Miller v. State
| Decision Date | 17 July 1980 |
| Docket Number | No. 59792,59792 |
| Citation | 270 S.E.2d 822,155 Ga.App. 399 |
| Parties | MILLER v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Kit B. Bradshaw, Cartersville, for appellant.
Charles Crawford, Dist. Atty., for appellee.
Jessie D. Miller was convicted of violating the Georgia Controlled Substances Act by possessing in excess of several pounds of marijuana with intent to distribute. He was sentenced to ten years, five to serve and five on probation. Miller brings this appeal enumerating two alleged errors. Held :
I
A. In the first prong of his argument, Miller contends that the reliability of an informer was not sufficiently proven before the justice of the peace to authorize the issuance of the search warrant. The affidavit of the officer procuring the warrant provided:
Once again we are faced with the question of whether a magistrate may act on the information of an informer as to whom the magic phrase "has given reliable information in the past that has resulted in arrests or convictions" may not be applied. At least a partial answer is furnished in United States v. Harris, 403 U.S. 573, 581, 91 S.Ct. 2075, 29 L.Ed.2d 723, where it was stated in substance that it has not yet been held to be a precondition that an averment of previous reliability is essential, rather the question always has been whether the informant's present information rings with truth and reliability. This court also was faced with a similar question in Davis v. State, 129 Ga.App. 158, 160, 198 S.E.2d 913 wherein it was held that an affidavit generally describing the informer as a person with no known criminal record, a mature person, regularly employed, demonstrating truthful demeanor, whose information was based upon personal knowledge, was a sufficient statement of reliability. Apparently in that case the informer was not known to the affiant except as the result of an investigation, i. e., the informer was not an acquaintance or friend of the affiant of long standing whose reputation for truth, veracity and reputation as a law abiding citizen in the community was known to the affiant. But as we held in Tuzman v. State, 145 Ga.App. 761, at p. 766, 244 S.E.2d 882, at p. 886: By our understanding of these declarations, we are persuaded of their logic. As in the case of a police officer, a law-abiding citizen has a "built in" credibility. See Carroll v. State, 142 Ga.App. 428, 429, 236 S.E.2d 159. We believe there is a sufficient showing of credibility and thus probability of truthfulness when the affiant can state to the magistrate that his investigation shows that the informant is indeed a law-abiding citizen or the informant is personally known to the affiant to be a law-abiding citizen. To hold otherwise would be to exclude the word of all reputable, law-abiding eyewitness informants simply because they are unknown to the police, or have no reputation other than a good one. We conclude that information that the affiant had known the informer for over five years, that the informer was concerned about the drug problem, was known to be reliable and truthful, and had seen marijuana at Miller's house within the past 96 hours sufficiently established the reliability of both the tip and the tipster. See Meneghan v. State, 132 Ga.App. 380, 383(d), 208 S.E.2d 150.
B. The second prong of the appellant's argument goes to the lack of detail in the description of the...
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