Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/412/291/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 04:12:20+00:00

Document:
Held: In view of the station house detention upon probable cause, the very limited intrusion undertaken to preserve highly evanescent evidence was not violative of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Pp. 412 U. S. 293-296.
STEWART, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J., and WHITE, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. WHITE, J., filed a concurring statement, post, p. 412 U. S. 297. MARSHALL, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 412 U. S. 297. BLACKMUN, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which BURGER, C.J., joined, post, p. 412 U. S. 300. POWELL, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which BURGER, C.J., and REHNQUIST, J., joined, post, p. 412 U. S. 300. DOUGLAS, J., post, p. 412 U. S. 301, and BRENNAN, J., post, p. 412 U. S. 305, filed opinions dissenting in part.
"At the time the detectives took these scrapings they knew: "
"The bedroom in which the wife was found dead showed no signs of disturbance, which fact tended to indicate a killer known to the victim rather, than to a burglar or other stranger."
"The decedent's son, the only other person in the house that night, did not have fingernails which could have made the lacerations observed on the victim's throat."
"The defendant and his deceased wife had had a stormy marriage, and did not get along well."
"The defendant had, in fact, been at his home on the night of the murder. He left and drove back to central Oregon, claiming that he did not enter the house or see his wife. He volunteered a great deal of information without being asked, yet expressed no concern or curiosity about his wife's fate."
"Nothing is more clear than that the Fourth Amendment was meant to prevent wholesale intrusions upon the personal security of our citizenry, whether these intrusions be termed 'arrests' or 'investigatory detentions.'"
In Davis, the Court held that fingerprints obtained during the brief detention of persons seized in a police dragnet procedure, without probable cause, were inadmissible in evidence. Though the Court recognized that fingerprinting "involves none of the probing into an individual's private life and thoughts that marks an interrogation or search," id. at 394 U. S. 727, the Court held the station house detention in that case to be violative of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. "Investigatory seizures would subject unlimited numbers of innocent persons to the harassment and ignominy incident to involuntary detention," id. at 394 U. S. 726.
The inquiry does not end here, however, because Murphy was subjected to a search as well as a seizure of his person. Unlike the fingerprinting in Davis, the voice exemplar obtained in United States v. Dionisio, supra, or the handwriting exemplar obtained in United States v. Mara, 410 U. S. 19, the search of the respondent's fingernails went beyond mere "physical characteristics . . . constantly exposed to the public," United States v. Dionisio, supra, at 410 U. S. 14, and constituted the type of "severe, though brief, intrusion upon cherished personal security" that is subject to constitutional scrutiny. Terry v. Ohio, supra, at 392 U. S. 24-25.
We believe this search was constitutionally permissible under the principles of Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752. Chimel stands in a long line of cases recognizing an exception to the warrant requirement when a search is incident to a valid arrest. Id. at 395 U. S. 755-762. The basis for this exception is that, when an arrest is made, it is reasonable for a police officer to expect the arrestee to use any weapons he may have and to attempt to destroy any incriminating evidence then in his possession. Id. at 395 U. S. 762-763. The Court recognized in Chimel that the scope of a warrantless search must be commensurate with the rationale that excepts the search from the warrant requirement. [Footnote 2] Thus, a warrantless search incident to arrest, the Court held in Chimel, must be limited to the area "into which an arrestee might reach." Id. at 395 U. S. 763.
At the time Murphy was being detained at the station house, he was obviously aware of the detectives' suspicions. Though he did not have the full warning of official suspicion that a formal arrest provides, Murphy was sufficiently apprised of his suspected role in the crime to motivate him to attempt to destroy what evidence he could without attracting further attention. Testimony at trial indicated that, after he refused to consent to the taking of fingernail samples, he put his hands behind his back and appeared to rub them together. He then put his hands in his pockets, and a "metallic sound, such as keys or change rattling" was heard. The rationale of Chimel, in these circumstances, justified the police in subjecting him to the very limited search necessary to preserve the highly evanescent evidence they found under his fingernails, cf. Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S. 757.
MR. JUSTICE WHITE joins the opinion of the Court, but does not consider the issue of probable cause to have been decided here or to be foreclosed on remand to the Court of Appeals where it has never been considered.
Oregon defines arrest as "the taking of a person into custody so that he may be held to answer for a crime." Ore.Rev.Stat. § 133.210.
"our inquiry is a dual one -- whether the officer's action was justified at its inception, and whether it was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place."
392 U.S. 1, 392 U. S. 19-20.
"It is quite plain that the Fourth Amendment governs 'seizures' of the person which do not eventuate in a trip to the station house and prosecution for crime -- 'arrests' in traditional terminology. It must be recognized that, whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has 'seized' that person."
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 392 U. S. 16 (1968). See also id. at 392 U. S. 19 n. 16, 392 U. S. 26; Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 392 U. S. 67 (1968).
scrapings, I would be inclined to hold the search illegal. For, as a general principle of the law of the Fourth Amendment, the scope of a search must be strictly limited in terms of the circumstances that justify the search. See, e.g., Terry v. Ohio, supra, at 392 U. S. 19-20; Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969). When a person is detained but not arrested, the detention must be justified by particularized police interests other than a desire to initiate a criminal proceeding against the person they detain. The police therefore cannot do more than investigate the circumstances that occasion the detention. In this case, the police limited their intrusion to precisely the area that led them to restrict Murphy's freedom; he was not searched as extensively as he might have been had an arrest occurred. Indeed, in my view, the Fourth Amendment would have barred a more extensive search, for the police had no reason at all to believe that Murphy had on his person more evidence relating to the crime, or, in light of the fact that this case involved a strangulation, a weapon that he might use at the station house.
the detention. On this understanding, I join the opinion of the Court.
