People v. Mason

Statement of the Case

Appellant stands convicted following a court trial of possession of hashish for sale in violation of Health and Safety Code section 11359. Appellant was sentenced to three years felony probation upon the condition he serve four months in the county jail.

As we shall explain, we reverse the judgment because of the failure of the affidavit supporting the search warrant to set forth facts from which the magistrate could rationally believe that the confidential informant was credible or that his information was reliable within the meaning of the “second prong” of Aguilar v. Texas (1964) 378 U.S. 108, 114 [ 12 L.Ed.2d 723, 728 , 84 S.Ct. 1509 ].

Statement of the Facts

On September 4, 1979, at approximately 5 p.m., a police informant, Mark McNeil, went to appellant’s mobile home located in a trailer court. When McNeil entered the trailer, he observed appellant sitting at a table with a scale breaking up a block of hashish and packaging it in tinfoil. Appellant told McNeil that he had a little less than an ounce of hashish and that he was cutting it into gram portions. Appellant offered to sell hashish to several other persons present in the trailer,…