SD discusses how Aguilar–Spinelli is no longer the law under Gates, and it finds in this case that corroboration of innocent details can establish the veracity of the informant’s tale. State v. Gilmore, 2009 SD 11, 2009 S.D. LEXIS 11 (February 25, 2009):
[*P24] In Raveydts, we borrowed language from Gates in identifying two elements crucial to the probable cause inquiry when an informant’s tip was involved. 2004 SD 134, P 11, 691 NW2d at 295. “First, an ‘explicit and detailed description of alleged wrongdoing, along with a statement that the event was observed firsthand, entitles [the informant’s] tip to greater weight than might otherwise be the case.'” Id. (quoting Gates, 462 US at 234, 103 SCt at 2330). “Second, the extent to which the tip is corroborated by the officer’s own investigation is important.” Id. P 12 (citing Gates, 462 US at 244, 103 SCt at 2335). Both of these elements are met here. As mentioned before, the tip was explicit, detailed, and witnessed firsthand. Therefore, any deficiency in the “veracity” prong is compensated by the strong firsthand knowledge of the CI. Secondly, there was sufficient corroboration of the information by law enforcement thereby ensuring its reliability. Therefore, under our deferential standard of review, Judge Neiles’s determination was appropriate.
While the search was without probable cause, the good faith exception saved it from suppression. United States v. Gainer, 600 F. Supp. 2d 1251 (M.D. Fla. 2009):
This Court’s determination that there was not probable cause justifying the warrant and search of the Anchor Road residence does not, however, end the inquiry. The question remains whether the Leon good faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies. If it does, the evidence should not be suppressed even though the warrant was issued without probable cause. Of the four situations in which the good faith exception does not apply, only two are relevant in this case–whether the magistrate wholly abandoned his detached and neutral role, and whether the warrant was based on an affidavit that was so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.
The first of these considerations requires little discussion. While it is this Court’s belief that few magistrates would have issued a warrant based on Officer Scammell’s affidavit, there is no evidence that the decision was the result of bias in favor of law enforcement as opposed to simply not viewing this request separately from the other two applications for warrants, both of which were based in part on observations of law enforcement officers. Moreover, by the time the magistrate signed the warrant, he knew Defendant sold cocaine at one location and lived at another. While the facts were not sufficient to constitute probable cause, it made sense that Defendant might have taken proceeds from cocaine sales to his home. There is no evidence supporting a conclusion that the magistrate wholly abandoned his neutral role.
The remaining and most difficult question in the good faith analysis is whether the affidavit was “so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.” Leon, 468 U.S. at 923. This question is answered in the negative. By the time the officers presented the Anchor Road affidavit to the magistrate, they had observed two controlled purchases of cocaine from Unit A. They also were convinced, based on what they had been told, that Defendant had been engaged in the sale of cocaine for a significant time. Based on their investigation, the officers believed that Defendant had a habit of leaving Unit A where he daily engaged in the sale of cocaine and returning to his Anchor Road residence. Having this information, it was not objectively unreasonable for the officers to believe that there existed a fair probability that the proceeds from illegal drug sales were located in Defendant’s residence.
The good faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies to the search of Defendant’s residence on Anchor Road, requiring that the Motion to Suppress the evidence found there be denied.
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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced." —Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today." — Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property." —Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment." —United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth." —Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable." —Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." —Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” —United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.” —United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need." —Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." —Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
