Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/364/206
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 23:06:07+00:00

Document:
Argued: March 28 and 29, 1960.
The petitioners were indicted in the United States District Court in Oregon for the offense of intercepting and divulging telephone communications and of conspiracy to do so. 47 U.S.C. 501, 605, 47 U.S.C.A. §§ 501, 605; 18 U.S.C. 371, 18 U.S.C.A. § 371. Before trial the petitioners made a motion to suppress as evidence several tape and wire recordings and a recording machine, which had originally been seized by state law enforcement officers in the home of petitioner Clark under circumstances which, two Oregon courts had found, had rendered the search and seizure unlawful. 1 At the hearing on the motion the district judge assumed without deciding that the articles had been obtained as the result of an unreasonable search and seizure, but denied the motion to suppress because there was no evidence that any 'agent of the United States had any knowledge or information or suspicion of any kind that this search was being contemplated or was eventually made by the State officers until they read about it in the newspaper.' At the trial the articles in question were admitted in evidence against the petitioners, and they were convicted.
We granted certiorari, 361 U.S. 810, 80 S.Ct. 61, 4 L.Ed.2d 58, to consider a question of importance in the administration of federal justice. The question is this: May articles obtained as the result of an unreasonable search and seizure by state officers, without involvement of federal officers, be introduced in evidence against a defendant over his timely objection in a federal criminal trial? In a word, we re-examine here the validity of what has come to be called the silver platter doctrine. 2 For the reasons that follow we conclude that this doctrine can no longer be accepted.
'* * * If letters and private documents can thus be seized and held and used in evidence against a citizen accused of an offense, the protection of the 4th Amenment declaring his right to be secure against such searches and seizures is of no value, and, so far as those thus placed are concerned, might as well be stricken from the Constitution. The efforts of the courts and their officials to bring the guilty to punishment, praiseworthy as they are, are not to be aided by the sacrifice of those great principles established by years of endeavor and suffering which have resulted in their embodiment in the fundamental law of the land.' 232 U.S. 383, 391393, 34 S.Ct. 341, 344.
That such a rule would engender practical difficulties in an era of expanding federal criminal jurisdiction could not, perhaps, have been foreseen. In any event the difficulties soon appeared. They arose from the entirely commendable practice of state and federal agents to cooperate with each other in the investigation and detection of criminal activity. When in a federal criminal prosecution evidence which had been illegally seized by state officers was sought to be introduced, the question inevitably arose whether there had been such participation by federal agents in the search and seizure as to make applicable the exclusionary rule of Weeks. See Flagg v. United States, 2 Cir., 233 F. 481, 483; United States v. Slusser, D.C., 270 F. 818, 820; United States v. Falloco, D.C., 277 F. 75, 82; Legman v. United States, 3 Cir., 295 F. 474, 476478; Marron v. United States, 9 Cir., 8 F.2d 251, 259; United States v. Brown, D.C., 8 F.2d 630, 631.
Then came Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 93 L.Ed. 1782. With the ultimate determination in Wolfthat the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not itself require state courts to adopt the exclusionary rule with respect to evidence illegally seized by state agentswe are not here directly concerned. But nothing could be of greater relevance to the present inquiry than the underlying constitutional doctrine which Wolf established. For there it was unequivocally determined by a unanimous Court that the Federal Constitution, by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures by state officers. 'The security of one's privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police * * * is * * * implicit in 'the concept of ordered liberty' and as such enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause.' 338 U.S. 25, 2728, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 1361. The Court has subsequently found frequent occasion to reiterate this statement from Wolf. See Stefanelli v. Minard, 342 U.S. 117, 119, 72 S.Ct. 118, 119, 96 L.Ed. 138; Irvine v. People of State of California, 347 U.S. 128, 132, 74 S.Ct. 381, 382, 98 L.Ed. 561; Frank v. State of Maryland, 359 U.S. 360, 362 -363, 79 S.Ct. 804, 807, 3 L.Ed.2d 877.
