Opinion
March 21, 1988
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Kings County (Kooper, J.).
rendered December 16, 1983, convicting
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.
The defendant's sole contention on appeal is that his arrest was not justified by probable cause; he asserts that the informants whose hearsay statements constituted the basis for his arrest were not established to be reliable. We disagree. Probable cause may be supplied by hearsay information as long as it is shown that the informant is reliable and has demonstrated a basis for his knowledge (see, People v. Johnson, 66 N.Y.2d 398, 402-403), and a finding of reliability may be based upon corroboration of the informant's statement with information independently gleaned in the course of a police investigation (see, People v. Johnson, supra; People v. Elwell, 50 N.Y.2d 231, 237).
It was called to this court's attention by the People at oral argument that the factual basis propounded in their brief that the informant was reliable was in error: they informed the court that the informant's knowledge may have been from published accounts of the crime rather than from the defendant's confession. However, we conclude that the informant's statement to the police was shown to be reliable when subsequent police investigative work led to another informant who similarly told the police that the defendant had confessed to committing the crime along with two other individuals.
Since the basis of the informant's knowledge was established, in that his reported information was derived directly from the defendant (see, People v. Nelson, 125 A.D.2d 339, lv denied 69 N.Y.2d 831; People v. Garcia, 103 A.D.2d 753, 754, cert denied 469 U.S. 1075), his information supplied the police with probable cause to arrest the defendant. Bracken, J.P., Kunzeman, Eiber and Balletta, JJ., concur.