Source: https://casetext.com/case/irvine-v-people-of-state-of-california
Timestamp: 2019-06-27 04:46:07
Document Index: 720094300

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 337', '§ 3285', '§ 3275', '§ 3276', '§ 3292', '§ 605', '§ 242', '§ 582', '§ 241', '§ 243', '§ 241', '§ 242']

Irvine v. California, 347 U.S. 128 | Casetext
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Irvinev.California
347 U.S. 128•74 S. Ct. 381•
Argued November 30, 1953. Decided February 8, 1954.
Petitioner's conviction in a California state court of offenses under the state antigambling laws was affirmed on appeal. 113 Cal.App.2d 460, 248 P.2d 502. The State Supreme Court denied a petition for hearing. This Court granted certiorari. 345 U.S. 903. Affirmed, p. 138.
This case involves constitutional questions growing out of methods employed to convict petitioner on charges of horse-race bookmaking and related offenses against the antigambling laws of California. Petitioner exhausted all avenues to relief under state procedures and then sought review here of duly raised federal issues.
Keeping premises with paraphernalia for the purpose of recording and registering bets on horse racing, receiving money and the equivalent thereof which had been or was to be wagered on horse races, and recording and registering bets on horse races.
Deering's Cal. Penal Code, 1949, §§ 337a (1), (2), (3), and (4).
We granted certiorari on a petition which tendered four questions. However, petitioner's counsel has now presented two additional questions, one concerning the application of an immunity statute of California and another attacking certain instructions given to the jury by the trial court. Neither of these was mentioned in the petition. We disapprove the practice of smuggling additional questions into a case after we grant certiorari. The issues here are fixed by the petition unless we limit the grant, as frequently we do to avoid settled, frivolous or state law questions. We do not take up the questions numbered 3 and 6 of petitioner's brief because they are improperly presented.
Upon his arrest, petitioner had on his person a federal wagering tax stamp bearing his name, home address and the date, November 5, 1951. Against objection, it and other documentary evidence from the office of the United States Collector of Internal Revenue was received to show petitioner's application for the wagering tax stamp and his return to the Collector under the federal law. These documents were made pursuant to the Federal Act imposing wagering taxes, 65 Stat. 529, 26 U.S.C. (Supp. V) § 3285 et seq., held constitutional by this Court in United States v. Kahriger, 345 U.S. 22. The claim is made that it was error as a matter of federal law to admit this evidence and also that payment of the federal tax resulted in a federal license to conduct the wagering business. This statute does not make such records or stamps confidential or privileged but, on the contrary, expressly requires the name and place of business of each such taxpayer to be made public. 53 Stat. 395, 26 U.S.C. § 3275. Petitioner's contentions are without substance or merit in view of the express provision of the statute that payment of the tax does not exempt any person from penalty or punishment by state law and does not authorize commencement or continuance of such business. 53 Stat. 395, 26 U.S.C. § 3276; 65 Stat. 531, 26 U.S.C. (Supp. V) § 3292.
Petitioner's question number 2, which challenges the State's use of "compelled evidence" obtained under the federal wagering statute, is answered in United States v. Kahriger, supra, at 32.
But the questions raised by the officers' conduct while investigating this case are serious. The police strongly suspected petitioner of illegal bookmaking but were without proof of it. On December 1, 1951, while Irvine and his wife were absent from their home, an officer arranged to have a locksmith go there and make a door key. Two days later, again in the absence of occupants, officers and a technician made entry into the home by the use of this key and installed a concealed microphone in the hall. A hole was bored in the roof of the house and wires were strung to transmit to a neighboring garage whatever sounds the microphone might pick up. Officers were posted in the garage to listen. On December 8, police again made surreptitious entry and moved the microphone, this time hiding it in the bedroom. Twenty days later, they again entered and placed the microphone in a closet, where the device remained until its purpose of enabling the officers to overhear incriminating statements was accomplished.
We should note that this is not a conventional instance of "wire tapping." Here the apparatus of the officers was not in any way connected with the telephone facilities, there was no interference with the communications system, there was no interception of any message. All that was heard through the microphone was what an eavesdropper, hidden in the hall, the bedroom, or the closet, might have heard. We do not suppose it is illegal to testify to what another person is heard to say merely because he is saying it into a telephone. We cannot sustain the contention that the conduct or reception of the evidence violated the Federal Communications Act. 48 Stat. 1103, 47 U.S.C. § 605. Cf. Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338; Goldman v. United States, 316 U.S. 129; Schwartz v. Texas, 344 U.S. 199.
