UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT
ILLINOIS v. GATES
426 U.S. 213 (1983)
Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court.
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On May 3, 1978, the Bloomingdale Police Department received by mail an anonymous handwritten letter which read as follows:
“This letter is to inform you that you have a couple in your town who strictly make their living on selling drugs. They are Sue and Lance Gates, they live on Greenway, off Bloomingdale Rd. in the condominiums. Most of their buys are done in Florida. Sue his wife drives their car to Florida, where she leaves it to be loaded up with drugs, then Lance flies down and drives it back. Sue flies back after she drops the car off in Florida. May 3 she is driving down there again and Lance will be flying down in a few days to drive it back. At the time Lance drives the car back he has the trunk loaded with over $100,000.00 in drugs. Presently they have over $100,000.00 worth of drugs in their home. They brag about the fact they never have to work, and make their entire living on pushers.
I guarantee if you watch them carefully you will make a big catch. They are friends with some big drugs dealers, who visit their house often.
Lance & Susan Gates
In Greenway
Condominiums”
The letter was referred by the Chief of Police of the Bloomingdale Police Department to Detective Mader, who decided to pursue the tip. Mader learned, from the office of the Illinois Secretary of State, that an Illinois driver’s license had been issued to one Lance Gates, residing at a stated address in Bloomingdale. He contacted a confidential informant, whose examination of certain financial records revealed a more recent address for the Gates, and he also learned from a police officer assigned to O’Hare Airport that “L. Gates” had made a reservation on Eastern Airlines flight 245 to West Palm Beach, Fla., scheduled to depart from Chicago on May 5 at 4:15 p.m.
Mader then made arrangements with an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration for surveillance of the May 5 Eastern Airlines flight. The agent later reported to Mader that Gates had boarded the flight, and that federal agents in Florida had observed him arrive in West Palm Beach and take a taxi to the nearby Holiday Inn. They also reported that Gates went to a room registered to one Susan Gates and that, at 7:00 a.m. the next morning, Gates and an unidentified woman left the motel in a Mercury bearing Illinois license plates and drove northbound on an interstate frequently used by travelers to the Chicago area. In addition, the DEA agent informed Mader that the license plate number on the Mercury registered to a Hornet station wagon owned by Gates. The agent also advised Mader that the driving time between West Palm Beach and Bloomingdale was approximately 22 to 24 hours.
Mader signed an affidavit setting forth the foregoing facts, and submitted it to a judge of the Circuit Court of DuPage County, together with a copy of the anonymous letter. The judge of the court thereupon issued a search warrant for the Gates’ residence and for their automobile.
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At 5:15 a.m. on March 7th, only 36 hours after he had flown out of Chicago, Lance Gates, and his wife, returned to their home in Bloomingdale, driving the car in which they had left West Palm Beach some 22 hours earlier. The Bloomingdale police were awaiting them, searched the trunk of the Mercury, and uncovered approximately 350 pounds of marijuana. A search of the Gates’ home revealed marijuana, weapons, and other contraband.
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The Illinois Supreme Court concluded-and we are inclined to agree-that, standing alone, the anonymous letter sent to the Bloomingdale Police Department would not provide the basis for a magistrate’s determination that there was probable cause to believe contraband would be found in the Gates’ car and home. The letter provides virtually nothing from which one might conclude that its author is either honest or his information reliable; likewise, the letter gives absolutely no indication of the basis for the writer’s predictions regarding the Gates’ criminal activities. Something more was required, then, before a magistrate could conclude that there was probable cause to believe that contraband would be found in the Gates’ home and car.
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In holding that the affidavit in fact did not contain sufficient additional information to sustain a determination of probable cause, the Illinois court applied a “two-pronged test” derived from our decision in Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410 (1969).
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…[P]robable cause is a fluid concept-turning on the assessment of probabilities in particular factual contexts-not readily, or even usefully, reduced to a neat set of legal rules.
