Opinion
January 29, 1988
Appeal from the Monroe County Court, Connell, J.
Present — Callahan, J.P., Doerr, Green, Balio and Davis, JJ.
Judgment unanimously reversed on the law, defendant's motion to suppress granted and indictment dismissed. Memorandum: On appeal from a judgment convicting her of criminal possession of marihuana in the first degree, defendant's primary claim is that a search warrant under which the marihuana was seized was not issued upon probable cause. The suppression court found that the warrant application did not satisfy the Aguilar-Spinelli test (see, Aguilar v Texas, 378 U.S. 108; Spinelli v United States, 393 U.S. 410), but did meet the "totality of the circumstances" test enunciated by the United States Supreme Court in Illinois v Gates ( 462 U.S. 213).
The Court of Appeals in cases involving arrests without a warrant has declined to adopt the Gates test as a matter of State constitutional law (People v Johnson, 66 N.Y.2d 398, 406) and we see no reason why the Gates test should be applied to cases involving a search warrant as in the instant case (see, People v P.J. Video, 68 N.Y.2d 296, 305; People v Bigelow, 66 N.Y.2d 417, 424-425; People v Griminger, 127 A.D.2d 74, 83, lv granted 70 N.Y.2d 647). It is the Magistrate, not the police, who must determine probable cause and that determination must be objectively verifiable (People v P.J. Video, supra, at 307; People v Hanlon, 36 N.Y.2d 549, 559). Here, the warrant application fails both prongs of the Aguilar-Spinelli test because there was no showing that the informant or the informant's information was reliable. Since the warrant was not issued upon probable cause, defendant's motion to suppress should have been granted. In view of our holding, we need not reach the other issues raised by defendant.