The Supreme Court: Vital Informers

For every Supreme Court action aimed at guaranteeing the rights of the accused, there is a reaction that the court is hindering the police. Last week the court issued a ruling that helped instead of hindered law enforcement.

At issue was the secret informer, whose tips often supply police with their sole "probable cause" for arrest. As long as police have such cause for arrest, they can search a suspect for the evidence that may convict him. But two Chicago policemen were sharply challenged in court in 1964 after they arrested one George McCray on a Chicago street corner, searched him and found heroin. At a pretrial hearing, the cops testified that they had been tipped off by a reliable informer, whom they refused to identify. McCray's lawyers demanded the informer's name; if he did not exist, there was no "probable cause" and the heroin evidence could be barred. The judge ruled against disclosure, and McCray eventually got a two-year sentence.

By a vote of 5 to 4, the Supreme Court last week upheld the conviction. When police claim that they have used a reliable informer, said Justice Potter Stewart, the Fourth Amendment does not require state judges to "assume the arresting officers are committing perjury." Justice William O. Douglas spoke for the dissenters, arguing that if the police need not identify informers, they become the "arbiters of probable cause." But the majority pointed out that a defendant is entitled to an informer's identity at the later trial if he needs it in order to rebut the charges. Besides, the anonymity of informers is too important to surrender. "The informer," ruled the court, "is a vital part of society's defensive arsenal."