Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/99667/frank-vs-maryland
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 13:19:05+00:00

Document:
"Whenever the Commissioner of Health shall have cause to suspect that a nuisance exists in any house, cellar, or enclosure, he may demand entry therein in the day time, and if the owner or occupier shall refuse or delay to open the same and admit a free examination, he shall forfeit and pay for every such refusal the sum of Twenty Dollars."
Held: Section 120 is valid, and appellant's conviction for resisting an inspection of his house without a warrant did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 359 U. S. 361 -373.
"Whenever the Commissioner of Health shall have cause to suspect that a nuisance exists in any house, cellar or enclosure, he may demand entry therein in the day time, and if the owner or occupier shall refuse or delay to open the same and admit a free examination, he shall forfeit and pay for every such refusal the sum of Twenty Dollars. "
Appellant was arrested on March 5, and the next day was found guilty of the offense alleged in the warrant by a Police Justice for the Northern District of Baltimore and fined twenty dollars. On appeal, the Criminal Court of Baltimore, in a de novo proceeding, also found appellant guilty. The Maryland Court of Appeals denied certiorari. The case came here under a challenge, 28 U.S.C. § 1257(2), to the validity of § 120, to determine whether appellant's conviction for resisting an inspection of his house without a warrant was obtained in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
"[e]very dwelling and every part thereof shall be kept clean and free from any accumulation of dirt, filth, rubbish, garbage or similar matter, and shall be kept free from vermin or rodent infestation."
Baltimore City Code, Art. 12, § 112. If the occupant of a building fails to meet this standard, he is notified by the Commissioner of Health to abate the substandard conditions. [ Footnote 1 ] Failure to remove these hazards to community health gives rise to criminal prosecution. Ibid. The attempted inspection of appellant's home was merely to ascertain the existence of evils to be corrected upon due notification or, in default of such correction, to be made the basis of punishment.
Amendment. Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25 , 338 U. S. 27 . Application of the broad restraints of due process compels inquiry into the nature of the demand being made upon individual freedom in a particular context and the justification of social need on which the demand rests.
The history of the constitutional protection against official invasion of the citizen's home makes explicit the human concerns which it was meant to respect. In years prior to the Revolution, leading voices in England and the Colonies protested against the ransacking by Crown officers of the homes of citizens in search of evidence of crime or of illegally imported goods. The vivid memory by the newly independent Americans of these abuses produced the Fourth Amendment as a safeguard against such arbitrary official action by officers of the new Union, as like provisions had already found their way into State Constitutions.
"It is very certain, that the law obligeth no man to accuse himself; because the necessary means of compelling self-accusation, falling upon the innocent as well as the guilty, would be both cruel and unjust; and it should seem that search for evidence is disallowed upon the same principle. There, too, the innocent would be confounded with the guilty."
evidence against himself, which in criminal cases is condemned in the Fifth Amendment; and compelling a man 'in a criminal case to be a witness against himself,' which is condemned in the Fifth Amendment, throws light on the question as to what is an 'unreasonable search and seizure' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment."
116 U.S. at 116 U. S. 633 .
of the Fourth Amendment and the extent to which the essential right of privacy is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment are, of course, not restricted within these historic bounds.
But giving the fullest scope to this constitutional right to privacy, its protection cannot be here invoked. The attempted inspection of appellant's home is merely to determine whether conditions exist which the Baltimore Health Code proscribes. If they do, appellant is notified to remedy the infringing conditions. No evidence for criminal prosecution is sought to be seized. Appellant is simply directed to do what he could have been ordered to do without any inspection, and what he cannot properly resist, namely, act in a manner consistent with the maintenance of minimum community standards of health and wellbeing, including his own. Appellant's resistance can only be based not on admissible self-protection, but on a rarely voiced denial of any official justification for seeking to enter his home. The constitutional "liberty" that is asserted is the absolute right to refuse consent for an inspection designed and pursued solely for the protection of the community's health, even when the inspection is conducted with due regard for every convenience of time and place.
entry and did not attempt it. A fine is imposed for resistance, but officials are not authorized to break past the unwilling occupant.
