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Smith v. State3/31/2004
Haight then added a few concluding remarks to the warrant application. He told the magistrate that N-428 had reported that, during his visit to Smith's house on July 31, "Nick" had told him that he (N-428) could "come back any time we can help you out with any drugs that ... you need". Haight then added that, during N-428's visit to Smith's house, "Aparicio was there, and Blaine Smith. I believe [that] all three of them indicated that that was possible."
However, Haight did not specify the basis of his belief that Smith had offered to make future sales of drugs to N-428. In particular, Haight did not tell the magistrate whether N-428 had directly asserted this, or whether this was merely an inference that Haight had drawn from N-428's description of the meeting - and, if so, what portion of N-428's description had led Haight to make this inference.
Why We Conclude that the State's Warrant Application Fails to Satisfy the Aguilar-Spinelli Test
Because N-428 was a person who provided information to the police in exchange for pay, N-428 was a "police informant" for purposes of the Aguilar-Spinelli test.
The State argues that a person who provides information to the police for pay is not as untrustworthy as a person who cooperates with the police in order to avoid prosecution or punishment for crimes that the police know about - and that therefore the State did not need to meet the normal requirements of Aguilar-Spinelli's second prong (the credibility prong) in order to establish N-428's credibility. Specifically, the State contends that, although the police had to provide the magistrate with some evidence of N-428's credibility, this evidence did not need to be "overwhelming".
We are not sure how to interpret the State's argument. The Aguilar-Spinelli test never requires "overwhelming" proof of an informant's credibility. If the State is arguing that, as a matter of law, the Aguilar-Spinelli test requires some lesser proof of credibility when the State relies on a paid informant rather than an informant who cooperates in order to avoid criminal prosecution, we reject this argument. An informant for pay falls squarely within the Aguilar- Spinelli category of "police informant". As we said in Lloyd v. State,
Distrust of police informants is founded on their tendency to report information for pay, for immunity, or for personal advantage or vindication; also a principal concern is the possibility that fictitious reports from unnamed informants will be used as a means of fabricating probable cause.
914 P.2d 1282, 1286 (Alaska App. 1996), citing Effenbeck v. State, 700 P.2d 811, 814 (Alaska App. 1985).
Because N-428 was a police informant, the State needed to fully satisfy the second prong of Aguilar-Spinelli - the prong requiring proof that a hearsay informant is a credible source of information. To meet this second prong, the State was obliged to affirmatively show that the police had obtained independent corroboration of N-428's assertions, or that N-428 had provided accurate information in the past, or that N-428's statements were against his own penal interest. And, of course, the State was also obliged to prove the first prong of the Aguilar-Spinelli test - i.e., prove that N-428 had obtained his information in a reliable way.
The first prong of Aguilar-Spinelli: what did N-428 know from his own personal knowledge?
Regarding the first prong of Aguilar-Spinelli, it is obvious from the warrant application that N-428 claimed to be reporting conversations and events that he had personally witnessed. The problem, however, is to identify (from Haight's narrative) what exactly N-428 cla
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