Court Opinion

ID: 9717895
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:12:26.880857+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:55.961193
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE GOLDENHERSH, dissenting: I dissent and would affirm the judgment of the circuit and appellate courts. Assuming, arguendo, that the majority has correctly construed the opinion in Gates, the Supreme Court did not obviate the requirement that there appear in “the totality of the circumstances” a basis for attributing some degree of reliability to the unnamed informant. The Supreme Court said: “We agree with the Illinois Supreme Court that an informant’s ‘veracity,’ ‘reliability’ and ‘basis of knowledge’ are all highly relevant in determining the value of his report.” (Illinois v. Gates (1983), 462 U.S._,_, 76 L. Ed. 2d 527, 543, 103 S. Ct. 2317, 2327.) The problem here is that there is no evidence of the informant’s reliability which can support the issuance of a warrant to search a particular apartment. Admittedly, the entrance through which the informant entered the building after leaving the police officer led to a number of apartments. During the time that the informant was inside the building he was not within sight of the police officer, who had no knowledge as to which apartment, if any, he entered. The fact that the police officer verified that a tenant with the name given him by the informant occupied one of the apartments did not indicate that the informant had entered that apartment or contacted the defendant. The after-the-fact corroboration by the discovery of contraband is of no value in determining the validity of the information which was presented to the magistrate at the time of the issuance of the warrant. To quote from Justice Stevens’ dissent in Gates, “I must surmise that the Court’s evaiuation of the warrant’s validity has been colored by subsequent events.” 462 U.S. _, _, 76 L. Ed. 2d 527, 584, 103 S. Ct. 2317, 2361. I agree with the appellate court that the affidavit did not contain sufficient information to support the issuance of a search warrant. There is another aspect of the case which the majority did not consider. This court decided Gates on the basis of the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States and article I, section 6, of the Constitution of Illinois. As was pointed out in both the majority opinion and Justice White’s concurrence in Gates, we are not required to blindly follow the action taken by the Supreme Court in determining the standards applicable under our own constitution. In his eloquent dissent in Gates, Justice Brennan has stated far better than can I the reasons for rejecting the holding in Gates and retaining the tests and standards enunciated in Aguilar and Spinelli. I would retain those tests and standards as constitutional requirements in Illinois. JUSTICE SIMON joins in this dissent.