Thus, not only does the inspection touch, at most, upon the periphery of the important interests safeguarded by the Fourteenth Amendment's protection against official intrusion, but it is hedged about with safeguards designed to make the least possible demand on the individual occupant, and to cause only the slightest restriction on his claims of privacy. Such a demand must be assessed in the light of the needs which have produced it.
"That all warrants, without oath or affirmation, to search suspected places, or to seize any person or property, are grievious and oppressive; and all general warrants -- to search suspected places, or to apprehend suspected persons, without naming or describing the place, or the person in special -- are illegal, and ought not to be granted."
See 3 Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions (1909) 1688.
"to examine and weigh all such bread, and to seize, for the use of the poor of the county, all such as they shall find deficient in weight or fineness, and not baked or marked as aforesaid. . . . [ Footnote 11 ]"
to open the same and to admit a free examination, he shall forfeit and pay for every such refusal the sum of twenty dollars, for the use of the corporation. [ Footnote 12 ]"
"The Fourteenth Amendment, itself a historical product, did not destroy history for the States and substitute mechanical compartments of law all exactly alike. If a thing has been practised for two hundred years by common consent, it will need a strong case for the Fourteenth Amendment to affect it. . . ."
"It is of the very nature of a free society to advance in its standards of what is deemed reasonable and right. Representing, as it does, a living principle, due process is not confined within a permanent catalogue of what may at a given time be deemed the limits or the essentials of fundamental rights."
Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25 , 338 U. S. 27 .
enforcement of minimum standards of far greater magnitude than the writers of these ancient inspection laws ever dreamed. Time and experience have forcefully taught that the power to inspect dwelling places, either as a matter of systematic area-by-area search or, as here, to treat a specific problem, is of indispensable importance to the maintenance of community health; a power that would be greatly hobbled by the blanket requirement of the safeguards necessary for a search of evidence of criminal acts. The need for preventive action is great, and city after city has seen this need and granted the power of inspection to its health officials; and these inspections are apparently welcomed by all but an insignificant few. [ Footnote 16 ] Certainly, the nature of our society has not vitiated the need for inspections first thought necessary 158 years ago, nor has experience revealed any abuse or inroad on freedom in meeting this need by means that history and dominant public opinion have sanctioned.
search warrant under the Fourteenth Amendment, and the situation now under consideration is laid bare by the suggestion that the kind of an inspection by a health official with which we are concerned may be satisfied by what is, in effect, a synthetic search warrant, an authorization "for periodic inspections." If a search warrant be constitutionally required, the requirement cannot be flexibly interpreted to dispense with the rigorous constitutional restrictions for its issue. A loose basis for granting a search warrant for the situation before us is to enter by way of the back door to a recognition of the fact that, by reason of their intrinsic elements, their historic sanctions, and their safeguards, the Maryland proceedings requesting permission to make a search without intruding when permission is denied do not offend the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In light of the long history of this kind of inspection and of modern needs, we cannot say that the carefully circumscribed demand which Maryland here makes on appellant's freedom has deprived him of due process of law.
If the nuisance constitutes an actual menace to health, the Commissioner may abate it forthwith. Baltimore City Code, Art. 12, § 112.
Tudor, Life of James Otis (1823), 66. No complete text of the Otis speech is extant, but see notes of Horace Gray, Jr., in Quincy's Massachusetts Reports for 1761-1762, App. I, p. 469 et seq. Tudor's life contains an account of it as well as of the events leading to the speech and the reaction to it.
"Otis was a flame of fire; with a promptitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity, and a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him. American Independence was then and there born. The seeds of patriots and heroes, to defend the Non sine Diis animosus infans, to defend the vigorous youth, were then and there sown. Every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take arms against Writs of Assistance. Then and there, was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there, the child Independence was born. In fifteen years, i.e., in 1776, he grew up to manhood and declared himself free."
The Court in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616 , relied heavily on the interrelationship between the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, a view challenged by Professor Wigmore. See 8 Wigmore, Evidence (3rd ed. 1940), § 2264.
