SANDRA GILLETTE, APPELLANT,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE
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The court held that a search warrant based solely on an undisclosed informant's tip, lacking independent corroboration of reliability, is invalid.
The appellant challenged a search warrant obtained based on an affidavit from a confidential informant who had no prior history of providing reliable …
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COBB, Judge.
The appellant, Sandra Gillette, challenges the validity of a search warrant predicated upon the affidavit of an undisclosed confidential informant. The confidential informant had not supplied information in the past and was not a citizen informant; nor did the affidavit show independent indicia of reliability, i.e., inculpatory details independently corroborated by law enforcement personnel prior to issuance of the warrant, as in Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983). Corroboration of easily accessible information does not establish the credibility of an informant. State v. Novak, 502 So. 2d 990 (Fla. 3d DCA), review denied, 511 So. 2d 299 (Fla.1987).
The instant factual scenario is very similar to that in Blue v. State, 441 So. 2d 165 (Fla. 3d DCA 1983), wherein the court said:
To place our imprimatur on the warrant in the present case would be to sanction a search in every instance where a person of unknown reliability brings contraband to the police, tells them that he obtained it in a particular place, and that there is more where it came from. This is not the meaning of Illinois v. Gates.
See also Williams v. State, 531 So. 2d 246 (Fla. 5th DCA 1988).
REVERSED.
W. SHARP and GOSHORN, JJ„ concur.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
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McNEELY v. State, 690 So. 2d 1337 (Fla. 1st DCA 1997)…ormant. The only details of the tip that Lee corroborated, however, were the directions to the defendant’s house and the description of the house and yard. It is not enough to verify innocent details such as these. As explained in Gillette v. State, 561 So. 2d 4 (Fla. 5th DCA 1990), “[e]orroboration of easily accessible information does not establish the credibility of an informant.” In Gillette, the court held that the affiant must provide independent evidence of the “inculpa-tory details.” Likewise, the b…
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Green v. State, 946 So. 2d 558 (Fla. 1st DCA 2006)…ication of innocent details such as the location of the residence as described by the confidential informant does not establish the veracity of the confidential informant. See McNeely v. State, 690 So. 2d 1337 (Fla. 1st DCA 1997); Gillette v. State, 561 So. 2d 4 (Fla. 5th DCA 1990). However, in this case, the affiant did not rely only on the verification of the location of appellant's camper and vehicle, but also found that appellant had prior arrests for narcotics related offenses. Additionally, unlike the…
Authorities Cited
- Illinois v. Gates et ux., 462 U.S. 213 (U.S. 1983)
- State v. Novak, 502 So. 2d 990 (Fla. 3d DCA 1987)
- Berry O. Russell v. State, 441 So. 2d 165 (Fla. 3d DCA 1983)
- State v. Caso, 441 So. 2d 165 (Fla. 3d DCA 1983)
- Bishop v. Moore, 531 So. 2d 246 (Fla. 5th DCA 1988)
- Williams v. State, 531 So. 2d 246 (Fla. 5th DCA 1988)