Opinion ID: 2329522
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Challenge of the Searches

Text: Appellants allege that they were denied the opportunity to litigate the validity of the searches of the subject establishment conducted by the Prince George's County Police in connection with the police investigation. [8] They base their argument on the purported applicability of the exclusionary rule to the proceedings at bar. For support, appellants rely in part on Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), where the Supreme Court made the exclusionary rule applicable to state criminal trials: Since the Fourth Amendment's right of privacy has been declared enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth, it is enforceable against them by the same sanction of exclusion as is used against the Federal Government. Id. at 655, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081. Conceding that Mapp speaks only to application of the exclusionary rule to state criminal proceedings, appellants nonetheless argue that the rule's applicability should be extended to the present proceedings. For this proposition, appellants rely on the 1965 case of One Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania, 380 U.S. 693, 85 S.Ct. 1246, 14 L.Ed.2d 170. There, the Supreme Court applied the exclusionary rule in a proceeding for forfeiture of an automobile used in violation of the criminal law. In so doing, the Court expressly relied on the fact that forfeiture is clearly a penalty for the criminal offense and [i]t would be anomalous indeed, under these circumstances, to hold that in the criminal proceeding the illegally seized evidence is excludable, while in the forfeiture proceeding, requiring the determination that the criminal law has been violated, the same evidence should be admissible. Id. at 701, 85 S.Ct. at 1251. See also Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 634, 6 S.Ct. 524, 534, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886), where a forfeiture proceeding was characterized as quasi-criminal. Thus, in effect, appellants ask us to create judicially an extension of the fourth amendment exclusionary rule by holding that evidence obtained by a law enforcement officer (here, a County detective) in good faith reliance on a purportedly defective search and seizure warrant should be inadmissible in a public nuisance action. We decline to do so. The exclusionary rule was created and has been applied primarily for the purpose of deterring police invasions of a defendant's constitutional rights by barring evidence illegally obtained from admission at the criminal trial of that defendant. See Weeks v. U.S., 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914); United States v. Janis, 428 U.S. 433, 96 S.Ct. 3021, 49 L.Ed.2d 1046 (1976). In United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 94 S.Ct. 613, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974), it was established that the exclusionary rule's prime purpose, if not its sole one, is to deter future unlawful police conduct. Calandra, 414 U.S. at 347, 94 S.Ct. at 619. See United States v. Peltier, 422 U.S. 531, 536-39, 95 S.Ct. 2313, 2317-18, 45 L.Ed.2d 374 (1975). Thus, [t]he rule is a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect, rather than a personal constitutional right of the party aggrieved. Calandra, 414 U.S. at 348, 94 S.Ct. at 620. And, Despite its broad deterrent purpose, the exclusionary rule has never been interpreted to proscribe the use of illegally seized evidence in all proceedings or against all persons. As with any remedial device, the application of the rule has been restricted to those areas where its remedial objectives are thought most efficaciously served. Ibid. The Court in Calandra noted that there is a balancing process implicit in a determination of the appropriateness of the exclusionary rule to a given situation; the potential benefits of applying the rule ( i.e., deterrence) must be balanced against the potential damage from such application. An important consideration to this process is the extent to which exclusion would deter, or non-exclusion would encourage, illegal searches and seizures. See 1 La Fave, Search and Seizure § 1.5 (1978). While the Supreme Court has never directly applied the exclusionary rule in a civil case, it ruled in Janis, supra, that evidence illegally seized by state agents in good faith and in reliance on a warrant may be used in a federal civil tax proceedings. Though the ruling cannot be said to stand for the proposition that evidence may never be excluded in a civil proceeding, it nonetheless severely undermined those cases in lower courts which applied the exclusionary rule to civil proceedings. Morale v. Grigel, 422 F. Supp. 988 (DNH 1976). [9] In Janis, the Court, in balancing the need for deterrence in inter-sovereign violations of the fourth amendment (those cases where the criminal law enforcement officer had no responsibility or duty to, or agreement with, the sovereign seeking to use the illegally obtained evidence) [10] against the societal cost of exclusion, noted In the complex and turbulent history of the rule, the Court never has applied it to exclude evidence from a civil proceeding, federal or state. Janis, 428 U.S. at 447, 96 S.Ct. at 3029. [11] Turning to the instant case, though the consequences of the County's suit may be grave, it is not a criminal proceeding and in no sense is the action vindictive or punitive. Rather, the proceedings only seek determination of whether appellants engaged in prostitution-related activities and, if so, whether those activities should be enjoined, and whether those activities were violative of certain court orders. In such a case the use in evidence of that which might be excluded in a criminal trial does not involve a constitutionally protected interest. Moreover, the additional marginal deterrence that might result from a judicially created extension of the rule here would not, in our view, outweigh the cost to society in excluding what might concededly be relevant and reliable evidence. Thus, we find that practically no deterrent effect could be anticipated by applying the rule to these proceedings. A detective who might be tempted to obtain evidence illegally for use in a criminal case may not even consider the effect of such illegality upon a proceeding to abate a public nuisance. Here, testimony at trial indicated Detective Mack's good faith reliance on the validity of the search and seizure warrants. Given this and in light of the civil nature of the proceedings before us, we conclude that the exclusionary rule is a remedy unavailable to appellants. The language of Calandra, coupled with the Court's refusal to extend the exclusionary rule to a civil proceeding in Janis, albeit upon a rationale which is not applicable in the instant case, supports this conclusion and is suggestive of that Court's intention to limit the applicability of the exclusionary rule to criminal proceedings.