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Wiggins v. State

The search of the defendant's residence, which resulted in numerous drug charges, was invalid because there was insufficient probable cause to support the issuance of the search warrant.

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We granted Jack Wiggins’s application for interlocutory review of the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence discovered during a search of his home. On appeal, Wiggins argues that the search was invalid because there was insufficient probable cause to support the issuance of the search warrant. We agree, and for the reasons set forth infra, reverse.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the trial court’s ruling,1 the evidence shows that, on June 22, 2012, Samone Burnes, an undercover narcotics agent with the Kennesaw Police Department “KPD”, received a written complaint from Lieutenant Graden, also with the KPD, conveying that an anonymous informant had given him information about Wiggins “selling narcotics at his residence and storing narcotics there.” Agent Burnes later spoke with Lt. Graden regarding the complaint, but he did not tell her “anything about the informant or who he was.” About a week later, Agent Burnes had a telephone conversation with the anonymous informant, who told her that Wiggins had an “indoor mushroom grow,” that he was selling “approximately 50 pounds of marijuana from his residence” each week, that the informant had seen the drugs in Wiggins’s home, and that there were cameras on the exterior of the house. But the informant did not advise Agent Burnes of when this alleged criminal activity occurred, and Burnes testified that she did not know if it occurred “five years ago or one week before she received the complaint.” Agent Burnes also did not learn anything about the informant during the call.

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