Court Opinion

ID: 9455338
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:19:13.56184+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:33.577135
License: Public Domain

WILL, District Judge
(dissenting in part).
There are two ways of effectively eliminating the Fourth Amendment from the law of the land. One is to repeal it, a difficult if not impossible undertaking. The other is to reduce it to a formalism, compliance with which may be accomplished by law enforcement officers incanting certain ritualistic conclusory phrases with no substantiation of their truth or substance.
The procedure followed in the instant ease and approved by the majority illustrates how easily the latter result may *743be achieved. Here, two warrants authorizing search for the same allegedly-stolen property at two geographically separate locations were issued by the United States Commissioner on the basis of a single joint affidavit signed by a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a Detective Sergeant of the Indiana State Police. The affidavit described information purportedly given to the affiants by three separate unnamed informers.
The first of these was described in the affidavit as “a reliable informant” who had “on various occasions in the past furnished information leading to the recovery of similar type stolen property.” The affidavit further stated that this informant had “stated to the undersigned” that from July 1967 to February 1968, he had seen certain tractors on the premises of defendant’s company. At the hearing on the motion to suppress, it appeared that the affidavit was in part false since neither of the affiants had ever spoken to this informer, the information both as to his past services and the tractors he had seen on the defendant’s premises having been passed on to them by another F.B.I. agent.
The affidavit further averred that the affiants knew the tractors seen by the informer to be stolen although most of them were identified by no more than the name of the manufacturer, the model year and, in some instances, their color, e. g., 1967 Mack U-8 Tractor, dark green, 1967 White Tractor, pea green, 1966 and 1967 Autocar Tractors.
The second informer is described in the affidavit simply as “Another informant, whom your affiants believe to be reliable * * * ” and the third as “Another informant, believed by your affiants to be reliable. * * * ”
As the majority recognizes, a search warrant may be properly issued only by a neutral and detached magistrate after an independent finding of probable cause to believe that contraband or stolen merchandise is on the premises. Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1947). While probable cause may be based in part on hearsay, Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960), the magistrate must be informed of some of the underlying circumstances on which the informant based his conclusions, as well as some of the underlying circumstances from which the officer making the affidavit concluded that the informant was reliable. Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 114, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1963); Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 413, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969).
It seems obvious to me that neither of these minimum criteria are met by the affidavit in this case. There is no underlying information as to how any of the informants or the affiants knew any of the tractors in question were stolen. The meagerness of the description of many of them should cast serious doubt or at least compel inquiry by a “neutral and detached magistrate” as to the basis of the conclusion. Even as to those identified, there is no underlying information as to where or when they were stolen or how the affiants or the informants could “know” that they were. The Commissioner apparently simply accepted the conclusory averments in the joint affidavit without learning any “underlying circumstances.”
The absence of “underlying circumstances” as to the reliability of the three informants is equally total. This Court previously found inadequate an averment without further underlying information “that said informant has in the past furnished the affiant with reliable and accurate information and that he knows the informant to be a reliable source.” United States v. Roth, 391 F. 2d 507 (C.A. 7, 1967). That is substantially the same as the description of the first informant here. The other two, as previously noted, are simply described as informants whom the affiants believe to be reliable.
The majority, apparently recognizing that none of these alone is an adequate basis to establish the reliability of any of the informants, concludes that the *744fact that all three allegedly gave similar information establishes their reliability. But nothing plus nothing plus nothing is still nothing.
I assume that the reason why the Supreme Court has stressed the necessity for the magistrate to be advised in the affidavit of the “underlying circumstances” is to prevent the kind of formalistic exercise which took place here. The magistrate here did not know, 1) the names of any of the informants, 2) any specific facts on which the affiants based their beliefs as to the reliability of any of the informants, or 3) any specific facts on which either the affiants or the informants based their conclusion that stolen property was on the premises to be searched.
If information from anonymous informants is to furnish the basis for probable cause, specific facts must be included in the affidavit on which the conclusions of reliability and the presence of stolen property can be tested by the magistrate or we shall open the door to the issuance of search warrants whenever law enforcement officers desire them. While I have no serious doubt that the three informants actually existed in the instant case, the United States Commissioner had no basis for an independent determination that they did, that they were reliable or that stolen property would be found on either or both of the premises he authorized to be searched. Conclusory representations that anonymous informants are “reliable,” “believed to be reliable” or have “in the past furnished information leading to the recovery of similar type property,” or that property “known” by the affiants or the informants to have been stolen is on the premises do not, in my opinion, satisfy the requirements of probable cause or constitute the “underlying circumstances” which Aguilar and Spinelli demand. If they do, the Fourth Amendment has been reduced to a formalism, compliance with which can be achieved by the recitation of certain ritualistic phrases, and the magistrate will be merely a rubber stamp for law enforcement officers seeking a search warrant.1
While I agree with the rest of the majority’s conclusions, for the reasons heretofore stated, I dissent from their determination that the affidavit was adequate and would therefore reverse.

. Protecting the anonymity of informants, a desirable objective, need not nullify the Fourth Amendment. Supplementary oral testimony under oath in which the necessary underlying circumstances are disclosed to the magistrate can be taken, a transcript made thereof and, if appropriate, that transcript examined in camera by the trial judge. In the instant case, oral testimony was presented to the Commissioner but no record was kept thereof, and at the hearing on the motion to suppress he could not recall any specific information presented to him other than that contained in the affidavit. We must, therefore, as the majority recognizes, determine the validity of the search warrants solely on the adequacy of the affidavit.