Wilson v. State

• Decision Date: 14 December 1973
• Citation: 314 A.2d 905
• Parties: Elwood H. WILSON, III, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Delaware

Page 905

314 A.2d 905

Elwood H. WILSON, III, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Delaware.

Dec. 14, 1973.

Upon appeal from Superior Court. Reversed.

Henry A. Wise, Jr., Wilmington, for defendant below, appellant.

H. Murray Sawyer, Jr., Deputy Atty. Gen., Wilmington, for plaintiff below, appellee.

Before HERRMANN, C.J., CAREY, J., and WRIGHT, Judge.

HERRMANN, Chief Justice:

The defendant seeks review of his conviction for possession of dangerous drugs (16 Del.C. § 4722) and for possession of a deadly weapon by one convicted of a felony (11 Del.C. § 468B). The question presented is whether, based on information given to the police by an informant, the police were justified in believing the informant credible, thus providing the requisite constitutional basis for the finding that probable cause existed to search the defendant's house.

I.

Police officers armed with a search warrant were admitted into the defendant's house by his wife. The police awakened the defendant who had been sleeping and identified themselves. They proceeded to search his clothing, for protective purposes, and found two cubes of hashish in a plastic vial. A search of the premises revealed a small quantity of marijuana in a shoebox underneath a sofa.

The defendant contends that the search warrant was defective in that the affidavit supporting it did not show probable cause to search. The affidavit contained the following information:

The police officer affiants received the following information from Betty L. DeLoach on June 10: That she was with the defendant Wilson and one Joseph Wilkinson when they burglarized an unidentified doctor's office in or near Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, on June 9, and stole approximately 20,000 amphetamine tablets and several thousand 'downs'; that the three of them separated the stolen drugs into bags of 100 each; that Wilson kept half in the garage of his residence and Wilkinson took the remainder to DeLoach's apartment; that thereafter Wilkinson moved all of the drugs from DeLoach's apartment to Wilson's residence; that DeLoach was admitted to the Memorial Hospital on June 10, and treated for an overdose of drugs; that if the police did not seize the drugs stored at Wilson's residence promptly, they would be moved to a new hiding place.

II.

We agree with the defendant that there was insufficient corroboration of the informant's statements to justify a finding that probable cause existed for the issuance of the search warrant. There was, as we recently held in Garner v. State, Del.Supr., 314 A.2d 908 (1973), no 'showing, with constitutional sufficiency, of the basis for believing that the information was reliable'. See also Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964); Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969); United States v. Harris, 403 U.S. 573, 91 S.Ct. 2075, 29 L.Ed.2d 723 (1971).

A search warrant can be legally issued only upon an affidavit establishing sufficient grounds for the warrant. The affidavit must state facts constituting probable cause to search; i.e., facts sufficient to warrant a reasoanble man in the belief that seizable property would be found in a particular place or on a particular person. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1924).

The affidavit can establish probable cause either by setting out the incriminating personal observations of a reliable affiant (usually a police officer who is presumptively reliable), or it may be based on incriminating reports to the affiant by some informer or third party witness; i.e., hearsay. If the affidavit is based on hearsay, it must contain reasonable corroboration of the hearsay reports. Under the two-fold standard set out in Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 114, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 1514, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964), this means (1) that the magistrate must be satisfied that the affidavit reveals the underlying circumstances from which the informant drew the conclusion that criminal activity had occurred; and (2) that there are sufficient reasons for believing that the informant's information is reliable.

The first standard has been sufficiently met in the instant case: the information, reciting the personal and criminal involvement of the informant with the defendant, satisfies this requirement. The affidavit fails, however, to meet the second requirement.

The information contained in the affidavit was held by the Superior Court to prove the informant sufficiently credible upon two grounds: (1) the informant was named and there was, therefore, a source of information to which the magistrate could refer in order to substantiate the story; and (2) the information implicated the informant in criminal...