Court Opinion

ID: 9536926
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:09:42.522831+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:55:34.098250
License: Public Domain

TOBRINER, J.
I dissent for reasons that were well expressed by Mr. Justice Peters in his dissenting opinion in Lockridge v. Superior Court (1970) 3 Cal.3d 166, at page 171 [89 Cal.Rptr. 731, 474 P.2d 683], an opinion in which I joined. We warned there that the court had forgotten “the long and bitter lesson of history which led to the adoption, of the exclusionary rule in order to protect rights guaranteed by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.” (Lockridge v. Superior Court, supra, 3 Cal.3d at p. 172.) The majority decision, I believe, signifies a lapse of memory of those lessons which only further erodes the protection afforded all citizens against unconstitutional methods of law enforcement.
Almost 17 years ago, in People v. Cahan (1955) 44 Cal.2d 434 [282 P.2d 905, 50 A.L.R.2d 513], this court recognized that the exclusion from, our courtrooms of evidence which was the product of illegal police activity was necessary, not to vindicate the rights of lawbreakers, nor to punish the constable who had blundered, but because such a rule was the only way to enforce the constitutional rights guaranteed to the people. By removing the profit from the use of illegally obtained evidence, we furnish an incentive for law enforcement officials to respect the rights of all citizens. By weakening this rule, by restoring any profit to illegal police activity, we threaten the liberty of our citizenry, and compromise the integrity of our courts. “[A]ny process of law that sanctions the imposition of penalties upon an individual through the use of the fruits of official lawlessness tends to the destruction of the whole system of restraints on the exercise of the public force that are inherent in the ‘concept of ordered liberty.’ ” (People v. Cahan, supra, 44 Cal.2d at p. 446.)
That the conviction of defendant resulted directly from the use of the products of an illegal arrest is not, and cannot be disputed. But somehow the majority finds that this “primary taint” of illegality has been *828attenuated, so as to remove the identification from the “fruit of the poisonous tree” prohibition. (Wong Sun v. United States (1963) 371 U.S. 471, at pp. 487-488 [9 L.Ed.2d 441, at p. 455, 83 S.Ct. 407].) Exactly where we' are to find the “intervening independent act,” which is required to break the causal chain between the illegality and the product of that illegality (People v. Sesslin (1968) 68 Cal.2d 418, at p. 428 [67 Cal. Rptr. 409, 439 P.2d 321]), lies in the foggy mists of the unknown. The identification of the defendant by the victims of the robbery was made possible only by exploiting the illegality of defendant’s arrest—not “ ‘by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.’ ” (Wong Sun v. United States, supra, 371 U.S. at p. 488 [9 L.Ed.2d at p. 455].)
Indeed, the majority admit that the illegally seized photograph connected and linked defendant to the instant robbery. “It is not disputed that the identification of a photograph of defendant originally taken as a result of an illegal arrest led to his connection with the current robbery.” “The fact that a tenuous link was forged between the illegal arrest and the robbery is more clearly ‘pure happenstance’ in the case at bar than in Lockridge.” (Ante, p. 825.) How and where is the direct chain of causation between identification and illegal police action broken? Is the illegal conduct whitewashed by labelling the unlawful link “tenuous” or “happenstance”?
In this regard, the situation involved here is distinguishable from that in Lockridge. The holding in Lockridge was premised on the fact that while the illegally seized gun led to the connection of the defendant with the crime, the actual courtroom identification of the defendant was untainted by that illegality. The direct product of the illegal search in Lock-ridge—the gun—was excluded. Here.by contrast, the direct product of the illegal police arrest—the booking photo—was not only admitted as evidence at trial, but as the testimony of the victims indicated, was the basis of their identification of the defendant. There was no showing that this taint of illegality had been in any way attenuated.
Thus the Lockridge doctrine has not only been affirmed by this decision, but has been further extended to situations which strike far closer to the heart of the exclusionary rule. The majority has taken an ominous and dangerous step away from the protections afforded by Cahan and Mapp v. Ohio (1961) 367 U.S. 643 [6 L.Ed.2d 1081, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 84 A.L.R.2d 933].
Furthermore, the majority opinion can only serve to increase the hazards to innocent citizens which result from the retention and dissemination *829of police arrest records. Despite the fact that an individual has been wrongfully arrested, or later acquitted or otherwise cleared of all charges, the record of that individual’s arrest remains. While these records may often be declared “confidential,” they are in fact widely disseminated and used almost without restriction both within the criminal justice system and without.1 The harm from the retention and use of these records has been well documented: such records may subject the individual to adverse treatment by the police and the courts,2 as well as to personal anguish, harm to the individual’s reputation, and economic loss.3
The impact of this unjust use of such records will, in all likelihood, sharpen and widen in the future now that law enforcement officials stand to profit from illegal arrests. If these officials may use the direct fruits of illegal arrests in the prosecution of the individual for another offense, they will have a decided incentive to arrest anyone whom they “suspect” may be involved in illegal activity, regardless of whether that suspicion is legally sufficient for an arrest. If nothing else, the data collected in the *830illegal arrest may provide the police with a sufficient basis to convict the individual of another crime. More innocent citizens will now face illegal arrest, and with it, the resulting disabilities of a record.
I would reverse the judgment.
Peters, J., and Sullivan, J., concurred.
Appellant’s petition for a rehearing was denied April 19, 1972. Peters, J., Tobriner, J., and Sullivan, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

