Court Opinion

ID: 9790346
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:52:00.202053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:29.040293
License: Public Domain

*135BURNETT, Judge,*
specially concurring.
I respectfully disagree with the lead opinion’s conclusion that the magistrate had a substantial basis for determining the existence of probable cause. The only information linking McAndrew to criminal activity was attributable solely to an anonymous informant, whose reliability was unknown and whose allegations were not self-authenticating. This information was supplemented by a few non-incriminating facts, which were corroborated by the investigating officer. These facts, however, simply demonstrated that the anonymous informant possessed knowledge of McAndrew’s personal and financial life; they had no nexus to the allegation that McAndrew was growing marijuana.
The lead opinion attempts to construct such a nexus by suggesting that if non-incriminating facts furnished by an anonymous informant are corroborated, then the uncorroborated allegations of criminal activity may be regarded as more likely to be true. The danger inherent in this approach is manifest. It would allow search warrants to be issued upon uncorroborated assertions by anonymous informants, if those assertions are accompanied by an investigating officer’s corroboration of a few unrelated, innocuous facts. Here, the corroboration was limited to non-incriminating information. Although the investigating officer did present data showing an increase in electrical power usage, these date were not accompanied — so far as the record indicates — by information concerning normal power usage or the quantity of increase that would be indicative of marijuana cultivation.
Accordingly, I would conclude that the search warrant in this case was issued without a substantial basis for concluding that probable cause existed. However, I also believe, as did the district court, that the evidence presented to the magistrate was sufficient to support the investigating officer’s good-faith reliance upon the warrant after it had been issued. Accordingly, under the Leon exception to the exclusionary rule, the evidence subsequently seized under the warrant could not be suppressed.

 Judge Burnett’s concurring opinion was prepared prior to his resignation on July 16, 1990.