Nearly all the early Maryland statutes are contained in Records of the States of the United States of America, a collection compiled by the Library of Congress in association with the University of North Carolina in 1949. This collection is on microfilm. Many volumes of the early Maryland Session Laws are available in various library collections throughout the country. No complete collection is known to exist. A typical tobacco inspection statute is Maryland Laws, November 1773, c. 1, §§ LXXIV, LXXX. At times, a warrant was required for inspections of homes. Id., § LXXIII. See also Maryland Laws, 1717, c. VII. Other Colonies also had statutes allowing inspection to enforce standards for the manufacture or shipping of various items of trade. See, e.g., Virginia Laws, 15 Geo. II (1742), c. IV (pork and beef); Virginia Laws, 12 Geo. III (1772), c. II (flour and bread); Pennsylvania Laws, 1722, c. CCLII (flour and bread); Pennsylvania Laws, 1727, c. CCXCV (beef and pork); Pennsylvania Laws, 1729-1730, c. CCCXVI (hemp).
See, e.g., Maryland Laws, 1715, c. XLVI (tobacco); Maryland Laws, May 1756, p. 5, § XLVI; Maryland Laws. March 1758, p. 3, § X.
See Givner v. State, 210 Md. 484, 492-494, 124 A.2d 764, 768-769. The Maryland Court of Appeals has said that this provision of its Declaration of Rights (originally Article 23, now Article 26) is " in pari materia " with the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Id. at 492.
Maryland Laws, Nov. 1782, c. XVII, § VII. A similar law had been in force in Pennsylvania since 1761. Pennsylvania Laws, 1761-1762, c. CCCCLXXX.
Maryland Laws, April 1787, c. XXIII. See also Pennsylvania Laws, 1782, c. MXXXI.
Maryland Laws, Nov. 1789, c. VIII, § 5. See also Maryland Laws, Nov. 1792, c. LXV, § VII; Maryland Laws, 1793, c. LVI; Maryland Laws, 1784, c. VII.
Baltimore Ordinances, 1801-1802, No. 23, § 6. The Baltimore City Health Department may be the oldest in the country. See 35 Am.J. of Public Health (Jan. 1945) 49.
See Howard, Public Health Administration and the Natural History of Disease in Baltimore, Maryland, 1797-1920 (1924) 140.
See id. at 145-146. For example, in 1880, there were 4,292 nuisances inspected by sanitary inspectors. In 1890, there were 34,138 such inspections. Ibid.
Compare Kotch v. Board of River Port Pilot Comm'rs, 330 U. S. 552 , and Ownbey v. Morgan, 256 U. S. 94 , with Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 .
The Baltimore Health Department keeps a record of the number of inspections made annually. All but a few of these are inspections of dwellings. The figures for the last five years are as follows: 1954, 28,081 inspections; 1955, 25,021 inspections; 1956, 35,120 inspections; 1957, 33,573 inspections; 1958, 36,119 inspections. Memorandum of Appellee at Request of Court 2. The Health Commissioner of Baltimore estimates that the number of prosecutions under § 120 average one per year.
Of 57 cities whose health codes were studied by the Urban Renewal Administration, 36 empowered their officers to enter and inspect for violations. See Provisions of Housing Codes in Various American Cities, Urban Renewal Bulletin No. 3 (published by Urban Renewal Administration of the Housing and Home Finance Agency of 1956).
For a discussion of some of the problems of Urban Renewal, see Note, 72 Harv.L.Rev. 504.
of, an unreasonable search within the meaning of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, I join the opinion of the Court.
The decision today greatly dilutes the right of privacy which every homeowner had the right to believe was part of our American heritage. We witness indeed an inquest over a substantial part of the Fourth Amendment.
The question in this case is whether a search warrant is needed to enter a citizen's home to investigate sanitary conditions. The Court holds that no search warrant is needed, that a knock on the door is all that is required, that, for failure of the citizen to open the door, he can be punished. From these conclusions I am forced to dissent.
The Court said in Wolf v. Colorado, supra, at 338 U. S. 27 , that "The security of one's privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police -- which is at the core of the Fourth Amendment -- is basic to a free society." Now that resounding phrase is watered down to embrace only certain invasions of one's privacy. If officials come to inspect sanitary conditions, they may come without a warrant and demand entry as of right. This is a strange deletion to make from the Fourth Amendment. In some States, the health inspectors are none other than the police themselves. In some States, the presence of unsanitary conditions gives rise to criminal prosecutions. Baltimore City Code, Art. 12, §§ 112 and 119 -- the one involved in the present case -- makes the failure to abate a nuisance a misdemeanor. The knock on the door in any health inspection case may thus lay the groundwork for a criminal prosecution. The resistance of the citizen in the present case led to the imposition of a fine. If a fine may be imposed, why not a prison term?
