People v. Dillon

• Decision Date: 21 January 1970
• Docket Number: No. 41811,41811
• Citation: 44 Ill.2d 482,256 N.E.2d 451
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Jack DILLON, Appellant.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

Page 451

256 N.E.2d 451

44 Ill.2d 482

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Jack DILLON, Appellant.

No. 41811.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Jan. 21, 1970.

Rehearing Denied March 23, 1970.

Geter & Geter, Chicago (Howard D. Geter, Sr., and Howard D. Geter, Jr., Chicago, of counsel), for appellant.

William J. Scott, Atty. Gen., Springfield, and Edward V. Hanrahan, State's Atty., Chicago (Morton E. Friedman, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Elmer C. Kissane and Patrick T. Driscoll, Jr., Asst. State's Attys., of counsel), for the People.

UNDERWOOD, Chief Justice.

Defendant was convicted in a Cook County circuit court bench trial under a two-count indictment charging him with possession of betting records and policy tickets, which constitute the offense of gambling under the Criminal Code. (Ill.Rev.Stat.1965, ch. 38, par. 28--1, subpars. (a)(5) and (a)(8).) It is his contention on appeal that the evidence upon which he was convicted was illegally seized in the execution of a search warrant issued without probable cause, and that he was not proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Acting pursuant to the search warrant, the arresting officers discovered the defendant seated at a card table upon which were located policy writings, currency and other paraphernalia. It is the seizure of those materials to which defendant objects, claiming that the affidavit of one of the officers, upon which the search warrant was issued, was defective.

The officer's affidavit was based upon information that a policy station was in operation at a location which had previously been raided. This information was provided by a reliable woman informant whose information had always been correct and had led to three prior convictions and four arrests then pending trial. On three occasions, after receipt of this information, the officers maintained surveillance of the location, and observed numerous persons visiting the premises for a matter of minutes at a time. During the second period of surveillance, the informant's purse and coat pockets were found to be free of any policy result tickets, whereupon she was directed to enter the premises and return with such a ticket. She did so. It is now contended that the affidavit is defective on several bases: the officers did not preclude by an exhaustive search of the informant, the possibility that the ticket which she produced was on her person prior to entering the premises; there was no explicit statement that the ticket produced had been obtained on the premises; there was no statement that the informant saw any policy tickets or other policy paraphernalia on the premises; and there was no statement as to where the informant obtained her information.

We are directed by defendant to the principles set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 and further articulated in Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637. It is contended that the affidavit in the instant case fails to satisfy the requirements of probable cause in that it does not show that the informant's tip was based upon information she obtained in a reliable way. We agree that the source of her information is nowhere stated in the affidavit, but we find that the affidavit nevertheless meets the tests laid down in Aguilar and Spinelli.

The affidavit involved in Aguilar stated flatly, 'Affiants have received reliable information from a credible person and do believe * * *'; there was no corroboration or surveillance reported in the affidavit. This was the setting from which arose the reasonable requirement that facts and circumstances must be stated which will give the issuing magistrate reason to conclude that the informant's tip is well-founded. (Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 109, 113, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 1511, 1513, 12 L.Ed.2d 723, 725.) This requirement was later clarified by the Supreme Court, noting that it applied, 'Where, as here, the informer's tip is a necessary element in a finding of probable cause, * * *.' (Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 415, 89 S.Ct. 584, 588, 21 L.Ed.2d 637, 643.) It was pointed out that in the absence of a statement detailing the manner in which the information was gathered by the informant, corroboration of the tip could satisfy Aguilar. The affidavit in Spinelli did not relate the basis for the informant's tip and the tip was only meagerly corroborated by relatively unprobative observations. The Supreme Court concluded that, to meet the probable cause requirements, the affidavit 'needed some further support * * * which would permit the suspicions engendered by the informant's report to ripen into a judgment that a crime was probably being committed.' (Spinelli, 393 U.S. at 418, 89 S.Ct. at 590, 21 L.Ed.2d at 644--645.) The facts in Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327, were tendered by the court as an example of satisfactory corroboration. While Draper tested probable cause for an arrest without a warrant, the court pointed out that the observation of circumstances accurately predicted by the informant there could have led a magistrate to 'reasonably infer that the informant had gained his information in a reliable way.' Thus, upon viewing such corroborative circumstances, the police officers in Draper, had probable cause for an arrest, since, 'It was then apparent that the informant had not been fabricating his report out of whole cloth; since the report was of the sort which in common experience may be recognized as having been obtained in a reliable way, it was perfectly clear that probable cause had been established.' (Spinelli, 393 U.S. at 417--418, 89 S.Ct. at 589, 590, 21 L.Ed.2d at 644.) Looking now to the corroboration related in the affidavit before us, we find: (1) that the premises reported by the informant had been raided previously by the police; (2) the informant entered the premises and returned with a policy ticket as requested by the officers; (3) during each of three separate periods of surveillance, numerous persons were seen to visit the premises for a stay of only minutes. We note further the statement that the informant's tips had always been correct, and had resulted in three...