Court Opinion

ID: 9716975
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:55:18.459354+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:50.475048
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE MORAN, dissenting: The majority concludes that the letter combined with the facts gleaned from the police investigation does not satisfy either prong of the Aguilar test. I disagree. As the opinion points out, the letter did not reveal that the informant had personal knowledge of the criminal activity, the method by which the “basis of knowledge” prong is generally satisfied. However, that prong can be satisfied by sufficiently specific detail and corroborating information. (Spinelli v. United States (1969), 398 U.S. 410, 416-17, 21 L. Ed. 2d 637, 644, 89 S. Ct. 584, 589.) That the necessary specificity of the initial information and the requisite corroboration were present here can be demonstrated by a comparison with three United States Supreme Court cases. Draper v. United States (1959), 358 U.S. 307, 3 L. Ed. 2d 327, 79 S. Ct. 329, involved an arrest without a warrant. There, an informant gave a Federal narcotics agent information regarding narcotics law violations. On a motion to suppress, the agent testified that he “had always found the information given by [the informant] to be accurate and reliable.” (358 U.S. 307, 309, 3 L. Ed. 2d 327, 329, 79 S. Ct. 329, 331.) No underlying facts established this conclusion. However, the informant told the agent that Draper had gone to Chicago the day before by train and that he would return to Denver by train with three ounces of heroin on one of two specified mornings. In addition, the informant described Draper’s physical appearance, the clothes he was wearing, that he would be carrying a tan zipper bag, and that he walked quickly. The court found that the agent had probable cause to arrest when a man fitting Draper’s description stepped off the specified train. In Aguilar v. Texas (1964), 378 U.S. 108, 12 L. Ed. 2d 723, 84 S. Ct. 1509, police officers, in support of their application for a search warrant, submitted an affidavit stating: “Affiants have received reliable information from a credible person and do believe that heroin, marijuana, barbiturates and other narcotics and narcotic paraphernalia are being kept at the above described premises for the purpose of sale and use contrary to the provisions of the law.” (378 U.S. 108, 109, 12 L. Ed. 2d 723, 725, 84 S. Ct. 1509, 1511.) The court found that the information merely reflected the informant’s “ ‘suspicion,’ ‘belief’ or ‘mere conclusion.’ ” (378 U.S. 108, 114, 12 L. Ed. 2d 723, 729, 84 S. Ct. 1509, 1514.) In so holding, it established the two-pronged standard for evaluating if a search warrant should issue: “[T]he magistrate must be informed of some of the underlying circumstances from which the informant concluded that the narcotics were where he claimed they were, and some of the underlying circumstances from which the officer concluded that the informant, whose identity need not be disclosed [citation], was ‘credible’ or his information ‘reliable.’” 378 U.S. 108, 114, 12 L. Ed. 2d 723, 729, 84 S. Ct. 1509, 1514. With this test as the standard, the Supreme Court decided Spinelli v. United States (1969), 393 U.S. 410, 21 L. Ed. 637, 89 S. Ct. 584. In that case, the affidavit stated that Spinelli was known to law-enforcement agents as a bookmaker and a gambler, and that the FBI had “been informed by a confidential reliable informant that William Spinelli is operating a handbook and accepting wagers and disseminating wagering information by means of telephones which have been assigned and numbers WYdown 4-0029 and WYdown 4-0136.” 393 U.S. 410, 414, 21 L. Ed. 2d 637, 642, 89 S. Ct. 584, 588. The court contrasted the informant’s tip with the information provided by the informant in Draper. The court concluded that a magistrate could infer from the tip in Draper that the informant had gained his information in a reliable way whereas, in the case before it, the report could have been obtained from an offhand remark heard at a neighborhood bar. The court also found that the investigative police work in Draper corroborated much more than one small detail and resulted in the inference that the report was reliable. In contrast, the investigation in Spinelli corroborated only that Spinelli could have used two telephones for gambling or for some other purpose, and was insufficient to support the reliability of the information. The court stated: “[In Draper], the police, upon meeting the inbound Denver train on the second morning specified by informer Hereford, saw a man whose dress corresponded precisely to Hereford’s detailed description. It was then apparent that the informant had not been fabricating his report out of whole cloth; since the report was of the sort which in common experience may be recognized as having been obtained in a reliable way, it was perfectly clear that probable cause had been established.” 