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Moreover, the “two-pronged test” directs analysis into two largely independent channels-the informant’s “veracity” or “reliability” and his “basis of knowledge”. [note omitted]. There are persuasive arguments against according these two elements such independent status.
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We also have recognized that affidavits “are normally drafted by nonlawyers in the midst and haste of a criminal investigation. Technical requirements of elaborate specification once exacted under common law pleading have no proper place in this area”.
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A magistrate’s “determination of probable cause should be paid great deference by reviewing courts.” Spinelli, supra, 393 U.S. at 419. “A grudging or negative attitude by reviewing courts toward warrants,” Ventresca, supra, 380 U.S., at 108, is inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment’s strong preference for searches conducted pursuant to a warrant “courts should not invalidate…warrant[s] by interpreting affidavit[s] in a hypertechnical, rather than a commonsense, manner.” Id., at 109.
If the affidavits submitted by police officers are subjected to the type of scrutiny some courts have deemed appropriate, police might well resort to warrantless searches, with the hope of relying on consent or some other exception to the warrant clause that might develop at the time of the search.
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For all these reasons, we conclude that it is wiser to abandon the “two-pronged test” established by our decisions in Aguilar and Spinelli.
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Our decisions applying the totality of circumstances analysis outlined above have consistently recognized the value of corroboration of details of an informant’s tip by independent police work.
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Finally, the anonymous letter contained a range of details relating not just to easily obtained facts and conditions existing at the time of the tip, but to future actions of third parties ordinarily not easily predicted. The letter writer’s accurate information as to the travel plans of each of the Gates was of a character likely obtained only from the Gates themselves, or from someone familiar with their not entirely ordinary travel plans. If the informant had access to accurate information of this type a magistrate could properly conclude that it was not unlikely that he also had access to reliable information of the Gates’ alleged illegal activities. Of course, the Gates’ travel plans might have been learned from a talkative neighbor or travel agent; under the “two-pronged test” developed from Spinelli, the character of the details in the anonymous letter might well not permit a sufficiently clear inference regarding the letter writer’s “basis of knowledge.” But, as discussed previously, supra, —-, probable cause does not demand the certainty we associate with formal trials. It is enough that there was a fair probability that the writer of the anonymous letter had obtained his entire story either from the Gates or someone they trusted. And corroboration of major portions of the letter’s predictions provides just this probability. It is apparent, therefore, that the judge issuing the warrant had a “substantial basis for conclud[ing]” that probable cause to search the Gate’s home and car existed. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Illinois there must be Reversed.
Justice White, concurring in the judgment.
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I continue to believe that the exclusionary rule is an inappropriate remedy where law enforcement officials act in the reasonable belief that a search and seizure was consistent with the Fourth Amendment…
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Justice Brennan, with whom Justice Marshall joins, dissenting.
Although I join Justice Stevens’ dissenting opinion and agree with him that the warrant is invalid even under the Court’s newly announced “totality of the circumstances” test, [note omitted], I write separately to dissent from the Court’s unjustified and ill-advised rejection of the two-prong test for evaluating the validity of a warrant based on hearsay announced in Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108 (1964), and refined in Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410 (1969).
The Court’s current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, as reflected by today’s unfortunate decision, patently disregards Justice Jackson’s admonition in Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160 (1949):
“[Fourth Amendment rights]……are not mere second-class rights but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror into every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government…
“But the right to be secure against searches and seizures is one of the most difficult to protect. Since the officers are themselves the chief invaders, there is no enforcement outside of court.” Id., at 180-181 (Jackson, J., dissenting).
In recognition of the judiciary’s role as the only effective guardian of Fourth Amendment rights, this Court has developed over the last half century a set of coherent rules governing a magistrate’s consideration of a warrant application and the showings that are necessary to support a finding of probable cause. We start with the proposition that a neutral and detached magistrate, and not the police, should determine whether there is probable cause to support the issuance of a warrant.
