Opinion ID: 547526
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Towns's Arrest

Text: 17 Towns initially asserts, as he argued in his unsuccessful pretrial motion to quash and suppress, that probable cause did not exist at the time of his arrest and that all evidence obtained as the fruits of the arrest therefore should have been excluded as evidence. When reviewing a district court's probable cause determinations, we will rely on the court's factual findings unless they are clearly erroneous. United States v. Price, 888 F.2d 1206, 1208 (7th Cir.1989); United States v. Lima, 819 F.2d 687, 688 (7th Cir.1987). We review the district court's legal determination of probable cause, however, de novo, employing the following standard: 18 The police have probable cause to arrest an individual where the facts and circumstances within their knowledge and of which they [have] reasonable trustworthy information [are] sufficient to warrant a prudent [person] in believing that the [suspect] had committed or was committing an offense. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 225, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964); .... [P]robable cause requires only a probability or substantial chance of criminal activity, not an actual showing of such activity. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2335 n. 13, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983). The determination of whether probable cause exists in a given situation involves the factual, practical considerations of everyday life upon which reasonable, prudent [persons], not legal technicians act. United States v. Watson, 587 F.2d 365, 368 (7th Cir.1978), cert. denied, Davis v. United States, 439 U.S. 1132, 99 S.Ct. 1055, 59 L.Ed.2d 95 (1979). 19 Lima, 819 F.2d at 688 (quoting United States v. Goudy, 792 F.2d 664, 668 (7th Cir.1986)); see also Price, 888 F.2d at 1208-09. 20 We find that the district court's factual findings were not clearly erroneous and that the officers had probable cause to arrest Towns based on the informant's tip and their corroborating surveillance. In Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983), the Supreme Court discarded the previously-used Aguilar-Spinelli two-prong test of the reliability of informants' tips and adopted the totality of circumstances approach in its stead. See Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969); Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964). Under the Gates test, a magistrate who issues a warrant assesses an informant's veracity, reliability, and basis of knowledge under the totality of the circumstances in determining the value of an informant's report in establishing probable cause. Because the standards applicable to the factual basis supporting the officer's probable-cause assessment at the time of the challenged arrest and search are at least as stringent as the standards applied with respect to the magistrate's assessment, Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S. 560, 91 S.Ct. 1031, 28 L.Ed.2d 306 (1971), we must determine whether the information that the officers possessed at the time of Towns's arrest would have allowed a magistrate to issue an arrest warrant. While under the totality of the circumstances test we still consider the informant's veracity, reliability, and basis of knowledge as important factors, a deficiency in one may be compensated for, in determining the overall reliability of a tip, by a strong showing as to the other, or by some other indicia of reliability. Id. 462 U.S. at 232, 103 S.Ct. at 2329. 21 The factual circumstances in Gates are not unlike those present in this case. In Gates, the police received the following anonymous letter: 22 [A] couple in your town ... strictly make their living on selling drugs. They are Sue and Lance Gates, they live on Greenway, off Bloomingdale Rd. in the condominiums. Most of their buys are done in Florida. Sue his wife drives their car to Florida, where she leaves it to be loaded up with drugs, then Lance flys down and drives it back. Sue flys back after she drops the car off in Florida. May 3 she is driving down there again and Lance will be flying down in a few days to drive it back. At the time Lance drives the car back he has the trunk loaded with over $100,000.00 in drugs. Presently they have over $100,000.00 worth of drugs in their basement. 23 They brag about the fact they never have to work, and make their entire living on pushers. 24