Commonwealth v. Conner

Decided May 23, 1973

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1973-05-23

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“Although an affidavit may be based on hearsay information and need not reflect the direct personal observations of the affiant, the magistrate must be informed of some of the underlying circumstances from which the informant concluded that the narcotics were where he claimed they were, and some of the underlying circumstances from which the officer concluded that the informant, whose identity need not be disclosed, was “credible” or his information “reliable.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Commonwealth v. Ruey

Relies on Aguilar v. Texas · Commonwealth v. Milliken

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1973-05-23

How this case has been cited

Cited by 74 later decisions — most recently October 2020 · most notably Commonwealth v. Edmunds (1991), Commonwealth v. Davis (1976)

3 federal appellate · 71 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1 *342Concurring Opinion by

Mr. Justice Pomeroy:

¶2I agree that appellant’s motion to suppress should have been granted because the magistrate was not informed “. . . of the underlying circumstances from which the officer concluded that the informant. . . was ‘credible? or his information ‘reliable.’ ” Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 114, 84 S. Ct. 1509, 1514 (1964) (footnote omitted), and concur in the decision of the Court on that basis.

¶3For the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in Commonwealth v. Milliken, 450 Pa. 310, 318, 300 A. 2d 78 (1973), however, I think appellant should prevail also on the first ground here advanced, viz., that the procedure which allows the suppression hearing judge to undertake to cure a defective search warrant by evidence of sworn oral testimony supposedly presented earlier to the issuing officer is constitutionally defective.