The foundation upon which the admissibility of state-seized evidence in a federal trial originally restedthat unreasonable state searches did not violate the Federal Constitutionthus disappeared in 1949. This removal of the doctrinal underpinning for the admissibility rule has apparently escaped the attention of most of the federal courts, which have continued to approve the admission of evidence illegally seized by state officers without so much as even discussing the impact of Wolf. 6 Only two of the courts of appeals which have adhered to the admissibility rule appear to have recognized that Wolf casts doubt upon its continuing validity. Jones v. United States, 8 Cir., 217 F.2d 381; United States v. Benanti, 2 Cir., 244 F.2d 389, reversed on other grounds, 355 U.S. 96, 78 S.Ct. 155, 2 L.Ed.2d 126. Cf. Kendall v. United States, 5 Cir., 272 F.2d 163, 165. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has been alone in squarely holding 'that the Weeks and the Wolf decisions, considered together, make all evidence obtained by unconstitutional search and seizure unacceptable in federal courts.' Hanna v. United States, 104 U.S.App.D.C. 205, 209, 260 F.2d 723, 727.
If resolution of the issue were to be dictated solely by principles of logic, it is clear what our decision would have to be. For surely no distinction can logically be drawn between evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment and that obtained in violation of the Fourteenth. The Constitution is flouted equally in either case. To the victim it matters not whether his constitutional right has been invaded by a federal agent or by a state officer. 7 It would be a curiously ambivalent rule that would require the courts of the United States to differentiate between unconstitutionally seized evidence upon so arbitrary a basis. Such a distinction indeed would appear to reflect an indefensibly selective evaluation of the provisions of the Constitution. Moreover, it would seem logically impossible to justify a policy that would bar from a federal trial what state officers had obtained in violation of a federal statute, yet would admit that which they had seized in violation of the Constitution itself. Cf. Benanti v. United States, 355 U.S. 96, 78 S.Ct. 155, 2 L.Ed.2d 126.
The exclusionary rule has for decades been the subject of ardent controversy. The arguments of its antagonists and of its proponents have been so many times marshalled as to require no lengthy elaboration here. Most of what has been said in opposition to the rule was distilled in a single Cardozo sentence'The criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.' People v. Defore, 242 N.Y. 13, 21, 150 N.E. 585, 587. The same point was made at somewhat greater length in the often quoted words of Professor Wigmore: 'Titus, you have been found guilty of conducting a lottery; Flavius, you have confessedly violated the constitution. Titus ought to suffer imprisonment for crime, and Flavius for contempt. But no! We shall let you both go free. We shall not punish Flavius directly, but shall do so by reversing Titus' conviction. This is our way of teaching people like Flavius to behave, and of teaching people like Titus to behave, and incidentally of securing respect for the Constitution. Our way of upholding the Constitution is not to strike at the man who breaks it, but to let off somebody else who broke something else.' 8 Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed. 1940), § 2184.
But pragmatic evidence of a sort is not wanting. The federal courts themselves have operated under the exclusionary rule of Weeks for almost half a century; yet it has not been suggested either that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has thereby been rendered ineffective, or that the administration of criminal justice in the federal courts has thereby been disrupted. 8 Moreover, the experience of the states is impressive. Not more than half the states continue totally to adhere to the rule that evidence is freely admissible no matter how it was obtained. 9 Most of the others have adopted the exclusionary rule in its entirety; the rest have adopted it in part. 10 The movement towards the rule of exclusion has been halting but seemingly inexorable. 11 Since the Wolf decision one state has switched its position in that direction by legislation, 12 and two others by judicial decision. 13 Another state, uncommitted, until 1955, in that year adopted the rule of exclusion. 14 Significantly, most of the exclusionary states which have had to consider the issue have held that evidence obtained by federal officers in a search and seizure unlawful under the Fourth Amendment must be suppressed in a prosecution in the state courts. State v. Arregui, 44 Idaho 43, 254 P. 788, 52 A.L.R. 463; Walters v. Commonwealth, 199 Ky. 182, 250 S.W. 839; Little v. State, 171 Miss. 818, 159 So. 103; State v. Rebasti, 306 Mo. 336, 267 S.W. 858; State v. Hiteshew, 42 Wyo. 147, 292 P. 2; see Ramirez v. State, 123 Tex.Cr.R. 254, 58 S.W.2d 829. Compare Rea v. United States, 350 U.S. 214, 76 S.Ct. 292, 100 L.Ed. 233.
