Aрpellant Walter Choice was arrested and tried on three counts of violating the Georgia Controlled Substances Act: possession of marijuana, possession of cocaine, and sale of cocaine. He was found guilty on the third charge and sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Choice appeals from this judgment, enumerating the gеneral grounds and the denial of his motion to suppress. We affirm.
A Baldwin County police officer, Patrolman McCormick, wаs approached by a confidential informant who on several previous occasions had supplied rеliable information leading to the arrest and conviction of local law-breakers. This individual informed McCormick that оn the preceding day he had seen controlled substances in appellant’s apartment, and offered to mаke a “controlled buy” at any time the police might desire. A controlled buy was arranged for two days thereafter, and on the appointed day the informant was given two $20 bills of which a photographic record had been made. McCormick then strip-searched the informant to ascertain that he had no controlled substances on his person. Thereafter, McCormick and other officers stationed themselves where they could observe the exterior of аppellant’s four-unit apartment building, including the entrance to a stairway which led only to appellant’s apartmеnt and one other unit, and which provided the only means of ingress and egress for those two apartments. The informant was thеn signaled to undertake the “buy.”
The informant entered the doorway leading to the stairs, and seven minutes later he was seеn to emerge from the entrance. He turned over to the officers a plastic bag containing a white powdery substance which a specially trained officer on surveillance identified as cocaine. This identification was later verified by the Georgia Crime Laboratory.
McCormick then went to the police station and swore out a search warrant and returned to the apartment building, where the other officers had maintained their stakeout. As two officers entered the backyard, they saw a plastic bag containing a green leafy substance (later identified as mаrijuana) falling to the ground apparently from a single open window on the building’s rear, later identified as opening into аppellant’s bathroom. In the grass near where this bag had fallen lay a plastic bag containing a white powder subsequently identified as cocaine.
In the meanwhile, other officers approached the appellant’s *29 apartment via the stairway, knocked at the door, and identified themselves as рolice. They heard the sound of flushing from within and, when they forced the door, saw appellant emerging from the bathroоm, where water was still swirling in the commode. The officers found in appellant’s pocket the two $20 bills that had been provided to the informant, and elsewhere in the apartment they found scales and plastic bags of a kind commonly used for measuring and dispensing illicit drugs. Appellant urges that this evidence should have been suppressed by the trial court, and that the verdict was contrary both to the law and to the evidence. Held:
1. Appellant objects on several grounds to the admission into evidence of the articles found in the apartment. His objections center primarily upon the sufficienсy of the affidavit underlying the search warrant and the state’s refusal to call the informant as a witness or otherwise to idеntify him, thereby allegedly denying appellant the opportunity to confront his accuser. While disclosure of the identity оf a mere tipster is not required,
Thornton v. State,
In the instant case the direct evidence was such as to render unnecessаry to the defendant’s case any information as to the informant’s identity. Moreover, “[t]he question of disclosure is a matter of discretion with the trial judge.”
Bennett v. State,
2. This state has traditionally used three tests for determining the sufficiency of an affidavit to show probable cause to issue a search warrant: thаt the affidavit gives reasons for the informant’s reliability; that the affidavit either states specifically how the informant obtained the information or otherwise establishes the validity of the information; and that the time period must be stated in the affidаvit in such affirmative manner as to show that the information is not stale. See Spinelli v. United States,
3. Having ruled that the court did not err in denying appellant’s motion to suppress, we find that the evidence was sufficient to authorize the jury’s verdict.
Crawford v. State,
Judgment affirmed.