For discussion of the wide dissemination of arrest records, and the resulting disabilities to the individual, see T.N.G. v. Superior Court (1971) 4 Cal.3d 767, 778-779 [94 Cal.Rptr. 813, 484 P.2d 981]; Note, Retention and Dissemination of Arrest Records: Judicial Response (1971) 38 U.Chi.L.Rev. 850; Note, Discrimination on the Basis of Arrest Records (1971) 56 Cornell L.Rev. 470, 472-473; Comment, Criminal Records of Arrest and Conviction: Expungement from the General Public Access (1967) 3 Cal.Western L.Rev. 121; Comment, Guilt by Record (1965) 1 Cal.Western L.Rev. 126; Baum, Wiping Out a Criminal or Juvenile Record (1965) 40 State Bar J. 816.

For example, arrest records may be used by police in the decision of whether or not to arrest the individual at some future time, or whether to formally charge him, or by the court in considering O.R. release, setting bail, and in sentencing. (See, e.g., Russell v. United States (1968) 402 F.2d 185, 186 [131 App.D.C. 44]; Rhodes v. United States (4th Cir. 1960) 275 F.2d 78, 81-82; Note, Retention and Dissemination of Arrest Records: Judicial Response (1971) 38 U.Chi.L.Rev. 850, 855.)

An individual with an arrest record is handicapped in obtaining insurance, credit, and especially in employment opportunities. For example, a study in New York City revealed that 75 percent of employment agencies would not refer an individual with an arrest record. (Note, Retention and Dissemination of Arrest Records: Judicial Response (1971) 38 U.Chi.L.Rev. 850, 864, fn. 79.) A number of surveys of employers have yielded similar results. (See, Committee to Investigate the Effects of Police Arrest Records on Unemployment in the District of Columbia, Report (1967); Schwartz & Skolnick. Two Studies of Legal Stigma (1962) 10 Social Prob. 133, 136; Comment, Guilt by Record (1965) 1 Cal.Western L.Rev. 126.) The burden of such a handicap is borne most heavily by those in our society who can least afford to bear it: since blacks are arrested substantially more frequently than whites on “suspicion arrests” which later prove unsupportable, this arrest record disability increases the difficulties many black citizens face in obtaining employment. (See Gregory v. Litton Systems, Inc. (C.D.Cal. 1970) 316 F.Supp. 401, 403; Note, Discrimination on the Basis of Arrest Records (1971) 56 Cornell L.Rev. 470, 472-473; Comment, Arrest Records as a Racially Discriminatory Employment Criterion (1970) 6 Harv.Civ. Rights-Civ.Lib.L.Rev. 165.)