The experience in California has been most illuminating. In 1955 the Supreme Court of that State resolutely turned its back on many years of precedent and adopted the exclusionary rule. People v. Cahan, 44 Cal.2d 434, 282 P.2d 905, 50 A.L.R.2d 513. 'We have been compelled to reach that conclusion because other remedies have completely failed to secure compliance with the constitutional provisions on the part of police officers with the attendant result that the courts under the old rule have been constantly required to participate in, and in effect condone, the lawless activities of law enforcement officers. * * * Experience has demonstrated, however, that neither administrative, criminal nor civil remedies are effective in suppressing lawless searches and seizures. The innocent suffer with the guilty, and we cannot close our eyes to the effect the rule we adopt will have on the rights of those not before the court.' 44 Cal.2d 434, at page 445, 447, 282 P.2d 905, at pages 911912, 913.
Impressive as is this experience of individual states, even more is to be said for adoption of the exclusionary rule in the particular context here presenteda context which brings into focus considerations of federalism. The very essence of a healthy federalism depends upon the avoidance of needless conflict between state and federal courts. Yet when a federal court sitting in an exclusionary state admits evidence lawlessly seized by state agents, it not only frustrates state policy, but frustrates that policy in a particularly inappropriate and ironic way. For by admitting the unlawfully seized evidence the federal court serves to defeat the state's effort to assure obedience to the Federal Constitution. In states which have not adopted the exclusionary rule, on the other hand, it would work no conflict with local policy for a federal court to decline to receive evidence unlawfully seized by state officers. The question with which we deal today affects not at all the freedom of the states to develop and apply their own sanctions in their own way. Cf. Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 93 L.Ed. 1782.
For these reasons we hold that evidence obtained by state officers during a search which, if conducted by federal officers, would have violated the defendant's immunity from unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment is inadmissible over the defendant's timely objection in a federal criminal trial. 16 In determining whether there has been an unreasonable search and seizure by state officers, a federal court must make an independent inquiry, whether or not there has been such an inquiry by a state court, and irrespective of how any such inquiry may have turned out. The test is one of federal law, neither enlarged by what one state court may have countenanced, nor diminished by what another may have colorably suppressed.
TABLE I.Admissibility, in state courts, of evidence illegally seized by state officers.
excludable excludable TABLE I.Admissibility, in state courts, of evidence illegally seized by state officers.
Undecided--20. Undecided--1. Undecided--0. TABLE II.Representative cases by state, considering the admissibility of evidence illegally seized by state officers.
Of course our law, and particularly our procedural law, does not stick fast in the past. (Speaking wholly for myself, there is indeed an appropriate basis derived from the nature of our federalismwhich I shall later set forthfor modification in the circumstances of the present cases of the rule admitting state-seized evidence, regardless of the way in which it was seized.) But when a rule of law has the history and the intrinsic authority of the rule overturned today, when it has been for so long a part of the administration of justice in the federal courts, a change, when not constitutionally compelled as the present change concededly is not, must justify itself either by the demands of new experience undermining the justification of the established rule or by new insight into the undesirable consequences of the old rule. The rule the Court newly promulgates today draws upon neither of these justifications and is not supported by any of this Court's previous decisions, while raising serious difficulties in its application, including undue conflict with state law and with state courts.
The Court finds such a significant development, destroying in its view the 'foundations,' the 'doctrine underpinning' of the express and authoritative limitation of the Weeks exclusionary rule to cases of federal violations, in what was said in 1949 in Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 2728, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 1361, 93 L.Ed. 1782, recognizing that '(t)he 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. It is therefore implicit in 'the concept of ordered liberty' and as such enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause.' The Court asserts that there is no longer any logic in restricting the application of the Weeks exclusionary rule to the fruits of federal seizures, for Wolf recognizes that state seizures may also encroach on interests protected by the Federal Constitution. The rule which the Court announces on the basis of this analysis is that there is to be excluded from federal prosecutions all evidence seized by state officers 'during a search which, if conducted by federal officers, would have violated the defendant's immunity from unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment.' As the Court's rule only purports to exclude evidence seized by state officers in violation of the Constitution, it is plain that the Court assumes for the purposes of these cases that, as a consequence of Wolf, precisely the same rules are applicable in determining whether the conduct of state officials violates the Constitution as are applicable in determining whether the conduct of federal officials does so, and precisely the same exclusionary remedy is deemed appropriate for one behavior as for the other.
