Court Opinion

ID: 9658290
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:54:31.280533+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:53.391593
License: Public Domain

Beilfuss, J.
(dissenting). I cannot agree with the conclusion of the majority that the plaintiff in error’s consent was not freely and voluntarily given because of circumstances implying duress.
I deplore, as the majority does, the police methods disclosed by this record, and I agree that the search, independent of any question of consent, was unreasonable. But the question is whether the statement by the police that they had a right to search the plaintiff in error because of the arrest constitutes duress as a matter of law.
The record in this case revéals that the plaintiff in error had been previously convicted of a narcotics violation and other felonies. This fact was known to both the police and the plaintiff in error prior to any attempt to search. I am convinced that the plaintiff in error knew why the officers wanted to search him and that he probably would be prosecuted if the officers found narcotics in the search. After the officers told him they had a right to search him because of his arrest on the traffic violation he did not dispute the claimed right, protest the search, nor even remain silent although previously having had the experience of being arrested. He affirmatively consented by his statement, “Go ahead. I am clean.” Considering all the facts in the record as they pertain to the entire question of consent, I cannot find that his consent to search was given by reason of duress, actual or implied. I conclude that at the time of the search the plaintiff in error knowingly and willingly gave consent, *128if not invitation, to search his person. The fact that plaintiff in error was mistaken in his belief that he had no drug on him only reinforces the conclusion that his consent was freely given. Self-serving claims of duress affecting his subjective state of 'mind, voiced only after the fruits of the search resulted in a prosecution, should be scrutinized, not preferred.
Implicit in the reasoning of the majority is the proposition, which I reject, that consent to an unreasonable search is an objective, rather than a subjective, determination. Circumstances implying duress may well increase the state’s eviden-tiary burden in establishing unequivocal consent to an otherwise unlawful search. However heavy that burden may be, in my opinion it has been met in this case. I would affirm on the ground that the plaintiff in error gave his consent to an otherwise unreasonable search.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Hallows joins in this dissent.