Court Opinion

ID: 9543367
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:44:54.931282+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:13.841014
License: Public Domain

BECK, Judge,
dissenting.
Because I cannot agree that the “only inference that can be drawn is that appellant’s drug-related activity was on-going and currently in progress,” I must dissent. The affiant’s use of the present tense in describing the activities of appellant is not enough to satisfy the requirement that an issuing authority must be supplied with the time frame within which an informant witnessed the criminal acts contained in the affida*585vit. See Commonwealth v. Haggerty, 388 Pa.Super. 67, 564 A.2d 1269, 1273-74 (1989) (Cavanaugh, J. dissenting).
The affidavit states that “the information [sic] states that he knows this because he has on at least 3 occasions left from the Chancellor Street address and accompanied Calvin Murphy to the Kingsessing address to get more drugs.” In my opinion this statement raises uncertainty as to the time frame in which appellant witnessed the criminal activity. It also distinguishes these facts from those in Haggerty. Was the informant’s last visit made on the day police received the information? Were all three visits made within a time reasonably close to the date police received the information? The affidavit sheds no light on our inquiry yet the majority assumes that the visits occurred in “the recent past.” Maj. Op. at 1023.
The affidavit as written lends itself to varying interpretations of when the informant made his or her observations. The affidavit, then, “does not contain facts from which the date of the [informant’s] observations could be determined.” Commonwealth v. Edmunds, 526 Pa. 374, 586 A.2d 887, 891 (1991). Based on this uncertainty, I would find that the warrant was invalid.