It is said, however, that this fine is so small as to amount only to an assessment to cover the costs of the inspection. Yet if this fine can be imposed, the premises can be revisited without a warrant and repeated fines imposed. The truth is that the amount of the fine is not the measure of the right. The right is the guarantee against invasion of the home by officers without a warrant. No officer of government is authorized to penalize the citizen because he invokes his constitutional protection.
ground for a narrow reading of statutory powers in Federal Trade Comm'n v. American Tobacco Co., 264 U. S. 298 , 264 U. S. 307 . The "fishing expeditions" there condemned, id. at 264 U. S. 306 , led no more directly to possible criminal prosecutions than the knock on the door in the present case.
King's Speech at the prorogation of Parliament and upon the unpopular Peace of Paris recently (February 10, 1763) concluded. Forty-nine persons, including Wilkes, were arrested under the general warrant; and when it was ascertained that Wilkes was the author, an information for libel was filed against him on which a verdict was obtained. In suits afterward brought against the Under- Secretary of State who had issued the general warrant, Wilkes, and Dryden Leach, one of the printers arrested on suspicion, obtained verdicts for damages. When the matter came before the King's Bench in 1765, Lord Mansfield and the other three judges pronounced the general warrant illegal, declaring that 'no degree of antiquity could give sanction to a usage bad in itself.'"
And see 2 Paterson, Liberty of the Subject (1877), pp. 129-132.
This history, also recounted in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616 , 116 U. S. 625 -626, was, in the words of Mr. Justice Bradley "fresh in the memories of those who achieved our independence and established our form of government." The Fourth Amendment thus has a much wider frame of reference than mere criminal prosecutions.
law as one of the bright features of the Anglo-Saxon contributions to human progress. It was not related to crime or to suspicion of crime. It belonged to all men, not merely to criminals, real or suspected. So much is clear from any examination of history, whether slight or exhaustive. The argument made to us has not the slightest basis in history. It has no greater justification in reason. To say that a man suspected of crime has a right to protection against search of his home without a warrant, but that a man not suspected of crime has no such protection, is a fantastic absurdity."
"We emphasize that, no matter who the officer is or what his mission, a government official cannot invade a private home, unless (1) a magistrate has authorized him to do so or (2) an immediate major crisis in the performance of duty affords neither time nor opportunity to apply to a magistrate. This right of privacy is not conditioned upon the objective, the prerogative or the stature of the intruding officer. His uniform, badge, rank, and the bureau from which he operates are immaterial. It is immaterial whether he is motivated by the highest public purpose or by the lowest personal spite."
Id. at 17. And see 44 Ill.L.Rev. 845.
The well known protest of the elder Pitt against invasion of the home by the police had nothing to do with criminal proceedings.
may shake -- the wind may blow through it -- the storm may enter, the rain may enter -- but the King of England cannot enter -- all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!"
While this statement did not specifically refer to the general warrant, it was said in reference to the danger of excise officers entering private homes to levy the "Cyder Tax." 15 Hansard, Parliamentary History of England (1753-1765) p. 1307.
and whether they break through malice or revenge no man, no court, can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient."
the absence of a search warrant without a showing by those who seek exemption from the constitutional mandate that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative."
"Q. Could you not just as well have made your inspection one hour or two hours later than at the time you demanded entry?"
"A. I could not. I had two students I had to release at three o'clock. I have to be in the office at three-thirty every day to take care of my reports."
That is indeed flimsy ground for denying this homeowner the constitutional protection afforded by a search warrant.
the executive before that privacy may be invaded. History shows that all officers tend to be officious, and health inspectors, making out a case for criminal prosecution of the citizen, are no exception.
