Court Opinion

ID: 9644785
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:04:49.734903+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:18.300101
License: Public Domain

COMBS, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent. Few admire Cardozo more than I.1 Nevertheless, I believe the issue is more accurately stated as whether the government may violate the Constitution, and then compound the wrong by using ill-gotten evidence to in*692criminate the very victim of its trespass. Cardozo’s statement of the issue begs the question. It presumes to characterize the appellant as a “criminal,” whereas the real question is the validity of a conviction obtained not pursuant to the law of the land, but in direct contravention of it.
Section 10 of the Constitution of Kentucky contains an absolute mandate and an absolute prohibition:
[1] The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions, from unreasonable search and seizure; and
[2] no warrant shall issue to search any place or seize any person or thing, without describing them as nearly as may be, nor without probable cause supported by oath or affirmation.
(Emphasis added.) Another applicable mandate is found in Section 26: “[Everything in this Bill of Rights ... shall forever remain inviolate_” It is given in this case that all three of those directives were transgressed: the judge issued the warrant without probable cause; the police conducted a per se unreasonable search and seizure; and thus two arms of government violated the Bill of Rights. Yet we, defenders of the Constitution, and of the rights which it guarantees, hold that the victim has no redress in the criminal justice system, because the government acted in “good faith.”
First, it may be observed that the language of the Constitution is categorical, admitting of no exceptions or qualifications. While consensual searches, warrant-less searches incident to lawful arrest, and the plain view doctrine, for example, may be reckoned as constitutional because not unreasonable, a search conducted pursuant to a warrant void for want of probable cause is patently unconstitutional. As the majority points out, the Constitution does not expressly provide a remedy to an individual whose rights have been violated, which is not surprising when one considers that the Constitution intends that they shall not be violated. If we must infer a footnote to Section 10, the Constitution will much more readily accommodate one saying that evidence seized in violation of constitutionally protected rights shall be suppressed, rather than another, the majority’s, saying in effect that the Bill of Rights protects one only until his/her rights are violated in “good faith” (a curious reading of the phrase “shall forever remain inviolate”).
Our majority, while announcing independence, has nevertheless adopted in toto the view of the United States Supreme Court expressed in the decision of United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3406, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). While I do not “ignore the logic and scholarship” of the United States Supreme Court (ante at 687), neither do I doubt its fallibility, nor blink the critical eye when called to apply the Kentucky Constitution.
The major premise of Leon, and of our majority opinion, is that exclusion of unconstitutionally seized evidence is appropriate only when there is “a police error which should be punished for the purpose of deterrence.” (Ante at 687.) According to the majority, “Suppression is a ‘judicially created remedy designed to safeguard [constitutionally guaranteed] rights generally, through its deterrent effect, rather than a personal constitutional right of the party aggrieved.’ ” (Ante at 687, quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 906, 104 S.Ct. at 3412, itself quoting United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 94 S.Ct. 613, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974); emphasis mine.) It is thus acknowledged that suppression, when ordered, is a “remedy” afforded to an individual defendant “aggrieved” by an unconstitutional invasion of his rights. Yet the logic of Leon is to apply the Constitution selectively, only where the remedy can “pay its way by deterring official unlaw-lessness [sic].” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, at 257-258, 103 S.Ct. 2317, at 2342, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983), White, J., concurring. By this logic, the individual’s right, the preeminent concern of the Constitution, is relegated to the background, superseded by inquiry into the “cost to society and administration of justice” (ante at 687). Sections 10 and 26 of our Constitution become, rather than the supreme law, “technical rules relating to search warrants” (ante at 688). And official lawlessness which supposedly *693cannot be deterred is not remedied, but condoned.
The logic of this logic escapes me. I read nothing in the Constitution about “general” as opposed to “personal” rights. The Constitution unquestionably aims to guarantee the personal rights of every individual. What better way to safeguard rights generally? The Bill of Rights is less concerned with “punishing” the police than with guaranteeing an individual's security from unlawful intrusion. The focus of the Constitution is upon the right of the citizen; that right is absolute, and is not diminished because violated in “good faith.” The remedy of exclusion of unconstitutionally seized evidence goes far toward vindicating the right, and restoring the security which has been breached. Admission of the evidence, it is said, is not a second constitutional violation (ante at 687). I suggest that it is, at least, an extenuation of the initial violation, further invading the right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures. What better way to secure this individual from an unconstitutional search, once accomplished, than to limit the resulting harm? Why add injury to injury by admitting against him evidence which would not have been available absent the constitutional violation?
The “cost to society” of the exclusionary remedy, if relevant at all, is the same social cost imposed by the Constitution, which requires probable cause, not “good faith.” Sections 10 and 26 clearly intend that a person shall remain secure, even in his/her crimes, until probable cause is established. Against this legitimate cost, one might weigh the cost of today’s result, which vitiates a fundamental individual right, and erodes the Constitution.
I am further dismayed by the paradoxical view that sanctioning a search made without probable cause will promote the administration of justice, the very foundation of which is the Constitution. On a more mundane level, today’s result invites the police to seek (and obtain) warrants on less than probable cause, and invites judges to issue such warrants liberally, on the theory that probable cause doesn’t matter anymore. According to the logic of Leon, “the exclusionary rule is designed to deter police misconduct rather than to punish the errors of judges and magistrates.” Leon, supra, 468 U.S. at 916, 104 S.Ct. at 3417. I suggest that the remedy is designed to preserve constitutionally guaranteed rights against unlawful invasion by either police or judges. According to Leon, supra, at 917, 104 S.Ct. at 3417, “Judges and magistrates are not adjuncts to the law enforcement team.” I believe that they are adjuncts to the government created by the Constitution, are prohibited from issuing warrants without probable cause, and are sworn to uphold the Constitution, which guarantees freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. Judges and magistrates are sworn to protect individual rights, not to render them meaningless by admission of evidence obtained as a result of the judge’s own violation of the Constitution. Section 10 of the Constitution of Kentucky, like the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, prohibits the ancient and oppressive practice of issuing general warrants, i.e., warrants grounded on less than probable cause. See Leon, 468 U.S. at 971, 104 S.Ct. at 3451, Stevens, J., dissenting. Today we cultivate the long-dormant seed of the general warrant. Our harvest will not, I think, please the palate.
STEPHENS, C.J., and REYNOLDS, J., join in this dissenting opinion.

. "Cardozo defined the issue here as whether '[t]he criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.’” Ante at 685.