Dyer v. State
| Decision Date | 30 June 1982 |
| Docket Number | No. 63727,63727 |
| Parties | DYER v. STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Glenn Zell, Atlanta, for appellant.
Lewis R. Slaton, Dist. Atty., Joseph J. Drolet, Benjamin H. Oehlert, III, Asst. Dist. Attys., Atlanta, for appellee.
Stephaney Dyer brings this appeal from her conviction of conspiracy to violate the Georgia Controlled Substances Act, Code Ann. § 79A-812, for which she was sentenced to serve twelve years.
Appellant asserts seven enumerations of error, to wit: (1) Denial of her motion to suppress wiretap evidence on the grounds that the affidavit filed in support of the request for issuance of the wiretap warrant failed to satisfy the Aguillar-Spinelli Test; (2) Denial of her motion to suppress wiretap evidence on the grounds of failure to monitor the officers to minimize interception and recordation of private conversations; (3) Admission into evidence of copies of excerpts of the original wiretap recordings; (4) Denial of her motion to quash the indictment on grounds that it failed to charge an offense, that it joined in one count two separate and distinct offenses and that it was vague and indefinite; (5) Denial of her motion for disclosure of the identity of an informant; (6) Denial of her motions regarding unintelligibility of the tape recordings, seeking, alternatively, to rule them out as evidence, to rule out the portions involving her or to instruct the jury to disregard those portions of the tapes the jury was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt it understood; and (7) Denial of her motion for a new trial.
1. Appellant's first four enumerations of error were presented in the appeal by co-defendant Douglas Tookes and were ruled upon by this court. See Tookes v. State, 159 Ga.App. 423, 283 S.E.2d 642 (1981).
2. Appellant contends that the informant in this case was a decoy and that his identity should have been disclosed. Under the rule established in Thornton v. State, 238 Ga. 160, 231 S.E.2d 729 (1977), cert. den., 434 U.S. 1073, 98 S.Ct. 1260, 55 L.Ed.2d 778 (1978), whenever disclosure of an informant's identity is raised in a Brady motion, the trial court must conduct a hearing on the merits of that motion. If the court determines that the informant was a decoy, that he participated in or witnessed the alleged crime, the court must then consider the balancing requirements of Roviaro v. United States, 353 U.S. 53, 77 S.Ct. 623, 1 L.Ed.2d 639 (1956). However, if the court is satisfied that the informant was merely a tipster, that he did not participate in or witness the alleged crime, no further inquiry is necessary and the informant's identity remains privileged. Thornton, supra. See also State v. Martin, 156 Ga.App. 554, 275 S.E.2d 129 (1980).
Appellant here made a Brady motion. Counsel for co-defendant Tookes also moved for disclosure of the informant's identity and argued the motion at the hearing. The state responded by asserting that, although the informant had been engaged in narcotics transactions with the defendants, he had not participated in any narcotics transactions included evidentially as overt acts to the alleged conspiracy. This was not disputed by defense counsel. Since the informant was not a participant or a witness in the overt acts elemental to the conspiracy, the informant was not a...
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Castillo v. State, s. 65437
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Bradford v. State
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