State v. Miller

• Decision Date: 22 June 1982
• Citation: 449 A.2d 1065
• Parties: STATE of Delaware v. Frank H. MILLER, Joseph Miller, and Debra Thorogood, Defendants.
• Court: Delaware Superior Court

Page 1065

449 A.2d 1065

STATE of Delaware v. Frank H. MILLER, Joseph Miller, and Debra Thorogood, Defendants.

Superior Court of Delaware New Castle County.

Submitted May 7, 1982.

Decided June 22, 1982.

Upon Defendants' Motion to Suppress. Denied.

Ralph K. Durstein, III, Deputy Atty. Gen., Department of Justice, for State.

Carl Schnee, of Prickett, Jones, Elliott, Kristol & Schnee, Wilmington, for defendants.

O'HARA, Judge.

As a result of a combined interstate investigation of gambling, the Delaware State Police ("Police") suspected that illegal gambling was being conducted through the use of the residential telephone of one Ollie Gordy ("Gordy"), a long time friend of Frank Miller ("Miller"), the focus of the investigation and one of the defendants herein. ¹ The Police installed an electronic device, a dialed number recorder, ("DNR"), to monitor the frequency of phone calls made to and from the Gordy telephone. The DNR revealed an unusually large number of brief calls made in a short period, a pattern consistent with illegal gambling activity. The Police then applied to Superior Court for approval to intercept communications on the Gordy telephone. The Court authorized the interception, finding probable cause in a 77 page affidavit submitted by the State.

The affidavit included statements of the knowledge, experience and beliefs of the affiant police officers, reports of information received from cooperating police departments, information revealed by three undisclosed informants, profiles of the persons believed to be involved in the gambling ring, plus detailed surveillance reports, DNR analysis and subpoenaed toll call records. The Police asserted that they were unable to secure evidence to support a premises search warrant using normal investigative techniques and, thus, a wiretap was necessary.

Defendants allege that the wiretap affidavit did not provide evidence of probable cause for authorization. First, they contend that the warrantless DNR improperly established probable cause since the State failed to use normal investigative techniques to obtain evidence for a search. Second, they contend that the informant reports did not satisfy the basis of knowledge criteria for use of such information and that the other information in the affidavit did not corroborate the informant information. Third, they contend that the affidavit contained reckless falsehoods relating to probable cause. Finally, they contend that the search warrant issued as a result of the wiretap was executed in an unreasonable manner. Thus, the defendants reason, the evidence gathered as a result of the wiretap and search must be suppressed. These arguments will be discussed seriatim.

THE DNR.

Electronic telephone surveillance is a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). However, the use of a pen register is not a search because that device does not intercept the contents of a communication. Therefore, a warrant is not a prerequisite to the installation of a pen register. Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 736, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 2578, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979). ² The State asserts that a pen register and a DNR are but two labels for the same device and, therefore, a warrant was not required before DNR use. Defendants contend that a DNR differs from a pen register because it records both in-coming and out-going telephone numbers as well as the duration of calls. A pen register is alleged to record only the number and frequence of out-going calls. Thus, defendants assert that a DNR acquires the contents of the communications it monitors and that a warrant was required here. They argue that the remedy of exclusion must be applied to this warrantless search and all evidence resulting from the use of the DNR (i.e., from the subsequent wiretap and premises search) must be suppressed.

This Court does not agree. Defendants do not allege that the DNR provided any information concerning the identity of the parties or the existence, substance, purport or meaning of the communications monitored. In the absence of such evidence, the use of a DNR cannot be found to acquire the content as defined in 11 Del. C. § 1336(a)(3). ³ Therefore, the DNR evidence, in reference to the frequency of calls, was competent to show probable cause under the reasoning of Smith v. Maryland, supra. ⁴

USE OF NORMAL INVESTIGATIVE TECHNIQUES.