We live in an era "when politically controlled officials have grown powerful through an ever increasing series of minor infractions of civil liberties." 17 U. of Chi.L.Rev. 733, 740. One invasion of privacy by an official of government can be as oppressive as another. Health inspections are important. But they are hardly more important than the search for narcotic peddlers, rapists, kidnappers, murderers, and other criminal elements. As we have seen, searches were once in their heyday when the government was out to suppress the nonconformists. That is the true explanation of Entick v. Carrington, supra. Many today would think that the search for subversives was even more important than the search for unsanitary conditions. It would seem that the public interest in protecting privacy is equally as great in one case as in another. The fear that health inspections will suffer it constitutional safeguards are applied is strongly held by some. Like notions obtain by some law enforcement officials who take shortcuts in pursuit of criminals. The same pattern appears over and again whenever government seeks to use its compulsive force against the citizen. Legislative Committees ( Watkins v. United States, 354 U. S. 178 ; Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U. S. 234 ), one-man grand juries ( In re Oliver, 333 U. S. 257 ), fire marshals ( In re Groban, 352 U. S. 330 , 352 U. S. 337 ), police ( Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165 ; On Lee v. United States, supra, 343 U. S. 762 ; Leyra v. Denno, 347 U. S. 556 ), sometimes seek to place their requirements above the Constitution. The official's measure of his own need often does not square with the Bill of Rights.
abundant. The house was in a state of extreme decay, and in the rear of the house was a pile of "rodent feces mixed with straw and debris to approximately half a ton." This is not to suggest that a health official need show the same kind of proof to a magistrate to obtain a warrant as one must who would search for the fruits or instrumentalities of crime. Where considerations of health and safety are involved, the facts that would justify an inference of "probable cause" to make an inspection are clearly different from those that would justify such an inference where a criminal investigation has been undertaken. Experience may show the need for periodic inspections of certain facilities without a further showing of cause to believe that substandard conditions dangerous to the public are being maintained. The passage of a certain period without inspection might, of itself, be sufficient in a given situation to justify the issuance of a warrant. The test of "probable cause" required by the Fourth Amendment can take into account the nature of the search that is being sought. This is not to sanction synthetic search warrants, but to recognize that the showing of probable cause in a health case may have quite different requirements than the one required in graver situations. It can hardly be denied, unless history is ignored, that the policeman's or the inspector's knock on the door is one of these "official acts and proceedings" which Boyd v. United States, supra, 116 U. S. 624 , brought squarely within the Fourth Amendment. That being true, it seems to us plain that there is nothing in the Fourth Amendment that relieves the health inspector altogether from making an appropriate showing to a magistrate if he would enter a private dwelling without the owner's consent.
are mostly cooperative in granting entrance to inspectors. [ Footnote 2/2 ] There were 28,081 inspections in 1954; 25,021 in 1955; 35,120 in 1956; 33,573 in 1957; and 36,119 in 1958. And, in all these instances, the number of prosecutions was estimated to average one a year. Submission by the overwhelming majority of the populace indicates there is no peril to the health program. One rebel a year ( cf. Whyte, The Organization Man) is not too great a price to pay for maintaining our guarantee of civil rights in full vigor.
England -- a nation no less mindful of public health than we and keenly conscious of civil liberties -- has long proceeded on the basis that, where the citizen denies entrance to a health inspector, a search warrant is needed. Public Health Act of 1936, 26 Geo. 5 & 1 Edw. 8, c. 49, §§ 285-287; Vines v. Governors, 63 J.P. 244 (Q.B.1899); Robinson v. Corporation of Sutherland,  1 Q.B. 751; Wimbledon Urban District Counsel v. Hastings, 87 L.T.Rep. (5 N.S.) 118 (K.B.1902); Consett Urban District Council v. Crawford, (1903) 2 K.B. 183; 24 Halsbury's Laws (2d ed. 1937), p. 102, note m.
We cannot do less and still be true to the command of the Fourth Amendment, which protects even the lowliest home in the land from intrusion on the mere say-so of an official.
6 Geo. 2, c. 13 (1733); 13 & 14 Car. 2, c. 11 (1662); 15 Car. 2, c. 7 (1663); 7 & 8 Will. 3, c. 22 (1696).
We are pointed to no body of judicial opinion which purports to authorize entries into private dwellings without warrants in search of unsanitary conditions. What is developed in the Court's opinion concerning Maryland's longstanding health measures may be only a history of acquiescence or a policy of enforcement which never tested the procedure in a definitive and authoritative way. Plainly we are not faced with a situation of constitutional adjudications of long duration, where change is resisted because community patterns have been built around them.

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