Court Opinion

ID: 9578717
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:47:47.397632+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:29:26.263941
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE QUINN
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
*441The charges of aggravated motor vehicle theft, section 18-4-409, C.R.S. 1973 (1979 Supp.), and theft by receiving, section 18-4-410, C.R.S. 1973 (1978 Repl. Vol. 8), are clearly possessory in nature, requiring as an essential element the possession of the motor vehicle. The defendant filed a motion to suppress a temporary motor vehicle license plate seized by police officers from inside the vehicle in the course of a warrant-less search. Several hours before the search the officers observed the vehicle unoccupied and parked in a parking lot at Mile-Hi Stadium in Denver. They determined that the vehicle was stolen and proceeded to disable it by releasing the hood latch and pulling spark-plug wires from the engine. They closely watched the vehicle for several hours. The defendant, who was attending a hockey game in the vicinity, eventually returned to the vehicle and entered it. He was immediately placed under arrest. The officers then searched the vehicle and seized the challenged evidence from the back-seat area.
In ruling on the defendant’s motion to suppress, the trial court concluded initially that the defendant had standing on the basis of the posses-sory nature of the offenses. The district attorney requested a continuance of the hearing in order to provide additional legal authorities to the court. The court expressed its concern over the issue of standing and accommodated the district attorney. During the course of further legal argument the defendant offered into evidence an affidavit stating that he came into possession of the vehicle in December 1978, three months before the search, and at no time did he know that it was stolen. The affidavit was admitted without objection. After extensive arguments the court again ruled that the defendant had standing. The court granted the motion to suppress on the ground that the officers had disabled the vehicle and had it under their close observation for three hours and, accordingly, a search warrant was constitutionally required under these circumstances. See e.g., People v. Bannister, 199 Colo. 281, 607 P.2d 987 (1980). The People contest only the court’s ruling on standing.
I dissent from the majority for two reasons: (1) the majority, in adhering to the United States Supreme Court’s holding in United States v. Salvucci, 448 U.S. 83, 100 S.Ct. 2547, 65 L.Ed.2d 619 (1980), unduly expands the prosecution’s right to use the defendant’s suppression testimony for impeachment at trial in the event the defendant exercises his constitutional right to testify in his own defense; and (2) the failure to accord the defendant automatic standing in this case, which involves posses-sory offenses, undercuts constitutional protections previously existing under Article II, Section 7, of the Colorado Constitution.
I.
The majority properly adheres to the holding of United States v. Salvucci, supra, as it must, in rejecting automatic standing as part of Fourth Amendment doctrine. However, the majority states that the *442defendant’s ability to establish standing at the cost of furnishing self-incriminating evidence by testifying at the suppression hearing has been eliminated by the holding of Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968). I disagree.
Simmons’ holding that the defendant’s suppression testimony may not be admitted against the defendant at trial as evidence of guilt does not afford complete protection against the self-incrimination dilemma, because Simmons does not expressly address the issue of impeachment-use of such testimony. Even Salvucci, in rejecting the automatic standing rule in possessory crimes, recognizes that impeachment-use at trial of an accused’s suppression testimony is still an open question that “more aptly relates to the proper breadth of the Simmons privilege . . . .” Thus, unless Simmons is extended to protect an accused’s suppression testimony from impeachment-use at trial, the accused is confronted with the Hobson’s choice of waiving his privilege against self-incrimination in order to assert a Fourth Amendment claim. The majority declines to address this issue.
The doctrinal trend evidenced in recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court authorizing the impeachment-use of evidence illegally obtained by law enforcement officers in violation of the accused’s constitutional rights is not dispositive of this issue. See United States v. Havens, 446 U.S. 620, 100 S.Ct. 1912, 64 L.Ed.2d 559 (1980); Oregon v. Hass, 420 U.S. 714, 95 S.Ct. 1215, 43 L.Ed.2d 570 (1975); Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 91 S.Ct. 643, 28 L.Ed.2d 1 (1971); Walder v. United States, 347 U.S. 62, 74 S.Ct. 354, 98 L.Ed. 503 (1954). These cases do not deal with testimonial evidence offered by the defendant in furtherance of a basic constitutional right. Simmons accorded such evidence great deference and regarded it “as an integral part of his Fourth Amendment exclusion claim”:
“It seems obvious that a defendant who knows that his testimony may be admissible against him at trial will sometimes be deterred from presenting the testimonial proof necessary to assert a Fourth Amendment claim. The likelihood of inhibition is greatest when the testimony is known to be admissible regardless of the outcome of the motion to suppress .... Since search-and-seizure claims depend heavily upon their individual facts, and since the law of search and seizure is in a state of flux, the incidence of such marginal cases cannot be said to be negligible. In such circumstances, a defendant with a substantial claim for the exclusion of evidence may conclude that the admission of the evidence, together with the Government’s proof linking it to him, is preferable to risking the admission of his own testimony connecting himself with the seized evidence.”
