Wood v. State
| Decision Date | 27 September 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. A94A1424,A94A1424 |
| Citation | 214 Ga.App. 848,449 S.E.2d 308 |
| Parties | WOOD v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Lorie A. Moss, Calhoun, for appellant.
Stephen F. Lanier, Dist. Atty., Lisa W. Pettit, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.
Carol Wood appeals the denial of her motion to suppress and subsequent conviction on one count of possession of amphetamines. Wood was arrested after a search of her home conducted by the Rome/Floyd Metro Task Force, pursuant to a search warrant, yielded a plastic bag containing amphetamine residue. She asserts that the trial court erred in denying her motion to suppress because the affidavit supporting the search warrant did not establish probable cause.
1. The affidavit upon which the search warrant was issued stated that a reliable informant related to the affiant that he had been told by an unidentified third-party that he had seen methamphetamines at Wood's home. According to the affidavit, the reliable informant told the officer that this unidentified third-party did not know that he would be passing the information along to the police. The reliable informant had no independent knowledge of these facts, but stated that his source "had no reason to lie" to him. Compare State v. Law, 208 Ga.App. 744, 432 S.E.2d 110 (1993), in which the informant actually saw the contraband but a third-party identified it as such for him.
(Citations, punctuation and emphasis omitted.) Gary v. State, 262 Ga. 573, 577, 422 S.E.2d 426 (1992).
The facts surrounding the affidavit upon which the magistrate relied in issuing the search warrant in this case are similar to those in Munson v. State, 211 Ga.App. 80, 438 S.E.2d 123 (1993), in which this court noted: "[T]he analysis applies also in situations in which there are two informers." Id. at 81, 438 S.E.2d 123. A deficiency created by the fact that the reliability of either source has not been established can be corrected by the corroboration of the information, thereby providing a substantial basis for finding probable cause. Id. at 82, 438 S.E.2d 123. In Munson the affiant corrected the deficiency by conducting an independent investigation of the information, verifying not only Munson's address, but also by involving another law enforcement agency which further investigated and confirmed that marijuana was growing at the location indicated by the informant. The affiant in this case, however, did nothing more to corroborate the information of the reliable informant than to confirm Wood's address, the make of her car and her hair color. Nothing whatsoever was done to corroborate the unidentified third-party's information. These steps, which merely verified Wood's identity but did not tie her to the commission of any crime, do not constitute corroboration so as to cure the deficiency created by the affiant's reliance on information from a source whose reliability had not been established. No matter how truthful or sincere the information from the reliable source, the crucial question is the unidentified third-party's reliability, and that is simply not established in the affidavit. (Punctuation omitted.) State v. Stephens, 252 Ga. 181, 183, 311 S.E.2d 823 (1984). In this case, the independent investigation done by the police in an effort to corroborate the information was insufficient. See Davis v. State, 214 Ga.App. 36, 447 S.E.2d 68 (1994).
We acknowledge that in doubtful or marginal cases preference should be afforded to upholding the warrant. Mincey v. State, 180 Ga.App. 898, 900, 350 S.E.2d 852 (1986). Nonetheless, we find here that the uncorroborated statement of an unnamed third-party source, as filtered through a reliable informant to a police affiant, did not give rise to probable cause sufficient to support the issuance of a search warrant. The trial court erred in denying Wood's motion to suppress.
2. In light of our holding in Division 1 above, we need not address Wood's remaining enumerations of error.
Judgment reversed.
I respectfully dissent as I believe the warrant is supported by probable cause. Although the majority purports to apply the totality of circumstances analysis, it bases its decision solely on the fact that the unidentified third-party's reliability is not established by the affidavit or otherwise. However, under the totality of circumstances analysis, the issuing magistrate is to make a practical, common-sense decision whether...
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