"April 13 (2008): A request to the FBI for phone records of the number used on the three-way call is returned, showing the number registered to someone in the household of Rozita Swinton, who has been accused of making numerous false reports to police and women's shelters. The records show she called NewBridge 16 times between March 22 and April 12. A second number also traced to Swinton called NewBridge seven more times."I still do not believe the dates, but it is partial confirmation. The affidavit attached to the arrest warrant says that the request for the information came on April 13, and it was from Brooks Long, directed towards CSPD. The San Angelo Standard-Times story says that the REQUEST was instead by the FBI (again, corroborating the story first written here) and was returned on April 13th. Compare this with stories here, and here.
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I'd be interested in learning just how much, if any, investigation Texas authorities did on these calls in the days before the raid. The Supreme Court has taken a very deferential approach for findings of probable cause by law enforcement, but does not give out a blank check. Illinois v. Gates (1983):
"The Supreme Court of Illinois reasoned that Draper involved an informant who had given reliable information on previous occasions, while the honesty and reliability of the anonymous informant in this case were unknown to the Bloomingdale police. While this distinction might be an apt one at the time the police department received the anonymous letter, it became far less significant after Mader's independent investigative work occurred. ... "Because an informant is right about some things, he is more probably right about other facts," Spinelli, supra, 393 U.S., at 427.
At bare minimum, it seems that if an informant's identity is unknown, the police must perform at least SOME independent corroboration. For example, an address, a name, a license plate. If the claims of the informant are rebutted by this investigation, that's a big strike against probable cause.
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