But Wolf, for reasons set forth therein, declined to make the subsidiary procedural and evidentiary doctrines developed by the federal courts limitations on the states. On the contrary, it declared, "We hold, therefore, that in a prosecution in a State court for a State crime the Fourteenth Amendment does not forbid the admission of evidence obtained by an unreasonable search and seizure." 338 U.S. 25, 33. See Stefanelli v. Minard, 342 U.S. 117, 119, 122. That holding would seem to control here.
An effort is made, however, to bring this case under the sway of Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165. That case involved, among other things, an illegal search of the defendant's person. But it also presented an element totally lacking here — coercion (as the Court noted, p. 173), applied by a physical assault upon his person to compel submission to the use of a stomach pump. This was the feature which led to a result in Rochin contrary to that in Wolf. Although Rochin raised the search-and-seizure question, this Court studiously avoided it and never once mentioned the Wolf case. Obviously, it thought that illegal search and seizure alone did not call for reversal. However obnoxious are the facts in the case before us, they do not involve coercion, violence or brutality to the person, but rather a trespass to property, plus eavesdropping.
Whether to exclude illegally obtained evidence in federal trials is left largely to our discretion, for admissibility of evidence is governed "by the principles of the common law as they may be interpreted by the courts of the United States in the light of reason and experience." Fed. Rules Crim. Proc., 26. As we have pointed out, reason has led state courts to differing conclusions, but about two-thirds of them to acceptance of the illegally obtained evidence. What actual experience teaches we really do not know. Our cases evidence the fact that the federal rule of exclusion and our reversal of conviction for its violation are not sanctions which put an end to illegal search and seizure by federal officers. The rule was announced in 1914 in Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383. The extent to which the practice was curtailed, if at all, is doubtful. The lower federal courts, and even this Court, have repeatedly been constrained to enforce the rule after its violation. There is no reliable evidence known to us that inhabitants of those states which exclude the evidence suffer less from lawless searches and seizures than those of states that admit it. Even this Court has not seen fit to exclude illegally seized evidence in federal cases unless a federal officer perpetrated the wrong. Private detectives may use methods to obtain evidence not open to officers of the law. Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465; see McGuire v. United States, 273 U.S. 95, 99; cf. Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487; Lustig v. United States, 338 U.S. 74. And the lower federal courts, treating the Fourth Amendment right as personal to the one asserting it, have held that he who objects must claim some proprietary or possessory interest in that which was unlawfully searched or seized. E. g., Connolly v. Medalie, 58 F.2d 629; Steeber v. United States, 198 F.2d 615, 617. See Goldstein v. United States, 316 U.S. 114, 121; Wolf v. Colorado, supra, at 30-31. Cf. United States v. Jeffers, 342 U.S. 48.
E. g., Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385; Gouled v. United States, 255 U.S. 298; Amos v. United States, 255 U.S. 313; Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20; Byars v. United States, 273 U.S. 28; Gambino v. United States, 275 U.S. 310; GoBart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 344; United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U.S. 452; Taylor v. United States, 286 U.S. 1; Grau v. United States, 287 U.S. 124; Nathanson v. United States, 290 U.S. 41; United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581; Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10; Trupiano v. United States, 334 U.S. 699; McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451; Lustig v. United States, 338 U.S. 74; United States v. Jeffers, 342 U.S. 48. The Court has also cited the doctrine with approval in many related cases. E. g., Perlman v. United States, 247 U.S. 7; Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465; Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132; McGuire v. United States, 273 U.S. 95; Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192; Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438; Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319; Goldstein v. United States, 316 U.S. 114; McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332; Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487; Davis v. United States, 328 U.S. 582; Zap v. United States, 328 U.S. 624; Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145; United States v. Wallace Tiernan Co., 336 U.S. 793; United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56; On Lee v. United States, 343 U.S. 747. See Appendix to dissenting opinion of MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER in Harris v. United States, supra, at 175.
It appears to the writer, in which view he is supported by THE CHIEF JUSTICE, that there is no lack of remedy if an unconstitutional wrong has been done in this instance without upsetting a justifiable conviction of this common gambler. If the officials have willfully deprived a citizen of the United States of a right or privilege secured to him by the Fourteenth Amendment, that being the right to be secure in his home against unreasonable searches, as defined in Wolf v. Colorado, supra, their conduct may constitute a federal crime under 62 Stat. 696, 18 U.S.C. (Supp. III) § 242. This section provides that whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation or custom, willfully subjects any inhabitant of any state to the deprivation of any rights, privileges or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution of the United States shall be fined or imprisoned. See Williams v. United States, 341 U.S. 97; Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91. It does not appear that the statute of limitations yet bars prosecutions. 45 Stat. 51, 18 U.S.C. § 582. We believe the Clerk of this Court should be directed to forward a copy of the record in this case, together with a copy of this opinion, for attention of the Attorney General of the United States. However, MR. JUSTICE REED and MR. JUSTICE MINTON do not join in this paragraph.
