Court Opinion

ID: 9616513
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:47:26.870053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:57:29.407506
License: Public Domain

Bussey, Justice
(concurring and dissenting) :
The majority opinion correctly concludes, inter alia, that the physical evidence was seized pursuant to the Federal search warrant, the validity of which was not challenged, and that therefore, the exclusionary rule does not apply. Such being the case, the validity or invalidity of the State search warrant becomes, in my view and for the purpose of this appeal, totally immaterial. The majority opinion unnecessarily, and at great pains, I submit, undertakes to sustain the validity of the State search warrant which, to say the least, is of questionable validity.
As I have heretofore had the occasion to urge upon my bretheren, if the experience of the ages should have taught us, as appellate jurists, any truly important lessons, possibly the most important one of all might well be that we should maintain a constant vigil to, avoid wading in troubled and tumultuous waters when doing so is totally unnecessary to the decision of the cause before us. Since in my view we do not need at all to reach the issue of the validity o,r invalidity of the State warrant I venture most timorously into troubled waters, along with my brethren, but only to the limited extent of considering two quite important points which, as treated by my brethren, I submit are provocative of extreme difficulty in the future.
The majority opinion reaches the conclusion, by virtue of code section 30-203, that the City of Columbia, under Act No. 161 of the Acts and Joint Resolutions (1965), had the power to appoint multiple ministerial recorders. To, say the very least, such a holding is highly suspect, of doubtful soundness and one that should be avoided because of its effect in lulling municipalities into a false sense of security as to the power to appoint an unlimited number of ministerial recorders, inviting ultimately the appointment of some who could not meet the constitutional requirement of neutrality. Act No. 161 of the Acts of 1965 is entitled “An *572Act To Provide For The Establishment Of The Office Of Ministerial Recorder In Certain Municipalities * * Section 1 of said Act provides that,
“The mayqr and council of any municipality having a recorder’s court may establish the office of ministerial recorder and elect a ministerial recorder who shall hold office at the pleasure of the council. The salary of the ministerial recorder shall be fixed by the mayqr and councilmen of such municipality. Before entering upon the discharge of the duties of the office of ministerial recorder, the person elected shall take and prescribe to the usual oath of office.” (Emphasis added).
As desirable as it might be for the City of Columbia to have more than one ministerial recorder, I see nothing in the language of the Act to authorize more than one such recorder.
Of course, code section 30-203 dqes provide, inter alia, that “The words ‘person’ and ‘party’ and any other word importing the singular number used in any act or joint resolution shall be held to include the plural . . .” But, such is applicable qnly in “cases in which the spirit and intent of the act or joint resolution may require it.” (Emphasis added). I fail to observe anything whatever in Act No. 161 which would indicate that either the spirit or intent thereof required that the singular language used therein be construed as intending or including the plural. Stated otherwise, I see nothing in section 30-203 which would have the effect of changing the plain language of the 1965 Act.
What is particularly regrettable to me is the treatment accorded by the majority opinion to the decision of this Court in State v. York, 250 S. C. 30, 156 S. E. (2d) 326 (1967), the clear holding of that case being treated in the majority opinion here as mere dicta. There was qnly one cardinal issue decided in State v. York, to wit: that the trial judge erred in failing to exclude evidence which was *573seized pursuant to a search warrant issued upon a statutorily defective affidavit. The opinion in York of coprse, discusses various contentions of the State as to the validity of the search, but there can be no question of the fact that the court held the affidavit to be defective, the warrant invalid and that the evidence should have been excluded.
In State v. Williams, S. C., 203 S. E. (2d) 436 (1974), without objection, evidence was offered to the effect that the magistrate issuing the search warrant had before him sworn oral testimony in addition to the content of the affidavit, and the question not having been preserved below, this Court did not pass on whether the magistrate in considering the issue of probable cause for the issuance of a warrant could, or not, consider additional oral testimony concurrently offered at the time of the execution of the affidavit.
The majority opinion as written, I respectfully submit, does violence to the holding of this Court in State v. York and to the statute upon which York was predicated. Just where this leads us with respect to future cases is indeed most difficult to predict. I most respectfully suggest that the foregoing, relatively brief criticisms of the majority opinion, should convince my brethren that much thereof is totally unnecessary to the decision of this case and should be deleted because it creates more problems and solves none.