| Illinois v. Gates
(No. 81-430)
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| Syllabus
| Opinion
[ Rehnquist ] | Concurrence
[ White ] | Dissent
[ Brennan ] | Dissent
[ Stevens ] |
| HTML version
PDF version | HTML version
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Illinois v. Gates
CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF ILLINOIS
393 U.S. at 417-418.
It is the Court's citation of Draper which creates most of the confusion. The informant's credibility was not at issue in Draper irrespective of the corroboration of the details of his tip. See n. 3, supra. The Court's opinion, therefore, might be read as suggesting that corroboration also could satisfy Aguilar's basis of knowledge test. I think it is more likely, however, especially in view of the discussion infra, this page and 282, that the Court simply was discussing an alternative means of satisfying Aguilar's veracity prong, using the facts of Draper as an example, and relying on its earlier determination that the detail of the tip in Draper was self-verifying. See 393 U.S. at 416-417. It is noteworthy that, although the affiant in Spinelli had sworn that the informer was reliable, "he [had] offered the magistrate no reason in support of this conclusion." Id. at 416. Aguilar's veracity prong, therefore, was not satisfied. 393 U.S. at 416.
5. After concluding that the tip was not sufficient to support a finding of probable cause, the Court stated:
This is not to say that the tip was so insubstantial that it could not properly have counted in the magistrate's determination. Rather, it needed some further support. When we look to the other parts of the application, however, we find nothing alleged which would permit the suspicions engendered by the informant's report to ripen into a judgment that a crime was probably being committed.
Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. at 418. The Court went on to suggest that corroboration of incriminating facts would be needed. See ibid.
6. As noted supra at 277-282, Aguilar and Spinelli inform the police of what information they have to provide and magistrates of what information they should demand. This advances the important process value, which is intimately related to substantive Fourth Amendment concerns, of having magistrates, rather than police or informants, determine whether there is probable cause to support the issuance of a warrant. We want the police to provide magistrates with the information on which they base their conclusions so that magistrates can perform their important function. When the police rely on facts about which they have personal knowledge, requiring them to disclose those facts to magistrates imposes no significant burden on the police. When the police rely on information obtained from confidential informants, requiring the police to disclose the facts on which the informants based their conclusions imposes a more substantial burden on the police, but it is one that they can meet because they presumably have access to their confidential informants.
In cases in which the police rely on information obtained from an anonymous informant, the police, by hypothesis, cannot obtain further information from the informant regarding the facts and circumstances on which the informant based his conclusion. When the police seek a warrant based solely on an anonymous informant's tip, therefore, they are providing the magistrate with all the information on which they have based their conclusion. In this respect, the command of Aguilar and Spinelli has been met and the process value identified above has been served. But Aguilar and Spinelli advance other values which argue for their application even to anonymous informants' tips. They structure the magistrate's probable cause inquiry and, more importantly, they guard against findings of probable cause, and attendant intrusions, based on anything other than information which magistrates reasonably can conclude has been obtained in a reliable way by an honest or credible person.
7. In Jaben v. United States, the Court considered whether there was probable cause to support a complaint charging petitioner with willfully filing a false tax return. 381 U.S. at 221. After reviewing the extensive detail contained in the complaint, id. at 223, the Court expressly distinguished tax offenses from other types of offenses:
Some offenses are subject to putative establishment by blunt and concise factual allegations, e.g., "A saw narcotics in B's possession," whereas "A saw B file a false tax return" does not mean very much in a tax evasion case. Establishment of grounds for belief that the offense of tax evasion has been committed often requires a reconstruction of the taxpayer's income from many individually unrevealing facts which are not susceptible of a concise statement in a complaint. Furthermore, unlike narcotics informants, for example, whose credibility may often be suspect, the sources in this tax evasion case are much less likely to produce false or untrustworthy information. Thus, whereas some supporting information concerning the credibility of informants in narcotics cases or other common garden varieties of crime may be required, such information is not so necessary in the context of the case before us.
Id. at 223-224. Obviously, Jaben is not inconsistent with Aguilar, and involved no general rejection of the Aguilar standards.
8. Rugendorf v. United States, 376 U.S. 528 (1964); Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23 (1963); Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257 (1960).
9. The Court also argues that,
[i]f the affidavits submitted by police officers are subjected to the type of scrutiny some courts have deemed appropriate, police might well resort to warrantless searches, with the hope of relying on consent or some other exception to the Warrant Clause that might develop at the time of the search.
Ante at 236. If the Court is suggesting, as it appears to be, that the police will intentionally disregard the law, it need only be noted in response that the courts are not helpless to deal with such conduct. Moreover, as was noted in Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443 (1971):
[T]he most basic constitutional rule in this area is that
searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment -- subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineted exceptions.
The exceptions are "jealously and carefully drawn," and there must be "a showing by those who seek exemption . . . that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative." "[T]he burden is on those seeking the exemption to show the need for it."
Id. at 454-455 (plurality opinion) (footnotes omitted). It therefore would appear to be not only inadvisable, but also unavailing, for the police to conduct warrantless searches in "the hope of relying on consent or some other exception to the Warrant Clause that might develop at the time of the search." Ante at 236.