Thus, I do not understand how Wolf v. Colorado, which is the only case relied upon by the Court as authority for its innovation, furnishes support for the Court's new rule of evidence. It seems to me to do the opposite. Nor can the Court's new rule be justified as an effective means for controlling state officers. Neither do I think the Court's adoption of an exclusionary rule in the present cases finds justification, as the Court suggests, in light of any universal recognition of the need of excluding evidence such as is involved in these cases in order to assure the wise and effective administration of criminal justice. It cannot be denied that the appropriateness of barring relevant evidence as a means for regulating police conduct has not been unquestioned even by those most zealous for honest law enforcement, and it certainly has not gone unquestioned as outweighing the interest of society in bringing criminals to justice. See, e.g., People v. Defore, 242 N.Y. 13, 21, 150 N.E. 585, 587588; 8 Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed. 1940), § 2184. And I regret to say that I do not find evidence that the movement towards adoption of the rule of exclusion has been, as we are told, 'seemingly inexorable.' On the contrary, what impresses me is the obduracy of high-minded state courts, like that of New York under the leadership of Judge Cardozo, in refusing to adopt the federal rule of exclusion. Indeed, this impressive insistence of States not to follow the Weeks exclusionary rule was the controlling consideration of the decision in Wolf not to read it into the requirement of 'due process' under the Fourteenth Amendment. As the material the Court has collected shows, fully half the States have refused to adhere to our Weeks rule, nearly fifty years after this Court has deemed it appropriate for the federal administration of criminal justice.
Whatever difficulties of application there may be in the present ruleand the opinions of those who have had to apply it do not indicate that they are significantthey surely cannot lead us to exchange a tried and settled principle for the Court's new doctrine. For that doctrine, although the Court purports to be guided by the practical consequences of rules of evidence in this area and by considerations of comity between federal and state courts and policies, not only raises new and far greater difficulties than did the old rule, but is also pregnant with new disharmonies between federal and state authorities and between federal and state courts.
I would agree wholly with my Brothers CLARK, HARLAN and WHITTAKER, who join me in the reasons for dissenting from the Court's decision, that the judgments should be affirmed if, like them, I found the only choice to be one between the Weeks-Byars doctrine and today's decision. For me, however, the course of events since the promulgation of the Weeks doctrine suggests a modification of it consonant with the thinking of Weeks and therefore not essentially departing from it. I would modify the Weeks-Byars rule to give due heed to appropriate comity between federal and state court determinations and due respect for the discretion left to the States by Wolf v. Colorado to develop and apply exclusionary rules upon their own initiative and I therefore would exclude the evidence in these cases on the basis of state decisions to suppress it. Specifically, I would recognize that about half the States have now adopted exclusionary rules although only one State had such a rule when the Weeks case was decided. It respects what was decided in Weeks regarding state-seized evidence for the federal courts now to adjust their rules of evidence to support the States which have adopted the Weeks exclusionary rule for themselves, thereby exercising the same control over state officials as Weeks found it appropriate for the federal courts to exercise over federal officials. Thus, although I find no good reason not to admit in federal courts evidence gathered by state officials in States which would admit the evidence, I would not admit such evidence in cases like the present, where state courts, enforcing their exclusionary rules, have found their officers guilty of infractions of the rules properly regulating their conduct and have suppressed the evidence. Just as Mr. Justice Holmes and Mr. Justice Brandeis in Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465, 476477 (dissenting), 41 S.Ct. 574, 576, 65 L.Ed. 1048, deemed it not seemly for a federal court to allow the Department of Justice to be the knowing beneficiary of stolen goods, so it seems to me unseemly for a federal court not to respect the determination of a state court that its own officials were guilty of wrongdoing and not to support the State's policy to prevent those officials from making use through federal prosecution of the fruits of their wrongdoing. Dealing with the generality of cases, as rules of evidence should, to let a state determination regarding the legality of the conduct of state officials determine the admissibility in a federal court of evidence gathered by them would not only avoid a retrial of identical issues in the federal court, but would also avoid the unseemliness and disruption of state authority involved in having a federal court decide that a search was legal, as it might well do when the federal constitutional standards are narrower than state standards, after a state court has adjudged the search illegal.