Of course, we could sterilize the rule announced in Wolf by adopting a case-by-case approach to due process, in which inchoate notions of propriety concerning local police conduct guide our decisions. But this makes for such uncertainty and unpredictability that it would be impossible to foretell — other than by guesswork — just how brazen the invasion of the intimate privacies of one's home must be in order to shock itself into the protective arms of the Constitution. In truth, the practical result of this ad hoc approach is simply that when five Justices are sufficiently revolted by local police action, a conviction is overturned and a guilty man may go free. Rochin bears witness to this. We may thus vindicate the abstract principle of due process, but we do not shape the conduct of local police one whit; unpredictable reversals on dissimilar fact situations are not likely to curb the zeal of those police and prosecutors who may be intent on racking up a high percentage of successful prosecutions. I do not believe that the extension of such a vacillating course beyond the clear cases of physical coercion and brutality, such as Rochin, would serve a useful purpose.
Federal law makes it a crime punishable by fine, imprisonment, or both, for a person to run a gambling business without making a report to the Government and buying a federal wagering tax stamp, both of which reveal his gambling operations. Petitioner made the necessary report of his gambling activities in California and bought the required tax stamp. The information he gave and the stamp he bought were used in this case to convict and sentence him to prison for violating California's antigambling law. For reasons given in my dissent in United States v. Kahriger, 345 U.S. 22, 36, I believe the federal law that extracted the disclosures and required the tax stamp violates the Fifth Amendment's command that a person shall not be compelled to be a witness against himself. But even though the law is valid, as the Court held, use of such forced confessions to convict the confessors still amounts to compelling a person to testify against himself in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
I cannot agree that the Amendment's guarantee against self-incrimination testimony can be spirited away by the ingenious contrivance of using federally extorted confessions to convict of state crimes and vice versa. Licensing such easy evasion of the Amendment has proven a heavy drain on its vitality although no such debilitating interpretation was given the Amendment by this Court until it decided United States v. Murdock in 1931, one hundred and forty years after the Bill of Rights was adopted. That construction was rested on the premise that a state and the United States are so separate and foreign to one another that neither of them need protect witnesses against being forced to admit offenses against the laws of the other. This treatment of the states and the Federal Government as though they were entirely foreign to each other is wholly conceptualistic and cannot justify such a narrow interpretation of the Fifth Amendment's language and the resulting frustration of its purpose.
See my dissent in Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487, 494.
284 U.S. 141, and see United States v. The Saline Bank of Virginia, 1 Pet. 100; Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591, 606, 608; Ballmann v. Fagin, 200 U.S. 186; Vajtauer v. Commissioner of Immigration, 273 U.S. 103; United States v. Murdock, 290 U.S. 389, 396.
Reliance for this view was placed mainly on two English cases, King of the Two Sicilies v. Willcox, 7 State Trials (N.S.) 1049, and Queen v. Boyes, 1 B. S. 311. 284 U.S., at 149. See discussion of these two cases as related to the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in Grant, Immunity from Compulsory Self-Incrimination, 9 Temp. L. Q. 57-70 and 194-212, particularly 59-62 and 196-204.
The Fifth Amendment forbids the Federal Government and the agents through which it acts — courts, grand juries, prosecutors, marshals or other officers — to use physical torture, psychological pressure, threats of fines, imprisonment or prosecution, or other governmental pressure to force a person to testify against himself. And if the Federal Government does extract incriminating testimony, as the Court has held it may in compelling gamblers to confess, the immunity provided by the Amendment should at the very least prevent the use of such testimony in any court, federal or state. The use of such testimony is barred, even though the Fifth Amendment may not of itself prohibit the states or their agents from extorting incriminating testimony. The Amendment does plainly prohibit all federal agencies from using their power to force self-incriminatory statements. Consequently, since the Amendment is the supreme law of the land and is binding on all American judges, the use of federally coerced testimony to convict a person of crime in any court, state or federal, is forbidden.
The Fifth Amendment not only forbids agents of the Federal Government to compel a person to be a witness against himself; it forbids federal courts to convict persons on their own forced testimony, whatever "sovereign" — federal or state — may have compelled it. Otherwise, the constitutional mandate against self-incrimination is an illusory safeguard that collapses whenever a confession is extorted by anyone other than the Federal Government.
