Court Opinion

ID: 9445804
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:38:26.824103+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:24.739226
License: Public Domain

CHAMBERS, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the opinion of Judge BARNES. If the only difference between Rochin’s case and this one is that Rochin was at one end of the alimentary canal and Blackford was at the other, then Judge BARNES is wrong. While Rochin was a 14th Amendment case, I am satisfied, whether a case is on the federal or state side, the Supreme Court, relying on one amendment to the Constitution or another, is not going to tolerate convictions based upon evidence obtained by abusive, “high handed” methods. When Rochin was announced I was enthusiastic about it. I still am.
But as I see it, the Supreme Court’s policy is to uphold human dignity. I cannot say that a man is devoid of dignity who, in the presence of officers about to arrest him, quickly swallows the contraband, as Rochin did.
But here it was Blackford who created, who first takes us into this disgusting sequence. He made the deposit in his body through the anal opening. The officers found incriminating real evidence on the exterior of Blackford’s body. He admitted that he had narcotics and where he had them. What the officers did was not torture or abuse. I do not say that the depraved have no rights. But I do say that to my sensibilities all of the shockingness was Blackford’s.
' Also, I am impressed with the doctor’s testimony that proper concern for the prisoner's own health required prompt removal of this foreign body.
Judge STEPHENS suggests that nature might have taken care of this problem. Should the officers have left Black-ford alone, there to destroy the evidence, or should they have left him with guards ? And, with what kind of plumbing ? Furthermore, I do not know whether nature would have evacuated within a reasonable time what Blackford had secreted.