Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

totality-of-the-circumstances 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. ( Under this test - which replaced Aguilar-Spinelli's twopronged approach - the reliability of the hear- say is weighed by focusing on the entire situation as described in the probable-cause affidavit, and not on any one specific factor. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317 (1983). Cf. AGUILAR-SPINELLI TEST.