Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

aguilar-spinelli test

criminal procedure. a standard for determining whether hearsay (such as an informant's tip) is sufficiently reliable to establish probable cause for an arrest or search warrant. 0 under this two-pronged test -which has been replaced by a broader, totalityof-the-circumstances approach - the reliability of both the information and the informant must be independently shown. aguilar u. texas, 378 u.s. 108, 84 s.ct. 1509 (1964); spinelli u. united states, 393 u.s. 410, 89 s.ct. 584 (1969). cf. totality-of-the-circumstances test.