The 'silver platter' label stems from a phrase first turned in the prevailing opinion in Lustig v. United States, 338 U.S. 74, 79, 69 S.Ct. 1372, 1374, 93 L.Ed. 1819. The doctrine has been the subject of much comment in legal periodicals. See, e.g., Allen, The Wolf Case: Search and Seizure, Federalism, and the Civil Liberties, 45 Ill.L.Rev. 1, 1425; Galler, The Exclusion of Illegal State Evidence in Federal Courts, 49 J.Crim.L., Criminology & Police Science, 455; Kohn, Admissibility in Federal Court of Evidence Illegally Seized by State Officers, 1959, Wash.U.L.Q. 229; Kamisar, Wolf and Lustig Ten Years Later: Illegal State Evidence in State and Federal Courts, 43 Minn.L.Rev. 1083; Parsons, State-Federal Crossfire in Search and Seizure and Self Incrimination, 42 Cornell L.Q. 346, 347368; Comment, The Benanti Case: State Wiretap Evidence and the Federal Exclusionary Rule, 57 Col.L.Rev. 1159; Comment, Judicial Control of Illegal Search and Seizure, 58 Yale L.J. 144; Notes, 51 Col.L.Rev. 128, 27 Geo.Wash.L.Rev. 392, 5 N.Y.L.F. 301, 6 U.C.L.A.Rev. 703.
See, e.g., Burford v. United States, 5 Cir., 214 F.2d 124, 125; Ford v. United States, 6 Cir., 234 F.2d 835, 837; United States v. Moses, 7 Cir., 234 F.2d 124; Williams v. United States, 9 Cir., 215 F.2d 695, 696; Gallegos v. United States, 10 Cir., 237 F.2d 694, 696697.
Long before the Court established that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the security of one's privacy against arbitrary intrusion by state officers, Mr. Justice (then Judge) Cardozo perceived a basic incongruity in a rule which excludes evidence unlawfully obtained by federal officers, but admits in the same court evidence unlawfully obtained by state agents. 'The federal rule as it stands is either too strict or too lax. A federal prosecutor may take no benefit from evidence collected through the trespass of a federal officer. * * * He does not have to be so scrupulous about evidence brought to him by others. How finely the line is drawn is seen when we recall that marshals in the service of the nation are on one side of it, and police in the service of the states on the other. The nation may keep what the servants of the states supply. * * * We must go farther or not so far. The professed object of the trespass rather than the official character of the trespasser should test the rights of government. * * * A government would be disingenuous, if, in determining the use that should be made of evidence drawn from such a source, it drew a line between them. This would be true whether they had acted in concert or apart.' People v. Defore, 242 N.Y. 13, 2223, 150 N.E. 585, 588.
'Complete protection of civil rights should be a primary concern of every officer. These rights are basic in the law and our obligation to uphold it leaves no room for any other course of action. Although the great majority in our profession have long since adopted that policy, we cannot yet be entirely proud of our record. Incidents which give justification to charges of civil rights violations by law enforcement officers still occur. * * * This state of affairs ought to be taken as a challenge to all of us. Every progressive police administrator and officer must do everything in his power to bring about such an improvement that our conduct and our record will conclusively prove each of these charges to be false.' FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, September, 1952, pp. 12.
See Appendix, 364 U.S. at pages 224225, 80 S.Ct. at page 1448.
Excerpt from letter of Governor Edmund G. Brown, then Attorney General of the State of California, to the Stanford Law Review, quoted in Note, 9 Stan.L.Rev. 515, 538 (1957). See also Barrett, Exclusion of Evidence Obtained by Illegal SearchesA Comment on People vs. Cahan, 43 Cal.L.Rev. 565, 586588 (1955).
JAFFEE, SPECIAL ADMINISTRATOR FOR ALLEN, DECEASED v. REDMOND et al. Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Robert Leon EUZIERE v. UNITED STATES.

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