Opinion ID: 2547964
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The trial court's factual findings are supported by substantial evidence.

Text: With respect to the first step, the trial judge ruled from the bench that the affidavit's description of the informant as reliable did not rise to the level of a Franks issue and therefore denied Appellant's motion. This appears to be the extent of his factual findings on the record. Implicitly, though, this means that the trial judge found that the affiant's assertion that the confidential informant was reliable was not a deliberate falsehood, or made with reckless disregard for the truth. The affidavit states, in relevant part, that Affiant received information from/observed a reliable confidential informant that she had made a successful controlled purchase of crack cocaine at [Appellant's address]. The officer corroborated this evidence by [l]isten[ing] to the audio of the buy and confirm[ing] that a controlled purchase had occurred, field test[ing] the drugs and confirm[ing] the location of the buy as described by the C.I. Appellant contends that the reliable status assigned to the confidential informant was deliberately or recklessly false or misleading because this was the first and only time that Connie Alexander was used as a confidential informant in a controlled buy. Reliability, Appellant contends, implies a pattern of behavior or history; according to him, reliability cannot be established by the mere fact that she was reliable in this case alone. We disagree. The confidential informant told HPD that she could purchase cocaine from Appellant. On the day of the purchase she went to the police station and met with an HPD officer who searched her person, while another officer searched her vehicle. No drugs were found. An officer equipped the informant with an audio recorder and transmission device. She was given forty dollars with which to purchase drugs. [4] She then drove to Appellant's residence which police officers watched her enter. The officers heard her ask to purchase a forty from Appellant, for which she was given two rocks of crack cocaine that she placed in her shirt pocket. She then went to the police station where she surrendered the drugs and was searched again. She told the officers that she had purchased the drugs, which had tested positive for cocaine, from Appellant. In short, the informant told the officer that she could purchase drugs from Appellant, and that proved to be true. In other words, the informant proved to be reliable, and that is supported by substantial evidence. See Taylor v. Commonwealth, 987 S.W.2d 302, 305 (Ky.1998) (concluding that findings of trial court with respect to its denial of a motion to suppress were supported by substantial evidence when the very specific information from the informer which was confirmed in every detail by independent police observation, reasonably led the police to believe that the tip was sufficiently truthful and reliable to justify a vehicle stop). Some of that evidence was detailed in the affidavit itself as required by Franks, 438 U.S. at 165, 98 S.Ct. 2674. Moreover, the affidavit includes some of the underlying circumstances from which the officer concluded that the informant... was credible or [her] information reliable. [5] Franks, 438 U.S. at 165, 98 S.Ct. 2674 (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, we cannot conclude that the officer's sworn affidavit was deliberately or recklessly misleading, or that the trial court's decision was not otherwise supported by substantial evidence.