Opinion ID: 2111932
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: suppression of financial records

Text: In concluding that the bank records should be suppressed, the justice premised that result on the assumption that the search and seizure of a Defendant's records from his bank must be accomplished by the use of appropriate legal process. Since the State had failed to present evidence to the court at the hearing  that legal process was used, the justice ordered the evidence suppressed, citing as ultimate authority United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 96 S.Ct. 1619, 48 L.Ed.2d 71 (1976) and Burrows v. Superior Court of San Bernardino County, 13 Cal.3d 238, 118 Cal.Rptr. 166, 529 P.2d 590 (1974). [2] Miller, construing the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, flatly holds that a bank depositor has no interest protected by that constitutional amendment that would entitle him to challenge the method by which information revealed by his bank transactions was obtained. In short, The depositor takes the risk, in revealing his affairs to another [e. g., a bank employee], that the information will be conveyed by that person to the Government. 425 U.S. at 443, 96 S.Ct. at 1624. Lest it be argued that the legal rule espoused in Miller should be reviewed as no longer viable, we note its recent citation with approval in Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 2581, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979). Defendant argues, however, that the right of privacy secured by Article I, Section 5 [3] of the Constitution of Maine mandates the suppression of bank records obtained by the State without legal process. It has been the consistent position of this court not to adopt an exclusionary rule pursuant to our Constitution when the United States Supreme Court has not applied such a rule to the states under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. See, e. g., State v. Foisy, Me., 384 A.2d 42, 44 n.2 (1978); State v. Stone, Me., 294 A.2d 683, 693 n.15 (1972); State v. Hawkins, Me., 261 A.2d 255, 258 n.3 (1970). We see no reason to depart from this established policy. [4] Since Mrs. Fredette had no expectation of privacy in her bank records that was constitutionally protected, their revelation to police agencies, whether by subpoena or otherwise, cannot be suppressed. Thus, the presence, or absence, in the record of the hearing below of legal process, defective or otherwise, becomes an improper basis for the suppression of those records. The justice below erroneously ordered the suppression of the defendant's bank records.