Though not essential to disposition of this case, it seems appropriate to add that I think the Fourteenth Amendment makes the Fifth Amendment applicable to states and that state courts like federal courts are therefore barred from convicting a person for crime on testimony which either state or federal officers have compelled him to give against himself. The construction I give to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments makes it possible for me to adhere to what we said in Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143, 155, that "The Constitution of the United States stands as a bar against the conviction of any individual in an American court by means of a coerced confession."
Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 68 (dissenting opinion); Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 174 (concurring opinion).
So far as this case is concerned it is enough for me that Irvine was convicted in a state court on a confession coerced by the Federal Government. I believe this frustrates a basic purpose of the Fifth Amendment — to free Americans from fear that federal power could be used to compel them to confess conduct or beliefs in order to take away their life, liberty or property. For this reason I would reverse Irvine's conviction.
Mere failure to have an appropriate warrant for arrest or search, without aggravating circumstances of misconduct in obtaining evidence, invalidates a federal conviction helped by such an unreasonable search and seizure. Such was the construction placed upon the Fourth Amendment by Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383. But Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, held that the rule of the Weeks case was not to be deemed part of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and hence was not binding upon the States. Still more recently, however, in Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, the Court held that "stomach pumping" to obtain morphine capsules, later used as evidence in a trial, was offensive to prevailing notions of fairness in the conduct of a prosecution and therefore invalidated a resulting conviction as contrary to the Due Process Clause.
The comprehending principle of these two cases is at the heart of "due process." The judicial enforcement of the Due Process Clause is the very antithesis of a Procrustean rule. In its first full-dress discussion of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court defined the nature of the problem as a "gradual process of judicial inclusion and exclusion, as the cases presented for decision shall require, with the reasoning on which such decisions may be founded." Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 U.S. 97, 104. The series of cases whereby, in the light of this attitude, the scope of the Due Process Clause has been unfolded is the most striking, because the liveliest, manifestation of the wide and deep areas of law in which adjudication "depends upon differences of degree. The whole law does so as soon as it is civilized." Holmes, J., concurring in LeRoy Fibre Co. v. Chicago, M. St. P. R. Co., 232 U.S. 340, 354. It is especially true of the concept of due process that between the differences of degree which that inherently undefinable concept entails "and the simple universality of the rules in the Twelve Tables or the Leges Barbarorum, there lies the culture of two thousand years." Ibid.
In holding that not all conduct which by federal law is an unreasonable search and seizure vitiates a conviction in connection with which it transpires, Wolf did not and could not decide that as long as relevant evidence adequately supports a conviction, it is immaterial how such evidence was acquired. For the exact holding of that case is defined by the question to which the opinion addressed itself: "Does a conviction by a State court for a State offense deny the `due process of law' required by the Fourteenth Amendment, solely because evidence that was admitted at the trial was obtained under circumstances which would have rendered it inadmissible in a prosecution for violation of a federal law in a court of the United States because there deemed to be an infraction of the Fourth Amendment as applied in Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383?" Thus, Wolf did not change prior applications of the requirements of due process, whereby this Court considered the whole course of events by which a conviction was obtained and was not restricted to consideration of the trustworthiness of the evidence.
Thus, the basis on which this case should be adjudicated is laid down in Rochin: "Regard for the requirements of the Due Process Clause `inescapably imposes upon this Court an exercise of judgment upon the whole course of the proceedings [resulting in a conviction] in order to ascertain whether they offend those canons of decency and fairness which express the notions of justice of English-speaking peoples even toward those charged with the most heinous offenses.'" 342 U.S., at 169, quoting from Malinski v. New York, 324 U.S. 401, at 416-417.
There was lacking here physical violence, even to the restricted extent employed in Rochin. We have here, however, a more powerful and offensive control over the Irvines' life than a single, limited physical trespass. Certainly the conduct of the police here went far beyond a bare search and seizure. The police devised means to hear every word that was said in the Irvine household for more than a month. Those affirming the conviction find that this conduct, in its entirety, is "almost incredible if it were not admitted." Surely the Court does not propose to announce a new absolute, namely, that even the most reprehensible means for securing a conviction will not taint a verdict so long as the body of the accused was not touched by State officials. Considering the progress that scientific devices are making in extracting evidence without violence or bodily harm, satisfaction of due process would depend on the astuteness and subtlety with which the police engage in offensive practices and drastically invade privacy without authority of law. In words that seem too prophetic of this case, it has been said that "[d]iscovery and invention have made it possible for the Government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet." Brandeis, J., dissenting in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 473.
