Court Opinion

ID: 9453935
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:29:23.247118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:53.182272
License: Public Domain

KILEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent. Pugh contends that the use of the fictitious name on the affidavit for the warrant per se voids the warrant under the Fourth Amendment. I cannot agree with this contention because I find nothing in the Constitution which requires such a result absent a showing of some prejudice to petitioner. Here petitioner does not claim that the issuing magistrate was not aware that the affiant was using a false name or that the affiant’s true identity was unknown to the magistrate. Petitioner does not claim that he sought the identity of the affiant from police and was unable to get it or even that he did not know the real identity of the affiant. I agree that the affiant must be named where the defendant wishes to question the existence of probable cause by a motion to suppress, but petitioner here has not, so far as the record before us shows, ever questioned the existence of probable cause.
The Fourth Amendment requires a warrant to be supported by oath or affirmation but does not expressly require the person giving that oath to sign his correct name. No Supreme Court case is cited which supports Pugh’s contention. The case of King v. United States, 282 F.2d 398, involved a federal search warrant to seize liquor, and the facts in that case do not warrant its use in supporting Pugh’s contention. There a hearing on a motion to suppress disclosed that the affiant used a quality fictitious name to add reliability to the application, and that the issuing magistrate was deceived. Moreover, the actual affiant could not be located to testify at a hearing on the motion to suppress. But here the motion to suppress was on the ground that the fictitious name itself voided the warrant.
The Illinois Appellate Court rejected Pugh’s per se contention in People v. Pugh, 217 N.E.2d 557; and in People v. Mack, 12 Ill.2d 151, 145 N.E.2d 609, at page 615 the Illinois Supreme Court *9stated that a fictitious name in the affidavit for a warrant is not ground for quashing a warrant. In my view the Illinois Appellate and Supreme Court decisions construing Illinois law with respect to the issuance of search warrants should not be circumvented by a decision of a federal court construing Rule 41(c) Fed.R.Cr.P., where the Illinois court decisions do not offend the requirements of the Fourth Amendment as included in the Fourteenth Amendment.