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State v. Boyea12/1/2000
" Ante, at 10 n.6. It asserts that the tip "predicted" information that the police officer verified and that this predictive value lent credibility to the tip. The "totality of the circumstances" in this case has never been shown to be anything more than an anonymous telephone call claiming that a car on the highway was "operating erratically." The entire predictive value of this tip was that the tipster "predicted" a car on a limited access highway would continue on the highway in the direction it was traveling.
By ignoring the requirement of reliability for anonymous tips, the majority has created an automobile exception to our established search and seizure jurisprudence for which there is no precedent and no conceivable limit. I respectfully dissent.
I.
The record in this case is indistinguishable from recent and relevant precedent from the United States Supreme Court. Because defendant has not raised a claim under Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution, we consider the issue solely under the United States Constitution. We are therefore bound by the Supreme Court's decisions interpreting the Fourth Amendment. We must apply the Supreme Court precedent using our best judgment about what that Court would do if faced with similar facts. For many years, the Court has required that police action must be based on objectively reliable information. We have the benefit of a recent pronouncement by that Court on the exact issue of anonymous tips, Florida v. J.L., 120 S. Ct. 1375 (2000), and yet the majority of this Court dispenses with this precedent and diverges from the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Fourth Amendment in a closely analogous case.
The anonymous tip in Florida v. J.L. described a particular person by appearance and specified his location. The tip alleged that a young black male wearing a plaid shirt at a particular bus stop was carrying a gun. Police checking the specified location saw a male matching the description given by the anonymous informant. They saw nothing to indicate any illegal conduct, and the individual made no threatening or suspicious movements. Id. at 1377.
The Supreme Court unanimously held that corroboration of generally available facts about a person's location, appearance, or clothing does not indicate the reliability of the tip. See id. at 1379. The Court began its analysis by noting that "'an anonymous tip alone seldom demonstrates the informant's basis of knowledge or veracity.'" Id. at 1378 (quoting Alabama v. White 496 U.S. 325, 329 (1990)). The tip in J.L. came from "an unknown, unaccountable informant who neither explained how he knew about the gun nor supplied any basis for believing he had inside information about J.L." Id. at 1379. Florida and the United States argued that the tip was reliable because its description of J.L. and his location had proved accurate. The Court rejected this analysis, stating " hese contentions misapprehend the reliability needed for a tip to justify a Terry stop." Id. This kind of public information, the Court explained, does not demonstrate that the tipster has inside information about concealed wrongdoing. The reasonable suspicion needed for such a stop "requires that the tip be reliable in its assertion of illegality, not just in its tendency to identify a determinate person." Id. Therefore, the Court held that this tip, lacking indicia of reliability and uncorroborated in its accusation of criminal behavior, did not provide reasonable suspicion for a Terry stop. Id. at 1380.
The need for reliability in anonymous-tip cases was first articulated by the Court in Alabama v. White. There, the Court held that the assessment of anonymous tips is "dependent upon both the
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