“In these circumstances, we find it intolerable that one constitutional right should have to be surrendered in order to assert another. We therefore hold that when a defendant testifies in support of a motion to suppress *443evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds, his testimony may not thereafter be admitted against him at trial on the issue of guilt unless he makes no objection.” 390 U.S. at 392-94, 88-S.Ct. at 975-76, 19 L.Ed.2d at 1258-59.
While I agree with the principle that the defendant’s right to assert a Fourth Amendment violation does not include the right to commit perjury, e.g., Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 91 S.Ct. 643, 28 L.Ed.2d 1 (1971), the imposition of a sanction in the form of unconditional use of such testimony for impeachment purposes at trial can have no effect other than the discouragement of legitimate assertions of constitutional claims. The interest of the state in deterring perjury and the interest of the defendant in asserting his Fourth Amendment claim can be accommodated by requiring the prosecution, as a condition precedent to trial-use of the defendant’s suppression testimony, to establish to the satisfaction of the trial court that: (1) the defendant gave a statement at the suppression hearing that is contrary to a matter about which he testified at trial; (2) the statement is material to the issues of the case; and (3) either the statement at the suppression hearing or the testimony at trial is false. This showing by the prosecution should be made in camera before there is any reference to the defendant’s prior testimony in front of the jury. The prosecution, in other words, should not be permitted to engage in a far ranging cross-examination before the jury in an effort to import secondary and tertiary issues into the case and thereby create a foundation for impeachment-use of the defendant’s suppression testimony. See Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 46 S.Ct. 4, 70 L.Ed. 145 (1925).
Unless such restrictions are imposed on the use at trial of defendant’s suppression testimony, his exercise of constitutional rights is skewed on two counts. First, his assertion of a Fourth Amendment claim will require him to risk furnishing evidence to the government for virtually unrestricted impeachment-use against him at trial and to that extent will encumber his constitutional right to testify in his own defense. Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 95 S.Ct. 2525, 45 L.Ed.2d 562 (1975); Brooks v. Tennessee, 406 U.S. 605, 92 S.Ct. 1891, 32 L.Ed.2d 358 (1972); Ferguson v. Georgia, 365 U.S. 570, 81 S.Ct. 756, 5 L.Ed.2d 783 (1961). Second, his election to keep open an unimpaired option to testify in his own defense at trial will incline him to forego a full and effective assertion of Fourth Amendment rights. Simmons v. United States, supra. In either instance, it is the prospect of unrestricted governmental use for impeachment purposes of the defendant’s suppression testimony that chills the exercise of basic constitutional rights by penalizing the exercise of them. United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570, 88 S.Ct. 1209, 20 L.Ed.2d 138 (1968); Simmons v. United States, supra; Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609, 85 S.Ct. 1229, 14 L.Ed.2d 106 (1965); see also C. Whitebread, Criminal Procedure, § 15.06(c) at 319-20 (1980).
*444II.
The majority scuttles the automatic standing rule in possessory offenses as part of Colorado constitutional doctrine on the ground that the vice of governmental self-contradiction has been resolved by Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978). The elimination of governmental self-contradiction, however, is but a secondary consequence of the United States Supreme Court’s holdings in Salvucci and Rakas. The primary effect of those holdings is the diminution of privacy and property rights previously available to a person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure. The diminution inevitably flows from the rejection of the automatic standing rule for possessory offenses, and the adoption of Rakas’ legitimate-expectancy-of-privacy test as the criterion for standing in those cases. The majority’s holding thus programs the development of state constitutional doctrine under Article II, Section 7, of the Colorado Constitution to the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court. With this I disagree.
In Rakas, the issue was whether an automobile passenger, who did not assert either a proprietary or possessory interest in the automobile or in the property seized therefrom, nevertheless could claim entitlement to Fourth Amendment protection as one “legitimately on the premises” under the automatic standing rule of Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960). In denying entitlement to the passenger, Rakas extracted from Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), a partial description of the scope of Fourth Amendment protection and converted that extraction into a formula of limitation. Rakas read Katz to hold that “capacity to claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment depends not upon a property right in the invaded place but upon whether the person who claims the protection of the Amendment has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place.” 439 U.S. at 143, 99 S.Ct. at 430, 58 L.Ed.2d at 401.
Privacy interests always have been central to Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. See Note, Formalism, Legal Realism, and Constitutionally Protected Privacy Under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, 90 Harv. L. Rev. 945 (1977). Katz, however, clearly recognized that Fourth Amendment protections are not necessarily coextensive with privacy interest. The teaching of Katz is that the Fourth Amendment “protects individual privacy against certain kinds of governmental intrusion, but its protections go further, and often have nothing to do with privacy at all.” 389 U.S. at 350, 88 S.Ct. at 510, 19 L.Ed.2d at 581 (emphasis added). This was also the teaching of Jones, namely, that the Fourth Amendment was designed as a “protection against official invasion of privacy and the security of property.” 362 U.S. at 261, 80 S.Ct. at 731, 4 L.Ed.2d at 702 (emphasis added).