Thus, this case does not require us to determine whether the police were required to obtain a warrant for Murphy's arrest at the relevant time. Cf. Jones v. United States, 357 U. S. 493, 357 U. S. 499-500 (1958); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 403 U. S. 477-481 (1971).
The Court of Appeals assumed that there was probable cause to arrest, and I proceed on that assumption. I agree with MR. JUSTICE WHITE that the question of probable cause to arrest is open on remand.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS suggests that the taking of fingernail scrapings might violate the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. In my view, however, that privilege is confined to situations in which the evidence could be secured by the State only with the defendant's "affirmative cooperation," United States v. Dionisio, 410 U. S. 1, 410 U. S. 31 (1973) (MARSHALL, J., dissenting).
In this case, the District Court and the Court of Appeals entertained a habeas corpus attack upon a state court conviction on the ground that the evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment had been wrongly admitted at the state trial. For the reasons set forth in my concurring opinion in Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, ante p. 412 U. S. 250, I think a claim such as this is properly available in federal habeas corpus only to the extent of ascertaining whether the prisoner was afforded a fair opportunity to raise and have adjudicated the question in state courts. The Court today, however, reaches the merits of the respondent's Fourth Amendment claim, and, on the merits, I join the Court's opinion.
I agree with the Court that exigent circumstances existed making it likely that the fingernail scrapings of suspect Murphy might vanish if he were free to move about. The police would therefore have been justified in detaining him while a search warrant was sought from a magistrate. None was sought, and the Court now holds there was probable cause to search or arrest, making a warrant unnecessary.
The question is clouded in my mind because the police did not arrest Murphy until a month later. It is a case not covered by Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752, on which the Court relies, for, in Chimel, an arrest had been made.
As the Court states, Oregon defines arrest as "the taking of a person into custody so that he may be held to answer for a crime." Ore.Rev.Stat. § 133.210. No such arrest was made until a month after Murphy's fingernails were scraped. As we stated in Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 333 U. S. 15 n. 5, "State law determines the validity of arrests without warrant." The case is therefore on all fours with Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U. S. 721, where a suspect was detained for the sole purpose of obtaining fingerprints, but, at the time, the police were not detaining him to charge him with the crime. Like the seizure in this case, Davis involved an investigative seizure. In Davis, at 394 U. S. 727, as in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 392 U. S. 19, the Court rejected the view that the Fourth Amendment does not limit police conduct "if the officers stop short of something called a technical arrest' or a `full-blown search.'"
as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a policeman or government enforcement agent."
In that case, the officers, smelling opium, asked for entrance, which was given. On entry, discovering that the accused was the sole occupant, the police arrested her . "Thus, the Government is obliged to justify the arrest by the search and at the same time to justify the search by the arrest. This will not do." Id. at 333 U. S. 16-17.
witness against himself. We think it is within the clear intent and meaning of those terms."
The same can be said of incriminating evidence found under a suspect's fingernails. See Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165. Moreover, the Fourth Amendment guarantees the right of the people to be secure "in their persons." Scraping a man's fingernails is an invasion of that privacy, and it is tolerable, constitutionally speaking, only if there is a warrant for a search or seizure issued by a magistrate on a showing of "probable cause" that the suspect had committed the crime. There was time to get a warrant; Murphy could have been detained while one was sought; and that detention would have preserved the perishable evidence the police sought. A suspect on the loose could get rid of it; but a suspect closely detained until a warrant is obtained plainly could not.
Our approval of the shortcut taken to avoid the Fourth and Fifth Amendments may be typical of this age. Erosions of constitutional guarantees usually start slowly, not in dramatic onsets. As stated in Boyd, "illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their first footing . . . by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure." 116 U.S. at 116 U. S. 635.
The issue of probable cause should be considered by the Court of Appeals. On the record before us and the arguments based on it, I cannot say there was "probable cause" for an arrest and for a search, since the arrest came after a month's delay. The only weight we can put in the scales to turn suspicion into probable cause is Murphy's conviction by a jury based on the illegally obtained evidence. That is but a simple way of making the end justify the means -- a principle wholly at war with our constitutionally enshrined adversary system.
* My Brother MARSHALL says that this privilege is confined to cases where the evidence can be obtained only with the defendant's cooperation. But that extends even the boundaries set by Schmerber v. California, involving forced giving of blood, 384 U. S. 757, 384 U. S. 761, with which my Brother MARSHALL disagrees. United States v. Dionisio, 410 U. S. 1.
Without effecting an arrest, and without first seeking to obtain a search warrant from a magistrate, the police decided to scrape respondent's fingernails for destructible evidence. In upholding this search, the Court engrafts another, albeit limited, exception on the warrant requirement. Before we take the serious step of legitimating even limited searches merely upon probable cause -- without a warrant or as incident to an arrest -- we ought first be certain that such probable cause in fact, existed. Here, as my Brother DOUGLAS convincingly demonstrates "[w]hether there was or was not probable cause is difficult to determine on this record." Ante at 412 U. S. 301. And, since the Court of Appeals did not consider that question, the proper course would be to remand to that court so that it might decide in the first instance whether there was probable cause to arrest or search. There is simply no need for this Court to decide, upon a disputed record and at this stage of the litigation, whether the instant search would be permissible if probable cause existed.

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