Court Opinion

ID: 9631827
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:51:28.047532+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:32:56.037147
License: Public Domain

Finley, J.
(concurring in the result)—I agree with the majority that the first arrest was illegal; that a second arrest occurred in this case, and that the latter was lawful; consequently, I concur in the result reached by the majority. But I prefer to reach the result for reasons or on a basis not referred to by the majority. In other words, irrespective of the question of a second arrest in this case, and the question of whether it was valid and legal, the stolen wrist watch, in my judgment, should have been admitted as evidence and made available to the prosecution in proving the commission of a crime. Admittedly, this point of view calls for some reconsideration of our decision in State v. Buckley, 145 Wash. 87, 89, 258 Pac. 1030. In that case, the trial court’s suppression of evidence was upheld by this court on the ground that the evidence had been acquired in connection with an alleged illegal arrest, search and seizure. At page 89, we said:
“It is the rule of the English courts, and is the rule of the courts in a majority of the American states, that the admis*98sibility of evidence is not affected by the manner in which, the means by which, or the source from which, it is obtained. It is held that, if the evidence is otherwise pertinent to the issue, it is no valid objection to its admissibility to show that it was unlawfully or illegally obtained. See the note of Mr. Freeman to State v. Turner, 82 Kan. 787, 109 Pac. 654, 136 Am. St. 129, 135. The highest court of the land, however, has uniformly followed a contrary rule. It has said, in no uncertain language, that it is beneath the dignity of the state, and contrary to public policy, for the state to use for its own profit evidence that has been obtained in violation of law. Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616; Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383; Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385; Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298; Amos v. United States, 255 U. S. 313; Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20. We have ourselves followed the Federal rule. State v. Gibbons, 118 Wash. 171, 203 Pac. 390; State v. Dersiy, 121 Wash. 455, 209 Pac. 837; State v. Smathers, 121 Wash. 472, 209 Pac. 839.”
While the Federal rule, as announced in Weeks v. United# States, supra, and applied in the United States courts, does not permit the admission of evidence or even the use of information acquired in connection with an illegal arrest or search and seizure, and while we have adopted the Federal rule substantially in this state by our decision in State v. Buckley, supra, it is quite apparent that the authorities generally are not in agreement on this problem.
5 Jones Commentaries on Evidence (2d ed.) 3875, § 2079, supports the Weeks case or Federal rule, i.e., the exclusionary doctrine. 8 Wigmore on Evidence (3rd ed.) 31, § 2184, takes the opposite view. Wigmore characterizes the adoption by numerous jurisdictions of the “heretical influence of Weeks v. United States,” as a “contagion of sentimentality in some of the State Courts, inducing them to break loose from long-settled fundamentals.”
There is much to be said for the viewpoint of those authorities favoring the rule of exclusion or nonuse of evidence or information acquired through illegal arrest or search and seizure. This is particularly true in view of the facts, (1) that the exclusionary principle has been predicated upon the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the United States Con-*99stitution, and (2) that those amendments were the outgrowth of widespread English colonial abuses of authority-involving compulsory testimony and arrest, search, and seizure, without warrant. The protection of individuals from illegal arrest, search, and seizure ostensibly is the principal purpose, or rationale, of the rule—and this is laudable; but realistically, there is much to be said for some reasonable modification or exception of the Weeks case doctrine as established in our state by the Buckley case.
Civil actions for damages, for false arrest and trespass are real possibilities in such situations. In addition to such civil actions is Rem. Rev. Stat., § 2240-1 [P.P.C. § 139-5]:
“It shall be unlawful for any policeman or other peace officer to enter and search any private dwelling-house or place of residence without the authority of a search-warrant issued upon a complaint as by law provided.”
and Rem. Rev. Stat., § 2240-2 [P.P.C. § 139-7]:
“Any policeman or other peace officer violating the provisions of this act shall be guilty of a gross misdemeanor.”
