Opinion ID: 2607891
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Standing to Object to an Unreasonable Search and Seizure.

Text: The fourth amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,    Article I, section 5 of the Hawaii Constitution is similarly worded. The United States Supreme Court has held that all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is, by that same authority, inadmissible in a state court. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 1691, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961). This exclusionary rule is premised on the policy that if the police cannot use such evidence to obtain convictions, illegal police practices will be deterred. It is further supported by the policy of making the agents of the state perform their tasks within the law regardless of the lawless tactics of those they seek to bring to justice. Mapp v. Ohio, supra, at 656, 659, 81 S.Ct. 1684. At the outset the state would have us disregard the question of the constitutionality of the search and seizure, arguing that the defendant in this case has no standing to raise the objection. Relying on Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960), it argues that the defendant was on the grounds as a trespasser and had no rights. We do not agree. The state's argument confuses two very different points: they are (1) the question of standing and (2) the question of what is an unreasonable search and seizure. See State v. Matias, 51 Haw. 62, 64, 451 P.2d 257, 259 (1969). The short answer to the question of standing in this case is that the state cannot charge a person with possession and then deny that person his remedy at law to object to the search and seizure of that which the state says is his. The state cannot have it both ways. Mr. Justice Frankfurter put it aptly in Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 263-264, 80 S.Ct. 725, 732, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960): The prosecution here thus subjected the defendant to the penalties meted out to one in lawless possession while refusing him the remedies designed for one in that situation. It is not consonant with the amenities, to put it mildly, of the administration of criminal justice to sanction such squarely contradictory assertions of power by the Government. Moreover, the defendant was the victim of the search and seizure as it was directed against him. Jones, supra at 261, 80 S.Ct. 725. Thus we conclude that standing exists in this case. The more difficult problem not squarely raised by this appeal is whether the doctrine of standing, which limits the exclusionary rule, has any place in the law of Hawaii. This we do not decide today. [1]