State v. Walker

530 So. 2d 1200, 1988 WL 58204
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedJune 1, 1988
Docket19678-KA
StatusPublished
Cited by22 cases

This text of 530 So. 2d 1200 (State v. Walker) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Walker, 530 So. 2d 1200, 1988 WL 58204 (La. Ct. App. 1988).

Opinion

530 So.2d 1200 (1988)

STATE of Louisiana, Appellee,
v.
Essie Mae WALKER, Appellant.

No. 19678-KA.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Second Circuit.

June 1, 1988.
Writ Denied November 11, 1988.

*1201 Jones & Johnson by Neal G. Johnson, Monroe, for appellant.

William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Baton Rouge, James A. Norris, Jr., Dist. Atty., Monroe, John P. Spires, Asst. Dist. Atty., Bastrop, for appellee.

Before HALL, MARVIN and FRED W. JONES, Jr., JJ.

MARVIN, Judge.

In this appeal of her conviction by jury verdict for attempted possession of cocaine and of her sentence, Essie Mae Walker argues that her motion to suppress should have been sustained and that in any event the conditions of probation imposed on her under a suspended sentence are constitutionally excessive. Assignments of error which were not argued or briefed are not considered.

We affirm.

*1202 FACTS

Responding to a request by narcotics officers made one year before to private parcel carriers, one private carrier informed the Morehouse Parish Sheriff's Office on September 26, 1985, that it had received from Detroit a package addressed to Mrs. Walker whom the officers suspected of being involved in major drug trafficking.

Within three hours a trained and "certified" canine "sniffed" and selected Mrs. Walker's package as containing marijuana, hashish, or cocaine from among several similarly wrapped dummy packages. A second test was conducted to "verify" the first test.

A narcotics deputy dressed in the uniform of the private carrier drove a delivery van of the private carrier to the address on the package, the residence of Mrs. Walker in Bastrop. There she accepted and signed for the package and was thereafter under surveillance. Within an hour, Mrs. Walker, carrying a paper sack, drove from her home in her car. She first went into a grocery store and then drove to a residence where she spoke to a male. Thereafter she drove to the parking lot of a cocktail lounge where she carried a paper sack out of her car and into an adjacent residential apartment. She returned to her car emptyhanded. The surveillants suspected that Mrs. Walker was making deliveries of narcotics and stopped her car after she left the apartment.

Mrs. Walker was informed that the officers were conducting a drug investigation and desired her consent to search her car. She agreed and then signed a consent form. She was given Miranda warnings and asked if she had received a package from the private carrier that morning by the officer who delivered the package to her. She denied receiving the package. The search of the car produced nothing incriminating.

The officers then followed Mrs. Walker to her home where they waited in the carport for another officer to return with a search warrant for her home. The officers saw that Mrs. Walker waited inside at her kitchen table on which sat the package that had been delivered to her. About the time, or shortly before the search warrant arrived about 4:15 p.m., one of the officers asked if she would allow the officers to enter her home. She agreed, stating that she wanted to "cooperate" with them and that the package was actually for her daughter, Glenda Henderson, who had told her that morning to expect delivery of and accept a package but instructed her not to open it. Mrs. Walker expected her daughter to come by later in the day to pick up the package.

One of the officers asked her to consent to opening the package, informing her that she could refuse to consent. She affirmatively consented to open the package. Her later statement to police confirmed the version of the officers that she agreed to open the package in the presence of the officers. The package contained a worn pair of tennis shoes and about seven ounces of cocaine in about 140 envelopes. Mrs. Walker was thereafter taken to the Sheriff's office about 6:30 p.m. There she was again advised of her Miranda rights and was questioned for about an hour. She first denied and then admitted that she had "wired" thousands of dollars on separate occasions to Detroit, the most recent occasion being two or three weeks earlier. She said she did so each time at her daughter's request and with money her daughter gave her to send. She repeatedly denied any knowledge of what the package contained.

After Mrs. Walker opened the package and before she was taken to the sheriff's office the narcotics officers awaited the appearance of Mrs. Walker's daughter, Ms. Henderson, who was also suspected of trafficking in drugs. The officers had been told that the package was actually for Ms. Henderson. Ms. Henderson came in the house about 5:45 p.m., but did not take the rewrapped package when she left a few minutes later.

Mrs. Walker and Ms. Henderson were separately billed with attempted possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and with conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute. This appeal concerns only Mrs. Walker's conviction by jury of the responsive *1203 verdict of attempted simple possession and her sentence.

THE MOTION TO SUPPRESS

Concluding that Mrs. Walker consented to opening the package in the presence of the officers and that her statement to the officers was properly predicated, the trial court denied Mrs. Walker's motion to suppress the cocaine and her statement.

Mrs. Walker asserts that the package should have been suppressed because it was unlawfully "seized" from the time the narcotics officers directed the private carrier to detain it for their "inspection." In a similar factual situation, the Supreme Court has held that the investigative detention and subjection of one's luggage to a canine sniff test in an airport is not a "search" prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. This type detention was held to be akin to the minimally intrusive detention allowed in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), and Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972), where an officer has reasonable suspicion based on articulable facts and inferences that a person has been or is about to become engaged in criminal activity. U.S. v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983).

Moreover, the "controlled delivery" by police of a package containing contraband has been recognized to serve a useful function in law enforcement. Illinois v. Andreas, 463 U.S. 765, 103 S.Ct. 3319, 77 L.Ed.2d 1003 (1983). In U.S. v. Van Leeuwen, 397 U.S. 249, 90 S.Ct. 1029, 25 L.Ed.2d 282 (1970), a 29-hour delay in delivery of a package by postal authorities was not fatal under the Fourth Amendment when the police reasonably suspected the package to contain contraband. Here the package was received by the private carrier in Monroe about 9:00 a.m. The sniff tests did not delay the scheduled delivery and the package was delivered "on time" in Bastrop about 2:15 p.m.

The officers knew from the sniff tests that the package to Mrs. Walker from Detroit probably contained either marijuana, hashish or cocaine. They knew from other sources that she had been sending large sums of money out of state. They saw her appear to make deliveries from her car soon after she received the package.

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Bluebook (online)
530 So. 2d 1200, 1988 WL 58204, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-walker-lactapp-1988.