The foregoing statutes constitute significant restraints upon law-enforcement officers. They afford protection and recoupment to deserving individuals who are injured or victimized by officers, perhaps too zealously and not too cautiously engaged in law enforcement activities. The exclusionary or nonuse doctrine may occasion some dubious or vague general restraint or caution on the part of the more sensitive police officers. It certainly provides little protection, and no adjustment of damages, to particular individuals in specific cases when there has been an unlawful arrest, search or seizure. The damages, the unlawful acts, have already occurred. Any innocent persons damaged must still resort to civil action or criminal complaint for positive redress against the overzealous officers. It certainly seems to me that the exclusionary nonuse doctrine definitely is to be criticized because, as in State v. Buckley, supra, it often and unreasonably may obstruct prosecution and confer immunity upon undeserving law violators. It is perhaps the latter who today benefit most from the rule, rather than innocent *100citizens, put upon, insulted and assaulted by hard-driving, short-cutting sheriffs and their posse men.
Why should criminal offenders, who would be unable successfully (1) to maintain a suit for civil damages, or (2) to press a criminal complaint against allegedly overzealous officers, nevertheless, be given immunities and assisted in avoiding prosecution for their misdeeds by applying the Weeks case, nonadmissibility-of-evidence doctrine? It seems to me a strange anomaly of the law, and an erroneous and unnecessary one, that the illegal—or at least the unexplained—possession of stolen property should be accorded such constitutional protection. If further protections are desirable against unlawful arrest, search, and seizure, they can and should be provided legislatively rather than through a somewhat emotional, shot-gun application of a rule of evidence which misses the bull’s-eye, the specific aim or purpose of the rule—that is, the protection of the innocent, law-abiding citizen—about as often as it hits it. Legislation, on the other hand, could be pin-pointed and directed precisely at specific protection for innocent persons who are victimized by law enforcement officers. Among other things, (a) criminal penalties, and (b) the amount of civil damages recoverable, could be increased significantly. The legislature in a variety of ways could facilitate recovery of civil damages and provide any needed additional protection for innocent victims of unlawful arrest, search and seizure.
In order that the criticism of State v. Buckley, supra, as suggested herein, may be fully evaluated, the facts of that case are outlined as follows:
A room in an apartment house had been burglarized. The police were called. They investigated promptly. Upon learning that earlier in the night the occupants of another room in the apartment house had been making considerable noise, the officers knocked on that door. It was then opened by some one from within. Without waiting for an engraved invitation, the officers pushed their way inside. Even then, they may have overlooked introducing themselves, and whether they had ever met any of the roomers socially is *101not apparent. Mr. Buckley, the defendant, was in bed. The time of day is perhaps immaterial. A search was made. A wrist watch, stolen from the other room of the apartment house, was found in the pockets of defendant’s trousers. It was no doubt a great surprise to him and undoubtedly shocked his erstwhile roommates, and perhaps the officers as well; but nevertheless, there was the stolen wrist watch. A missing purse containing currency was found in a pillow on which the defendant was sleeping,—probably at the time quite blissfully, since he was yet unaware of any threatened violation of his constitutional rights, both state and Federal. Whether things were so blissful after the officers’ abrupt and allegedly “ungenteel” entrance is another matter, entirely. The defendant was arrested. Later in the day the still curious, busy-body officers found a stolen travelers check,—and again, of all places, in the defendant’s room. The wrist watch, the currency, and the travelers check were admitted as state’s evidence. Thereafter, apparently convinced by argument and authorities cited by defense counsel, the trial court granted a new trial in the belief that it was error to have admitted the wrist watch and currency. On appeal, we adverted to the Weeks case and the exclusionary doctrine, and affirmed the granting of a new trial.
In view of the foregoing facts in the Buckley case, it would seem to me not to be too far-fetched or insensitive of the intent of our founding fathers to conclude that judicial recognition of Mr. Buckley’s claim of violated constitutional rights amounted to a yielding to “a contagion of sentimentality,” as suggested by Wigmore on Evidence, supra.
Mr. Buckley’s situation and his contentions closely approximate those of the appellant in the case at bar. Constitutional protections regarding the stolen personal property, in my opinion, would be inappropriate and unsound. In accordance with the views expressed hereinabove, I think the stolen watch indigenous to the present case was admissible as evidence, irrespective of the validity of the second arrest. For this reason particularly, I concur in the result reached by the majority.