Court Opinion

ID: 9764168
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:13:12.400861+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:57:48.783337
License: Public Domain

KERN, Associate Judge
(dissenting):
With all deference, I deem our remand to the trial court a “waste of judicial time in pursuit of a legal trivia”, Snow v. United States (D.C.Cir., No. 72-1021, April 25, 1973) (dissenting opinion by Judge Tamm). The record reflects that the trial court had before it (R. 21, 58) the transcript of the testimony of three of the six police officers who participated in the search and seizure adjudged illegal after a hearing by the United States District Court (R. 25-26). One of the remaining three officers has left both the force and the jurisdiction (R. 70-71). No proffer was ever made to the trial court during the instant libel proceeding as to the testimony of the remaining two police raiders. Under these circumstances, I see no reason now to require the trial court to undertake its own evidentiary hearing on the lawfulness of the police conduct.1
I find nothing in either the plain language or the legislative history of D.C. Code 1972 Supp, § 22-1505(c),2 relied upon by the majority, to show that the District of Columbia has the right, without alleging changed circumstances or discovery of additional evidence, to insist upon a *535rehearing before another judge in another court on the issue of the lawfulness of the action by its police officers. The majority cite Randolph v. District of Columbia, D.C.Mun.App., 156 A.2d 686 (1959), but that decision is inapposite because the application and enforcement of the Fourth Amendment was not there at issue as is the case here. See Berkowitz v. United States, 340 F.2d 168, 170-171 (1st Cir. 1965), where the court said:
But the courts have always known that, unless the language of the Amendment were to be reduced to mere rhetoric, it was imperative that when the Government violated Constitutional commands it should not be allowed to use its misconduct for its own advantage. .
What the Government is seeking in the case at bar is to put its interest in forfeiting some money which was used to commit a crime ahead of the public’s interest in keeping actions of Government agents within Constitutional boundaries. Our choice between these interests must favor the interest of constitutionality unless we are to betray our historic commitments and our living faitn.
In sum, the applicable statute permits a trial court to deny forfeiture “upon good cause shown” and good cause not to forfeit was shown in this case.3 I would affirm.

. The Chief Judge of the District of Columbia Superior Court sitting as a committing magistrate in the criminal gambling proceeding, which culminated in the suppression as evidence of the items sought to be forfeited in this forfeiture proceeding, was concerned enough by the inconsistencies in the police testimony he heard to direct the appearance in court of another officer who had participated in the raid and, subsequently, to order a transcript of all the testimony prepared and sent to the United States Attorney “for whatever action he deems appropriate” (R. 19).

. S.Rep.No.856, 87th Cong, 1st Sess. (1961) ; H.R.Rep.No.569, 87th Cong, 1st Sess. (1961).

. The trial court’s ruling was wholly consistent with the Supreme Court’s express holding in One Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania, 380 U.S. 693, 696, 701, 85 S.Ct. 1246, 1248, 1251, 14 L.Ed.2d 170 (1965) that “the constitutional exclusionary rule does apply to forfeiture proceedings .... It would be anomalous indeed ... to hold that in the criminal proceeding the illegally seized evidence is excludable, while in the forfeiture proceeding, requiring the determination that the criminal law has been violated, the same evidence would be admissible.” (Emphasis added, footnote omitted.)