The underlying reasoning of Rochin rejected the notion that States may secure a conviction by any form of skulduggery so long as it does not involve physical violence. The cases in which coercive or physical infringements of the dignity and privacy of the individual were involved were not deemed "sports in our constitutional law but applications of a general principle. They are only instances of the general requirement that States in their prosecutions respect certain decencies of civilized conduct. Due process of law, as a historic and generative principle, precludes defining, and thereby confining, these standards of conduct more precisely than to say that convictions cannot be brought about by methods that offend `a sense of justice.'" 342 U.S., at 173.
"The vague contours of the Due Process Clause do not leave judges at large. We may not draw on our merely personal and private notions and disregard the limits that bind judges in their judicial function. Even though the concept of due process of law is not final and fixed, these limits are derived from considerations that are fused in the whole nature of our judicial process. See Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process; The Growth of the Law; The Paradoxes of Legal Science. These are considerations deeply rooted in reason and in the compelling traditions of the legal profession. The Due Process Clause places upon this Court the duty of exercising a judgment, within the narrow confines of judicial power in reviewing State convictions, upon interests of society pushing in opposite directions." 342 U.S., at 170-171.
This Court has rejected the notion that because a conviction is established on incontestable proof of guilt it may stand, no matter how the proof was secured. Observance of due process has to do not with questions of guilt or innocence but the mode by which guilt is ascertained. Mere errors of law in the conduct of State trials afford no basis for relief under the Fourteenth Amendment, and a wide swath of discretion must be left to the State Courts in such matters. But when a conviction is secured by methods which offend elementary standards of justice, the victim of such methods may invoke the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment because that Amendment guarantees him a trial fundamentally fair in the sense in which that idea is incorporated in due process. If, as in Rochin, "[o]n the facts of this case the conviction of the petitioner has been obtained by methods that offend the Due Process Clause," 342 U.S., at 174, it is no answer to say that the offending policemen and prosecutors who utilize outrageous methods should be punished for their misconduct.
That the prosecution in this case, with the sanction of the courts, flouted a legislatively declared philosophy against such miscreant conduct and made it a policy merely on paper, does not make the conduct any the less a disregard of due process. Cf. Rochin v. California, supra, at 167.
What transpired here was as revolting as the abuses arising out of the writs of assistance against which James Otis complained. Otis in his speech against the writs had this to say:
I protest against this use of unconstitutional evidence. It is no answer that the man is doubtless guilty. The Bill of Rights was designed to protect every accused against practices of the police which history showed were oppressive of liberty. The guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures contained in the Fourth Amendment was one of those safeguards. In 1914 a unanimous Court decided that officers who obtained evidence in violation of that guarantee could not use it in prosecutions in the federal courts. Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383. Lawless action of the federal police, it said, "should find no sanction in the judgments of the courts . . . ." Id., p. 392.
Exclusion of evidence is indeed the only effective sanction. If the evidence can be used, no matter how lawless the search, the protection of the Fourth Amendment, to use the words of the Court in the Weeks case, "might as well be stricken from the Constitution." 232 U.S., at 393.
The suggestion that the remedy for lawless conduct by the local police is through federal prosecution under the civil rights laws relegates constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment to a lowly status. An already overburdened Department of Justice, busily engaged in law enforcement, cannot be expected to devote its energies to supervising local police activities and prosecuting police officers, except in rare and occasional instances. And the hostility which such prosecutions have received here (see Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, especially pp. 138 et seq.) hardly encourages putting the federal prosecutor on the track of state officials who take unconstitutional short cuts in enforcing state laws.
The current hostility towards federal actions — both criminal and civil — under the civil rights laws is further evidenced by United States v. Williams, 341 U.S. 70; Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U.S. 367; Collins v. Hardyman, 341 U.S. 651; Whittington v. Johnston, 201 F.2d 810, cert. denied, 346 U.S. 867; Francis v. Crafts, 203 F.2d 809, cert. denied, 346 U.S. 835.
Note: These figures from the Administrative Office include all prosecutions filed and conducted under all of the Sections of the Criminal Code which are usually called Civil Rights Sections, that is, 18 U.S.C. § 241-244. Use of §§ 243 and 244, however, has been very rare, so that most of the figures quoted involve prosecutions under either § 241 or § 242. The figures set out in the second table do not take into account such appellate reversals as may have been entered, and they include only those post-judgment motions in the district court which were disposed of before the end of the fiscal year in question.
"No citizen possessing all other qualifications which are or may be prescribed by law shall be disqualified for service as grand or petit juror in any court of the United States, or of any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude; and whoever, being an officer or other person charged with any duty in the selection or summoning of jurors, excludes or fails to summon any citizen for such cause, shall be fined not more than $5,000.