IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 16-0868
Filed August 16, 2017
STATE OF IOWA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
vs.
BRADLEY DAVISSON,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Carol S. Egly (motion
to suppress) and Cynthia M. Moisan (bench trial), District Associate Judges.
A defendant challenges the probable cause supporting a search warrant
to obtain his DNA. AFFIRMED.
Heidi Young of Parrish Kruidenier Dunn Boles Gentry Brown & Bergmann
L.L.P., Des Moines, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Timothy M. Hau, Assistant
Attorney General, for appellee.
Considered by Vogel, P.J., McDonald, J., and Scott, S.J.*
*Senior judge assigned by order pursuant to Iowa Code section 602.9206 (2017).
2
SCOTT, Senior Judge.
Bradley Davisson was found guilty of operating a vehicle without the
owner’s consent, in violation of Iowa Code section 714.7 (2015). In this appeal
he challenges the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress. He asserts
there is a lack of probable cause supporting the search warrant that was used to
obtain a sample of his DNA.
Search warrants are only to issue upon a finding of probable cause. State
v. Green, 540 N.W.2d 649, 655 (Iowa 1995). The test the issuing judge must
apply is “whether a reasonably prudent person would believe that a crime has
been committed on the premises to be searched or evidence of a crime is being
concealed there.” Id. There must be “a nexus between criminal activity, the
things to be seized, and the place to be searched.” Id. (citation omitted). On
appeal, while our review is de novo, “our task is not to make an independent
determination of probable cause, but only to determine whether the issuing
magistrate had a ‘substantial basis for . . . conclud[ing] that probable cause
existed.’” Id. (alteration in original) (citation omitted). We are “obliged to give
great deference to a magistrate’s finding of probable cause to search.” Id.
“Close cases must be resolved in favor of upholding warrants, as public policy is
promoted by encouraging officers to seek them.” Id.
In this case, on April 7, 2015, a Cadillac was stolen from a vehicle dealer
in Des Moines. Two days later on April 9, it was discovered in Madrid, Iowa, in a
parking lot with a plastic drink cup and straw inside. Officers suspected Davisson
of the theft and applied for a search warrant to obtain his DNA to test against the
cup and straw found in the car. In support of the search warrant, the officers
3
averred Davisson was arrested in Des Moines for possession of drug
paraphernalia on April 6, 2015. The vehicle he was in at the time of his arrest
was a Yukon, which was later determined to have been stolen from the same
parking lot in Madrid where the Cadillac was found. Davisson was released from
the Polk County Jail on April 7, 2015, the day the Cadillac was stolen, and the jail
is located approximately eight blocks from the vehicle dealer where the Cadillac
was stolen. Two days later, Davisson was arrested in a truck that was also
stolen on April 7, 2015, from a parking lot in Madrid across the street from where
the Cadillac was found and where the Yukon had been stolen earlier.
On appeal, Davisson asserts this information only puts him in proximity to
where the Cadillac was located and provides no additional information linking him
to the theft of the Cadillac. From our review of the record presented to the
issuing magistrate, it is reasonable to deduce that Davisson first stole the Yukon
from a parking lot in Madrid and drove it to Des Moines, where he was arrested
in the Yukon on April 6. When he was released from jail the next day, he walked
the eight blocks to the vehicle dealer, stole the Cadillac, and drove it back to
Madrid, first stopping to obtain a drink at a gas station. He abandoned the
Cadillac in the same parking lot where he had initially taken the Yukon, walked
across the street, and stole the truck. He was arrested in possession of the truck
two days later.
Davisson’s proximity to the location where the Cadillac was stolen in Des
Moines and the location where it was recovered in Madrid, along with his
possession of two other stolen vehicles taken from the same location in Madrid in
the days surrounding the theft of the Cadillac, provided the issuing judge the
4
nexus between Davisson and the crime. As the district court noted in ruling on
Davisson’s motion to suppress, there was probable cause to believe “someone
might have dropped off one stolen vehicle and picked up and stole another
vehicle.”
Giving deference to the judge’s probable cause finding, we find there was
a “substantial basis for . . . conclud[ing] that probable cause existed” to obtain
Davisson’s DNA in order to test it against the cup and straw found in the Cadillac.
See id. We affirm the district court’s decision denying Davisson’s motion to
suppress.
AFFIRMED.
State of Iowa v. Bradley Davisson
Combined Opinion