Background
Jonesboro law-enforcement officers surveilled Jamien Thompson’s apartment after receiving information that he was selling fentanyl. According to a search-warrant affidavit, a confidential source said he bartered items with Thompson for fentanyl, met Thompson inside his residence, received fentanyl, and then surrendered it to an investigator.
Officers executing the warrant found a digital scale and a hairbrush with a concealed compartment containing 7.8 grams of fentanyl and 5.1 grams of cocaine. A jury convicted Thompson of trafficking fentanyl, possessing cocaine with purpose to deliver, and possessing drug paraphernalia to manufacture. Thompson was sentenced to an aggregate term of twenty-five years’ imprisonment.
On appeal, Thompson challenged the denial of his suppression motion, arguing that the affidavit failed to establish the confidential source’s reliability, the barter transaction did not establish probable cause, and the affidavit did not adequately connect the transaction to his apartment. He also argued that a no-knock entry lacked sufficient particularized justification.
The Court’s Holding
The Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of Thompson’s suppression motion. It held that the affidavit contained sufficient facts bearing on the confidential source’s reliability because the source admitted personally participating in a recent illegal drug transaction and immediately surrendered the fentanyl obtained from Thompson to law enforcement. The source’s lack of a prior record of reliability and the affidavit’s omission of certain controlled-buy safeguards were not fatal under the totality of the circumstances.
The court also held that the affidavit provided a substantial basis for finding probable cause to search Apartment G-8. Read practically and as a whole, the affidavit described officers surveilling that apartment, the source meeting Thompson inside “his residence,” and the source emerging with fentanyl. The issuing judge could reasonably infer that the referenced residence was Apartment G-8. Because probable cause existed, the court did not address the circuit court’s alternative reliance on the good-faith exception.
The court declined to consider Thompson’s no-knock argument because he had not preserved it below by specifically challenging the officers’ manner of entry or arguing that a knock-and-announce violation required suppression. The court also noted that, although the affidavit requested no-knock authority, the warrant itself neither authorized a no-knock entry nor addressed the knock-and-announce requirement.
Key Takeaways
- An informant’s personal participation in a recent drug transaction and immediate surrender of the drugs to police can supply facts supporting reliability even without a history of providing reliable information.
- A warrant affidavit is read practically and as a whole, and a connection between criminal activity and the place searched may be established through reasonable inferences from the affidavit’s facts.
- A challenge to the manner in which officers executed a warrant must be specifically raised in the circuit court to be preserved for appellate review.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates Arkansas’s totality-of-the-circumstances approach to probable cause and informant reliability. An affidavit need not recite a fixed set of controlled-buy procedures when its facts otherwise provide a substantial basis to believe that contraband will be found at the identified location.
It also underscores the need for defense counsel to distinguish between attacking a warrant’s probable-cause basis and challenging how officers executed it. Raising only the former will not preserve a knock-and-announce or no-knock argument for appeal.