Court Opinion

ID: 9540568
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:17:48.206638+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:00:01.216310
License: Public Domain

BARNES, Judge,
dissenting.
Because the anonymous tip on which the arresting officer relied to stop and search Daniels lacked sufficient inside information that was unavailable to the general public, rather than observations about Daniels’ car and location that could have been determined by anyone, I must respectfully dissent from the majority opinion affirming the denial of Daniels’ motion to suppress.
The majority contends that this case is materially similar to and controlled by Alabama v. White, 496 U. S. 325 (110 SC 2412, 110 LE2d 301) (1990). The case is not materially similar, as the tipster in that case predicted that the suspect would leave a particular apartment at a particular time in a particular car and drive to a particular motel. The police followed the suspect from that apartment in that car along the most direct route to that motel and stopped her “just short of” the motel. Id. at 327. Thus, the tip in White provided a range of details about White’s future actions that could not be predicted easily by the general public. Id. at 332. In this case, the tipster merely predicted that a particular car with “a black male and a black female about 26 years of age” would be heading east on 1-20 and pass through Conyers *268in 20 to 30, or possibly up to 60, minutes, information that revealed no insider information, but only information available to any other motorist who also happened to be traveling on 1-20.
The United States Supreme Court revisited the issue of an anonymous tipster’s reliability in ruling on a motion to suppress in Florida v. J. L., 529 U. S. 266 (120 SC 1375, 146 LE2d 254) (2000), pointing out that the fact pattern it had earlier approved in Alabama v. White, supra, 496 U. S. 325, was “a close case on the reliability of anonymous tips.” While the facts in J. L. differ from the facts before us in some respects, the Supreme Court’s search and seizure analysis regarding anonymous tips, particularly its clarification of White, is directly on point.
In J. L., an anonymous caller reported to the Dade County Police that “a young black male standing at a particular bus stop and wearing a plaid shirt was carrying a gun.” The police went to the bus stop and saw J. L. in a plaid shirt, standing with two other African-American males. The police observed nothing suspicious but frisked J. L. and seized a gun from his pocket. Id. In affirming the Supreme Court of Florida, which held that the search was invalid under the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court reiterated that, to justify a brief Terry “stop and frisk,” the police had to observe conduct that led them to conclude, based on their experience, that the person they were dealing with may be armed and dangerous. In J. L., the officer’s suspicion that J. L. might have a weapon was based, not on his observation, but “solely from a call made from an unknown location by an unknown caller.”
Unlike a tip from a known informant whose reputation can be assessed and who can be held responsible if her allegations turn out to be fabricated, an anonymous tip alone seldom demonstrates the informant’s basis of knowledge or veracity. As we have recognized, however, there are situations in which an anonymous tip, suitably corroborated, exhibits sufficient indicia of reliability to provide reasonable suspicion to make the investigatory stop. The question we here confront is whether the tip pointing to J. L. had those indicia of reliability.
In White, the police received an anonymous tip asserting that a woman was carrying cocaine and predicting that she would leave an apartment building at a specified time, get into a car matching a particular description, and drive to a named motel. Standing alone, the tip would not have justified a Terry stop. Only after police observation showed that *269the informant had accurately predicted the woman’s movements, we explained, did it become reasonable to think the tipster had inside knowledge about the suspect and therefore to credit his assertion about the cocaine. Although the Court held that the suspicion in White became reasonable after police surveillance, we regarded the case as borderline. Knowledge about a person’s future movements indicates some familiarity with that person’s affairs, but having such knowledge does not necessarily imply that the informant knows, in particular, whether that person is carrying hidden contraband. We accordingly classified White as a “close case.”
The tip in the instant case lacked the moderate indicia of reliability present in White and essential to the Court’s decision in that case. The anonymous call concerning J. L. provided no predictive information and therefore left the police without means to test the informant’s knowledge or credibility. That the allegation about the gun turned out to be correct does not suggest that the officers, prior to the frisks, had a reasonable basis for suspecting J. L. of engaging in unlawful conduct: The reasonableness of official suspicion must be measured by what the officers knew before they conducted their search. All the police had to go on in this case was the bare report of an unknown, unaccountable informant who neither explained how he knew about the gun nor supplied any basis for believing he had inside information about J. L. If White was a close case on the reliability of anonymous tips, this one surely falls on the other side of the line.
(Citations and punctuation omitted.) Florida v. J. L., supra, 529 U. S. at 270-271.
The tipster in the case before us provided more information than the tipster in J. L., but less than the tipster in White. After describing the vehicle, the tipster in this case predicted that the SUV would travel on 1-20 through Conyers in 20 to 30, or possibly up to 60, minutes, heading east, containing a man and a woman who were about 26 years old. The informant also stated that he had observed the driver conduct an apparent drug transaction involving cocaine and that he had observed other such transactions in the past. Before this
information can give rise to the articulable suspicion necessary to warrant a stop, it must be sufficiently corroborated. *270[Cit.] The information corroborated must be of sufficient detail to predict the future behavior of third parties that otherwise would not be easily predicted; in other words, it must consist of inside information that is unavailable to the general public. VonLinsowe v. State, 213 Ga. App. 619, 621 (1) (445 SE2d 371) (1994).
(Emphasis supplied.) State v. Davenport, 268 Ga. App. 704, 706 (603 SE2d 324) (2004).