*445To say, as the Court did in Rakas, that in all cases entitlement to Fourth Amendment protection requires a threshold demonstration of a legitimate expectation of privacy is to misunderstand the teaching of Katz. The Fourth Amendment consistently has accorded protection to certain property interests — houses, papers and effects — and, in addition, has offered protection against governmental intrusions into privacy interests emanating, not from property, but from personhood. These personal privacy interests exist independently of any property interest and, therefore, well might require a threshold showing of legitimate expectation. In fact, Charles Katz’ use of a public telephone booth to transmit words to another represents a prime example of a privacy interest existing independently of traditional categories of Fourth Amendment property interests. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. at 352, 88 S.Ct. at 511-12, 19 L.Ed.2d 582. In many cases, however, the interest of an accused in a house, an automobile, a document or a personal effect has its source in the fact that it is his or hers — that is, it originates in the accused’s possessory or proprietary interest in the property seized. The automatic standing rule helps to insulate these interests against unjustified governmental intrusions, not against legitimate intrusions.
Although ostensibly attributing diminishing importance to property considerations in its analysis of Fourth Amendment issues, the United States Supreme Court after Rakas has utilized, as it must, those very property considerations in making the initial determination whether an accused’s expectation of privacy in the property seized was legitimate. See United States v. Salvucci, supra; Rawlings v. Commonwealth, 448 U.S. 98, 100 S.Ct. 2556, 65 L.Ed.2d 633, (1980). This phenomenon of circularity is inevitable because privacy interest, while admittedly of greater depth and breadth than property interest, cannot be severed totally from property considerations without turning the Fourth Amendment topsy-turvy.
Just as the abandonment of the “legitimately on the premises” rule of Jones was a declaration of “open season” on automobiles, insofar as passengers are concerned, Rakas v. Illinois, supra (White, J., dissenting), so also the abandonment of the automatic standing rule in this case signals an “open season” on other forms of personal property that might be innocently possessed by an unknowing defendant. We now require a defendant charged with a possessory offense to establish a reasonable doubt with respect to his guilt before he even can claim entitlement to the protections of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article II, Section 7, of the Colorado Constitution. The majority formulates the following directions to the trial court upon remand:
“If the Oldsmobile had been stolen, and the defendant knew that it had been stolen, the defendant could have no expectation of privacy which the law would recognize as legitimate. See Rakas v. Illinois, supra; People *446v. Pearson, supra. On the other hand, if the Oldsmobile had not been stolen or if the defendant reasonably believed that it had not been stolen, and if the defendant reasonably believed that he had a right to use the vehicle, he would have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the vehicle.”
The logical progression of this approach leads inevitably to a per se rule that one may never claim as legitimate an expectation of privacy in any property the possession of which is prohibited, or in property which might be material evidence in a criminal proceeding.
III.
I believe that Article II, Section 7, of the Colorado Constitution contemplates greater protection for privacy interests than is presently available under Fourth Amendment doctrine. We have recognized on other occasions that the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, while entitled to respectful consideration, are not controlling on the issue of constitutional protections emanating from identical or similar provisions in the Colorado Constitution. Charnes v. Digiacomo, 200 Colo. 94, 612 P.2d 1117 (1980); Denver v. Nielson, 194 Colo. 407, 572 P.2d 484 (1977); People v. Hoinville, 191 Colo. 357, 553 P.2d 777 (1976); People v. District Court, 165 Colo. 253, 439 P.2d 741 (1968); see also, Brennan, State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights, 90 Harv. L. Rev. 489 (1977); Howard, State Courts and Constitutional Rights in the Day of the Burger Court, 62 Va. L. Rev. 873 (1976); Note, The New Federalism: Toward a Principled Interpretation of the State Constitution, 29 Stan. L. Rev. 297 (1977).
I would adhere to the automatic standing rule and continue it as part of state constitutional doctrine. The rule affords salutary protection to privacy interests by allowing an accused to assert his rights under Article II, Section 7, of the Colorado Constitution without unduly burdening his right to testify in his own defense at trial. The state’s interest in deterring perjury can be effected by allowing impeachment-use of the accused’s suppression testimony upon a demonstration that the defendant testified falsely on a material fact either at the suppression hearing or at trial.
The automatic standing rule broadens the range of constitutional protection attaching to both the privacy interests of the accused and those of society at large by removing inducements to illegitimate governmental incursions into those interests. Accommodation of the conflicting societal and personal interests in criminal proceedings by limitation of the right of privacy does not produce an incremental benefit to society when that accommodation is itself an erosion of the constitutional principle to be protected. If the rights of the accused end with those designed to preserve the reliability of the trial process and to prevent conviction of the innocent, it is difficult to imagine the purpose of the protection afforded under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article II, Section 7, of the Colorado Constitution. See Shrock & Welsh, Up From *447Calandra: The Exclusionary Rule as a Constitutional Requirement, 59 Minn. L. Rev. 251 (1974).
I would affirm the ruling of the trial court.
I am authorized to say that Justice Erickson joins me in this dissent.