Opinion ID: 4527707
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Privacy Rationale

Text: Under a privacy rationale, the exclusionary rule exists “not to deter or ensure judicial integrity, but to effectuate in the pending case the constitutional right of the accused to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.” Cardenas-Alvarez, 25 P.3d at 232 (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, as the United States Supreme Court previously stated, under a privacy rationale, the exclusionary rule is “part and parcel” of [J-40-2019] [MO: Baer, J.] - 16 a search and seizure provision’s “limitations upon [state] encroachment of individual privacy.” Mapp, 367 U.S. at 651. When state exclusionary rules have a privacy rationale, state courts uniformly have found that the law of the forum state, rather than the law of the situs state, should govern suppression. For example, the Oregon Supreme Court noted that its constitution’s “focus . . . is on protecting the individual’s rights vis-à-vis the government, not on deterring or punishing the excessive conduct of any particular governmental actor, local or otherwise.” Davis, 834 P.2d at 1012. That court was confronted with a case wherein an Oregon prosecution relied upon a search by Mississippi police in Mississippi that may have violated the Oregon Constitution. Id. at 1009-12. The court found that “there is only one place and only one way in which such rights can be vindicated, viz., in Oregon courts and by excluding from use in Oregon prosecutions any evidence obtained in a manner contrary to Oregon’s constitutional rules.” Id. at 1013.6 Similarly, the New Mexico Supreme Court has held that its constitution has a privacy rationale for the exclusionary rule. Cardenas-Alvarez, 25 P.3d at 232. CardenasAlvarez was a reverse silver platter case involving a search by federal agents at a border patrol checkpoint within New Mexico. Id. at 227. The search by the federal agents may have violated the New Mexico Constitution. Employing an exclusionary rule analysis, the New Mexico Supreme Court held that when a search violates the protections guaranteed by our state constitution, however, we will not abandon our guard of those protections in order to accommodate evidence thereby yielded. Although we do not claim the authority to constrain the activities of federal agents, we do possess the authority-and 6 The Oregon Supreme Court ultimately found that there was no violation of the Oregon Constitution, but the court chose first to determine whether the Oregon Constitution applied and only then interpret that constitution. Davis, 834 P.2d at 101113. [J-40-2019] [MO: Baer, J.] - 17 indeed the duty-to insulate our courts from evidence seized in contravention of our state's constitution. Id. at 233; accord State v. Snyder, 967 P.2d 843, 848 (N.M. Ct. App. 1998). Finally, while Hawaii employs all three rationale for its exclusionary rule, the Hawaii Supreme Court found that the privacy rights guaranteed by its exclusionary rule should “be given substantial weight when another jurisdiction’s law is involved.” Torres, 262 P.3d at 1020.7