The defendants' second contention is that the State was not justified in applying for a wiretap because it did not show that normal investigative techniques were unlikely to succeed, in accord with 11 Del. C. § 1336(h)(3)(f). ⁵ See, State v. Wilson, Del. Super., 306 A.2d 743 (1973), aff'd 343 A.2d 613 (1975). However, a review of the affidavit makes it clear that the State went to unusual lengths to document that surveillance was non-productive; it submitted 19 pages of synopsis material on 53 surveillance efforts, most occurring over a four month period. Further, it included extensive information derived from the Pennsylvania Crime Commission Report of 1980 and 17 Amer. Crim. L.R. 376 (1979-80) to support its claim that the use of infiltration techniques would be equally unavailing. These reports describe the closely knit inner circle of Miller's operation which consists of old friends and family members. These reports also document Miller's skill in using sham fronts and businesses to conduct operations, and explain how use of infiltration resulted in Miller's recent conviction and sentence for racketeering. Thus, the State's claim as to the uselessness of ordinary techniques in this case is amply supported and persuasive. See United States v. Spagnuolo, 9th Cir., 549 F.2d 705 (1977).

Further, neither statute nor case law mandates that all normal investigative techniques must be exhausted; they require only that such techniques "reasonably appear to be unlikely to succeed if tried or to be too dangerous to employ." 11 Del. C. § 1336(h)(3)(f); State v. Wilson, supra. The Court finds that the affidavit provides sufficient evidence that such techniques were unlikely to succeed.

INFORMANT INFORMATION.

The third contention made by defendants is that the informants' tips did not provide probable cause for the issuance of a wiretap. Probable cause for a search warrant may be established through the use of hearsay evidence such as undisclosed informants' information. In Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964), the Court established a two prong test to determine if probable cause for a warrant can be found in such a tip. The first prong of Aguilar is whether "there are sufficient reasons [in the affidavit] for believing the informant himself is credible or his information is trustworthy." Sexton v. State, Del. Supr., 397 A.2d 540 (1979). The second prong is whether there is a showing that "the informant acquired this information in a reliable manner ...", Id. See, also Schramm v. State, Del. Supr., 366 A.2d 1185 (1976), State v. Poli, Del. Supr., 390 A.2d 415 (1978), Garner v. State, Del. Supr., 314 A.2d 908 (1973) and Wilson v. State, Del. Supr., 343 A.2d 613 (1975).

As to the first prong "[t]he test for determining the reliability of an undisclosed informant is not his record in aiding arrests or convictions, but whether his information has ever been verified in the past." Sexton v. State, supra. In this case all three undisclosed informants were known to law enforcement officers who were cooperating with the Delaware State Police in this interstate investigation. ⁶ These officers verified the past accuracy of the informants' prior information. Reports of law enforcement officers can be presumed reliable. United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 85 S.Ct. 741, 13 L.Ed.2d 684 (1965). Further, the affiants, themselves, investigated some of the details of the informants' tips and found these details accurate. See Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327 (1959). In addition, each tip was found to be consistent with the others. Thus, the informant information met the first prong of Aguilar.

The second prong of Aguilar requires that the source of the informants' knowledge must be disclosed so that the judge can independently determine that the informant had a proper basis for his information. The tip must be more than a mere repetition of "casual rumor or general accusation." State v. Ramirez, Del. Super., 351 A.2d 566 (1976), Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969). Personal knowledge or observation, State v. Poli, supra, admissions against penal interest, Wilson v. State, supra, or relation of self-verifying details, Marvel v. State, Del. Supr., 290 A.2d 641 (1972), can satisfy this prong. In this case, only the information from one of the three informants, identified by affiants as "G-1", satisfies the second prong of Aguilar. G-1's observations come from personal association as a "heavy player" and are detailed as to names, places, times, and the gambling ring's division of responsibility. See, United States v. Sellers, 5th Cir., 483 F.2d 37 (1973), Carter v. State, Del. Supr., 418 A.2d 989 (1980).

A judge could not have determined the basis of knowledge from the references to the other two informants. Their information is indistinguishable from rumor. Nevertheless, that other informant information need not be discarded if it is corroborated by other material in the affidavit. Draper v. United States, supra, State v. Ramirez, supra. Contra, Stanley v. State, Md. App., 19 Md.App. 507, 313 A.2d 847 (1974).

[T]he Supreme Court has either used corroboration or assumed that it might be used in a variety of ways. Sometimes it appears that the court was seeking evidence of corroboration because no showing of the informant's basis of knowledge (Draper, Ker, Adams), sometimes because the informants' veracity was not otherwise established sufficiently (Jones,...