After he received the tip, the officer in this case waited beside 1-20 to watch for the vehicle. He saw it pass around 6:30, 25 minutes after the call, and pulled behind it to verify the tag number and the occupants’ gender and race. The officer could not, however, verify the ages of the people in the car before the stop. He initiated a traffic stop solely based on the information provided by the anonymous caller, because the driver committed no traffic violations that would authorize a traffic stop.
In its order denying Daniels’ motion to suppress, the trial court held:
In today’s society, illegal drug trafficking has become more prolific than ever before.... In order to protect the fruits of the entire operation, individuals within the [drug] network are quick to take retaliatory action against anyone they even suspect of being a police informant, even when the informant’s information does not relate directly to them. Thus, when a concerned citizen witnesses drug activity, the citizen faces the probability of severe and possibly life threatening retaliation by someone in the drug network if the concerned citizen relays such information to police, even if the individual the concerned citizen gives information about is successfully prosecuted and imprisoned. Because of the fear of retaliation, concerned citizens are often reluctant to reveal their identity to police. In fact, under these circumstances, if a drug informant gives his name, the information he imparts might be more suspect than that received from an anonymous tipster. Drug distributors who pass information to police on the activities of their rivals because they have a “score” to settle or a “business” opportunity to advance, are often more willing to provide their names because they have less fear of retaliation than a concerned citizen, because of their own network of criminal allies. . . . This Court must take into account the changed circumstances of our society relative to the illegal drug trade when balancing the rights of citizens driving on public roads to be free of *271momentary stops against the rights of other citizens to protect their communities through the police, against the ravages of the drug trade.
The trial court concluded that “under the totality of the circumstances the anonymous tip, as corroborated, even by the illegal drugs found, exhibited sufficient indicia of reliability to justify the investigatory stop of the Defendant’s vehicle.”
Aside from the fact that nothing in the record supports the trial court’s conclusions regarding the general reliability of anonymous tipsters over named ones, the federal and state constitutions as well as the rulings of the United States Supreme Court and our state’s appellate courts protect our citizens’ right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and provide no framework for the trial court’s balancing of priorities.
As the United States Supreme Court held,
[a]n accurate description of a subject’s readily observable location and appearance is of course reliable in this limited sense: It will help the police correctly identify the person whom the tipster means to accuse. Such a tip, however, does not show that the tipster has knowledge of concealed criminal activity. The reasonable suspicion here at issue requires that a tip he reliable in its assertion of illegality, not just in its tendency to identify a determinate person. Cf. 4 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 9.4(h), p. 213 (3d ed. 1996) (distinguishing reliability as to identification, which is often important in other criminal law contexts, from reliability as to the likelihood of criminal activity, which is central in anonymous-tip cases).
Florida v. J. L., supra, 529 U. S. at 272.
Similarly, the tip in this case only predicted that the vehicle would be driving on the highway passing through Conyers in 20 to 30, or possibly up to 60, minutes, information that does not establish its reliability in its assertion of legality, but only tended to “identify a determinate person.” Florida v. J. L., supra, 529 U. S. at 272. “The information provided here was simply not the kind of predictive ‘inside information’ about alleged criminal activity that can be meaningfully corroborated and that is necessary to support an investigative stop.” (Citation omitted.) Baker v. State, 277 Ga. App. 520 (627 SE2d 145) (2006); accord Rucker v. State, 276 Ga. App. 683, 684 (624 SE2d 259) (2005). “Anyone could have predicted the facts here because they involved conditions presumably existing at the time of the call. Thus the tip, as corroborated, was not sufficiently reliable to *272justify the investigatory stop of [Daniels’] vehicle.” Id. (reversing trial court’s denial of motion to suppress after search and seizure based on tip from known informant of unknown reliability). The tipster’s information in this case regarding “[Daniels’] race, the description of [his] vehicle, [his] license number, etc., was information available to any member of the motoring public, as was the fact that [he] was heading toward [Conyers] on Interstate [20] prior to the time [the officer] spotted [him].” VonLinsowe v. State, supra, 213 Ga. App. at 621.
Decided March 16, 2006
Vaughn & Leggett, John C. Leggett, for appellant.
Richard R. Read, District Attorney, Kirk M. Thomas, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
Moreover, we note that only two pieces of information were provided that would not have been available to the general motoring public on 1-20: the age of the SUV occupants, which was not corroborated before the stop; and that the anonymous source observed the driver buy two kilos of cocaine and put them in his SUV, which was false because no cocaine was found. Although the trial court held that the illegal drugs in Daniels’ car corroborated the tip, this is neither relevant nor true. It is not relevant because information obtained after the police stopped and searched Daniels’ car does not justify their stopping him in the first place (State v. Davenport, supra, 268 Ga. App. at 707), and it is untrue because the officers did not find cocaine, as the tipster predicted, but marijuana.
During Daniels’ argument on his motion to reconsider the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress, the trial court noted that the officer did all that he could do to corroborate the information from the anonymous tipster in this case. Even if I were to agree that the officer did all that he could do, this should not change the result. The information regarding the reported drug transaction and the tipster’s familiarity with such transactions could not be corroborated, and thus provided no reasonable articulable suspicion justifying a Terry stop. The solution is not to admit the evidence, but to accept that the information provided by some tips is insufficient to justify a traffic stop.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion.
I am authorized to state that Chief Judge Ruffin and Judge Miller join in this dissent.