Aguilar v. Texas Case Brief

Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct 1509 (1964)

FACTS: Two Houston police officers applied to a magistrate for a warrant to search Aguilar's home for narcotics. Their affidavit, in relevant part, recited that:

"Affiants have received reliable information from a credible person and do believe that heroin, marijuana, barbiturates and other narcotics and narcotic paraphernalia are being kept at the above described premises for the purpose of sale and use contrary to the provisions of law."

The search warrant was issued and narcotics were found.

ISSUES: Did the affidavit provide sufficient basis for finding of probable cause and issuance of a search affidavit?

HOLDING: No

DISCUSSION: In passing on the validity of the search warrant, the reviewing court may consider only information brought to the magistrate's attention. Informed and deliberate determinations of magistrates are to be preferred over hurried action of officers who may happen to make arrests, and evidence sufficient to support a magistrate's disinterested determination to issue a warrant will not necessarily justify the officer in making search without warrant.

The point of the Fourth Amendment is not that it denies law enforcement the support of usual inferences which reasonable men may draw from evidence but that it requires that such inferences to be drawn by neutral and detached magistrate instead of the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime. An affidavit for a search warrant may be based on hearsay information and need not reflect direct personal observations of the affiant, but magistrate must be informed of some of the underlying circumstances on which informant based his conclusions and some of the underlying circumstances from which officer concluded that the informant, whose identity need not be disclosed, was "credible" or that his information was reliable.

Although the reviewing court will pay substantial deference to judicial determinations of probable cause, the court must still insist that the magistrate perform his "neutral and detached" function and not serve merely as a rubber stamp.