Opinion ID: 1234405
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments Require the Suppression of Unconstitutionally Seized Evidence

Text: Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961) said that the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments require the suppression of unconstitutionally seized evidence in the prosecution of a seizure-victim in a state court. Mapp held: Today we once again examine Wolf's documentation of the right to privacy free from unreasonable state intrusion, and, after its dozen years on our books, are lead by it to close the only courtroom door remaining open to evidence secured by official lawlessness and flagrant abuse of that basic right, reserved to all persons as a specific guarantee against that same unlawful conduct. We hold that all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is, by that same authority, inadmissible in a state court. Pp. 654, 655. In Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471 (1963), the Supreme Court of the United States held that unconstitutionally procured evidence, both physical and testimonial, must be suppressed in a criminal prosecution of the seizure-victim. In Brown v. Illinois, supra, (1975), the Supreme Court of the United States declined to overrule Wong Sun and held that the unconstitutionally obtained evidence in that case had to be suppressed. Mr. Justice White's concurring opinion in Brown v. Illinois was: Insofar as the court holds (1) that despite Miranda warnings the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments require the exclusion from evidence of statements obtained as the fruit of an arrest which the arresting officers knew or should have known was without probable cause and unconstitutional, and (2) that the statements obtained in this case were in this category, I am in agreement and therefore concur in the judgment. 45 LE2d 428. Reasons for the constitutional requirement of suppression of illegally obtained evidence in criminal prosecutions were well-stated by Justice Traynor of the Supreme Court of California in 1955, some six years prior to the Mapp declaration by the Supreme Court of the United States. In People v. Cahan, 44 Cal. 2d 434 (282 P2d 905) (1955), Justice Traynor said: It is contended, however, that the police do not always have a choice of securing evidence by legal means and that in many cases the criminal will escape if illegally obtained evidence cannot be used against him. This contention is not properly directed at the exclusionary rule, but at the constitutional provisions themselves. It was rejected when those provisions were adopted. In such cases had the Constitution been obeyed, the criminal could in no event be convicted. He does not go free because the constable blundered, but because the Constitutions prohibit securing the evidence against him. Their very provisions contemplate that it is preferable that some criminals go free than that the right of privacy of all the people be set at naught. P. 449. 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. When, as in the present case, the very purpose of an illegal search and seizure is to get evidence to introduce at a trial, the success of the lawless venture depends entirely on the court's lending its aid by allowing the evidence to be introduced. It is no answer to say that a distinction should be drawn between the government acting as law enforcer and the gatherer of evidence and the government acting as judge. `(N)o distinction can be taken between the government as prosecutor and the government as judge. If the existing code does not permit district attorneys to have a hand in such dirty business it does not permit the judge to allow such iniquities to succeed.' Holmes, J., dissenting in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 470 (48 SC 564, 575, 72 LE 944). Out of regard for its own dignity as an agency of justice and custodian of liberty the court should not have a hand in such `dirty business.' See, McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332, 345 (63 SC 608, 87 LE 819). P. 445.