NC: Anonymous informant hearsay and officer’s conclusions not PC

The CI in this case provided information that defendant had a grow operation, and the police did little to corroborate any of that. Accordingly, the CI was treated as an anonymous informant, and his information was unsubstantiated. Sure the defendant lived where the CI said he did, but what does that say about probable cause? Nothing. The utility records and observations of gardening supplies weren’t much help either. Essentially, the magistrate credited the conclusions of the officer, not any facts. The court of appeals held not close enough for PC, and this court agrees and affirms. [Good faith exception not discussed.] State v. Benters, 2014 N.C. LEXIS 963 (December 19, 2014):

Taking the relevant factors together in view of the totality of the circumstances, we conclude that the officers’ verification of mundane information, Detective Hastings’s statements regarding defendant’s utility records, and the officers’ observations of defendant’s gardening supplies are not sufficiently corroborative of the anonymous tip or otherwise sufficient to establish probable cause, notwithstanding the officers’ professional training and experience. Furthermore, the material allegations set forth in the affidavit are uniformly conclusory and fail to provide a substantial basis from which the magistrate could determine that probable cause existed. Gates, 462 U.S. at 238-39, 103 S. Ct. at 2332-33, 76 L. Ed. 2d at 548-49; Arrington, 311 N.C. at 638, 319 S.E.2d at 257-58; Campbell, 282 N.C. at 130-31, 191 S.E.2d at 756. Accordingly, although “great deference should be paid a magistrate’s determination of probable cause,” Sinapi, 359 N.C. at 399, 610 S.E.2d at 365 (citation and quotation marks omitted), we hold the affidavit at issue is insufficient to establish probable cause.

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