Court Opinion

ID: 9449626
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:17:25.084932+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:54.953182
License: Public Domain

TUTTLE, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
With much deference to the views of my colleagues, I must dissent. I agree that the search in this case was illegal. I also agree that in deciding Mapp v. *20Ohio, supra, the Supreme Court did not give clear guidance to the trial or circuit courts which must now determine whether the relief afforded Mapp is to be made available to others in post-conviction proceedings where their trial and conviction had been finally disposed of before the Mapp decision. The choice that this Court has between giving retrospective as well as prospective effect to Mapp is a choice that has been made by two Courts of Appeal for different Circuits. The Tenth Circuit has held, in accordance with the decision of the majority here, that the Supreme Court, by implication, pointed the direction in prospective application only. See Gaitan v. United States, 317 F.2d 494. The Fourth Circuit, by an en banc opinion,1 held that Mapp must be applied retroactively, Hall v. Warden, Maryland Penitentiary, 313 F.2d 483.
Both Courts recognized that the exclusionary rule now adopted by the Supreme Court is one required by the Constitution itself. “[T]he decision in Mapp scotched all notion that only evidentiary rules were involved.” Hall v. Warden, Maryland Penitentiary, supra. In this situation I must align myself with what the majority opinion calls “the traditional Blaekstonian view,” which is “that a court does not pronounce a new law, but maintains and expounds the old one;” as contrasted with those who believe “that judges exercise a law creating function.” I find myself fully in accord with the statement from Hall v. Warden, Maryland Penitentiary.
“It must be recognized that, since Weeks and Wolf, there had been no change in the constitutional requirements of due process considered and found controlling in Mapp. If the protections are there now, were they not present when Wolf was decided and were they not present when [Linkletter] was tried, convicted and sentenced? An affirmative answer would appear to be inescapable.”
To me the most persuasive thought which leads me to conclude that the Supreme Court did not intend to restrict' Mapp to prospective application is that it did not say so. As stated by the Court in the Hall case,
“It is significant that the Supreme Court did not specifically declare the effect of its decision was to operate only in the future, as it might have done.”
With every deference to the views of my colleagues, my best judgment is that it will not do so.

. There were two dissents, but these dissents were based on differences between the members of the Court on the legality of the search itself. The dissenting judges did not reach the question of retroactive application.