393 U.S. 410, 417-18, 21 L. Ed. 2d 637, 644, 89 S. Ct. 584, 590. When comparing the affidavits in Aguilar and Spinelli and the testimony of the agent in Draper to the affidavit here, it is clear that this case is more similar to Draper than to Aguilar and Spinelli. In Aguilar, the information in the affidavit consisted of mere conclusions and did not satisfy either prong of the standard established here. Similarly, in Spinelli the affidavit did not contain a sufficient statement of the underlying circumstances from which the magistrate could conclude that the informer had knowledge that Spinelli was running a bookmaking operation. Further, the court found that although the affiant swore that his confidant was reliable, he offered the magistrate no reason in support of this conclusion. In this case, however, as in Draper, a specific, detailed and future sequence of events was supplied by the informant’s letter. As already stated, in Draper the tip was that a man fitting a particular description had gone to Chicago and would be arriving on a particular train in Denver on one of two specified mornings carrying three ounces of heroin. Here, the letter revealed that on May 3, in compliance with their usual procedure, Sue Gates would be driving down to Florida to purchase drugs. It further stated that Lance Gates would be flying down a few days later to drive their car back to Bloomingdale carrying over $100,000 in drugs in the trunk. The police investigation showed that on May 5 a person matching Lance Gates’ description flew to West Palm Beach, Florida, and proceeded to the Holiday Inn West to a room registered to Susan Gates. On May 6, 7 a.m., Gates and an unidentified female left the motel driving a red-vinyl-over-gray Mercury. The investigation disclosed that Gates and the woman left the West Palm Beach area driving northbound on an interstate highway and that the driving time to Bloomingdale was 21 to 23 hours. In this case, as in Draper, every detail of the informant’s information was corroborated by the police investigation. The specific, detailed information in the letter combined with the corroboration clearly indicates that the informant had an underlying basis of knowledge, satisfying Aguilar’s first prong. In addition, the specific information contained in the letter which was then corroborated proved the informant’s statements to be credible and reliable, thereby satisfying Aguilar’s second prong. The majority opinion attempts to distinguish Draper by observing in that case there was a named informant who had given the agent reliable information on other occasions. However, the agent’s statement as to the informant’s reliability was a mere conclusion. It is questionable whether that naked assertion would satisfy Aguilar’s second prong in that it does not present any underlying circumstances from which the judge could determine if the informant is credible or his information reliable. The statement is not essentially different from the one made in Spinelli that the “informant was reliable.” The point is, however, that under the court’s analysis in Spinelli, the result in Draper, in light of Aguilar, does not hinge on the mere averment that the informant had previously given reliable information. Rather, the determining factor in establishing probable cause and complying with both prongs of Aguilar is the specificity of the tip combined with the police verification by investigation. Finally, the majority, citing Whiteley v. Warden of Wyoming State Penitentiary (1971), 401 U.S. 560, 567, 28 L. Ed. 2d 306, 312-13, 91 S. Ct. 1031, 1036, finds that the corroborating information combined with the tip would not satisfy either prong of the Aguilar test because the corroborating evidence was of clearly innocent activity. This conclusion is incorrect. First, in Whiteley, the corroborating evidence was simply that the sheriff knew the defendants and the kind of car they drove. The court in Whiteley specifically stated: “[T]he additional information acquired by the arresting officers must in some sense be corroborative of the informer’s tip that the arrestees committed the felony or, as in Draper itself, were in the process of committing the felony.” 401 U.S. 560, 567, 28 L. Ed. 2d 306, 312-13, 91 S. Ct. 1031, 1036. In Draper, the corroborating information also related to innocent activity — a man fitting a particular description stepped off a train on a specific day carrying a tan zipper bag. Yet, the court in Whiteley, as well as in Spinelli, clearly held that this type of detailed information can be used to corroborate an informant’s tip. The key is whether the corroborative evidence is endowed with an aura of suspicion by virtue of the informant’s tip. (See Spinelli v. United States (1969), 393 U.S. 410, 418, 21 L. Ed. 2d 637, 645, 89 S. Ct. 584, 590.) In this case, just as in Draper, seemingly innocent activity became suspicious in light of the initial tip. Here, the police went through the desired procedure of obtaining a warrant. The judge had before him, by way of affidavit, information from which he reasonably could conclude that the informat had knowledge that the Gateses were involved in criminal activity and that the information was reliable. Under the standard enunciated in Spinelli, the judge could conclude he was relying on more than casual rumor or reputation and that the report had not been fabricated “out of whole cloth.” (See Spinelli v. United States (1969), 393 U.S. 410, 416, 417, 21 L. Ed. 2d 637, 644, 89 S. Ct. 584, 590.) Probable cause was determined by a neutral and detached judge. (See Johnson v. United States (1948), 333 U.S. 10, 14, 92 L. Ed. 436, 440, 68 S. Ct. 367, 369.) Issuance of a search warrant in the instant case is consistent with the rationale underlying Aguilar, as applied in Spinelli, and does not attenuate one’s right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures as guaranteed by the United States and Illinois constitutions. For the above-stated reasons, I must respectfully dissent. MR. JUSTICE UNDERWOOD joins in this dissent.