Brown v. State

WILNER, Judge. Appellant was convicted in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County of possession of marijuana, for which he was sentenced to one year in prison and fined $1,000. His only complaint in this appeal is that the marijuana seized, pursuant to a search warrant, at the time of his arrest should have been suppressed because the search warrant was not supported by probable cause. Appellant’s attack on the warrant is grounded entirely on the principles laid down by the Supreme Court in Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108 , 84 S.Ct. 1509 , 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964), and Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410 , 89 S.Ct. 584 , 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969), as construed and applied in subsequent cases by this and other courts.

His complaint is that the warrant was based upon uncorroborated hearsay information obtained from a confidential informant whose veracity and reliability were not demonstrated in the application for the warrant. ¹⁸⁸ Recognizing that, by virtue of Illinois v. Gates,-U.S. -, 103 S.Ct. 2317 , 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983), the criteria of Aguilar and Spinelli are no longer controlling for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, as applied to the States by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment, appellant nonetheless argues that those criteria should continue to control through art. 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. We reject his invitation to drive an unnecessary cleavage between the two parallel constitutional provisions. The Court of Appeals has concluded on a number of occasions, including some recent ones, that art. 26 of the Declaration of Rights is in pari materia with the Fourth Amendment, that both grew out of the same historical background, and that the “decisions of the Supreme Court on the kindred 4th Amendment are entitled to great respect” when construing art. 26. Givner v. State, 210 Md. 484, 498 , 124 A.2d 764 (1956); Gahan v. State, 290 Md. 310 , 430 A.2d 49 (1981), and cases cited therein.

Although scholars and commentators may debate the matter, as is their wont, privilege, and function to do, it would seem from the majority Opinion in Gates that the Supreme Court abandoned the rather rigid “two prong test” of Aguilar and Spinelli not only because it believed that that test was inappropriate but also because it felt that the test had not served its intended purpose. The various “prongs” and “spurs” attendant to the test