients. Dawson said he began knocking on the door and shouting "Police!" which caused the residents to begin picking up items off the table and moving around. Dawson told the lower court he had "no doubt" they were trying to destroy evidence and that he feared for the public safety. He and other officers then entered the home, seized the evidence, and arrested the residents, Phillip Nichols, his wife Trudy, and Dale Scamardo. That wasn't good enough for Sebastian County Circuit Court Judge Norman Wilkinson, who ordered the evidence suppressed after Dawson admitted he did not have probable cause to believe a crime had been committed until peering through the windows of the home. Police should have obtained a search warrant before going to the home, he ruled. Oddly enough, police did obtain a search warrant -- after they had already raided the house -- suggesting they knew they had a problematic search from the beginning. Prosecutors appealed to the state Supreme Court, but if it wasn't good enough for Judge Wilkinson, it wasn't good enough for the Supreme Court, the justices held in unanimous opinion authored by Justice Tom Glaze. "This court has never wavered in its long-standing rule that it is the providence of the trial court, not this court, to determine the credibility of the witnesses," Glaze wrote. The trial court "has acted within its discretion after making an evidentiary decision based on the particular facts of the case or even a mixed question of law and fact." And police still need to get a search warrant before searching someone's home. That's good news for the rule of law, and it's good news for Scamardo and the Nichols. Their charges will soon be dropped, their attorney, H. Ray Hodnett, told the Associated Press. "The lower court found the evidence should have been suppressed and the Supreme Court agreed," Hodnett said. "Their case is over."
|
