Court Opinion

ID: 9753134
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:59:48.361869+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:50.552508
License: Public Domain

Condon, J.,
dissenting. I cannot agree with the majority that the problem here is one of choosing between two conflicting rules of evidence. I think a grave question of constitutional law is involved. That question may be stated as follows: Does the state constitution bind our courts to exclude evidence obtained by the state in violation of defendant’s rights as declared in sec. 6 of article I thereof? In my opinion the answer must be in the affirmative because of the mandatory language of that article.
That language is as follows: “In order effectually to secure the religious and political freedom established by our venerated ancestors, and to preserve the same for our posterity, we do declare that the essential and unquestionable rights and principles hereinafter mentioned shall be established, maintained, and preserved, and shall be of paramount obligation in all legislative, judicial, and executive proceedings.” (italics supplied) One of these “essential and unquestionable rights” is the right of the people to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures as guaranteed by sec. 6. That section reads almost word for word like its great counterpart, the fourth amendment to the federal constitution.
The right so meticulously protected by that constitutional guaranty has often been called the great right of privacy; the right of free men to be let alone. It has always .been looked upon with high favor and most jealously *42guarded by the federal supreme court. “Of all the rights of the citizen,” said Mr. Justice Field, “few are of greater importance or more essential to his peace and happiness than the right of personal security, and that involves, not merely protection of his person from assault, but exemption of his private affairs, books, and papers from the inspection and scrutiny of others. Without the enjoyment of this right, all other rights would lose half their value.” In re Application of Pacific Ry. Comm’n, C. C., 32 Fed. 241, 250. That is indeed high praise but the supreme court deemed it so well merited that they quoted it with approval in Interstate Commerce Comm’n v. Brimson, 154 U. S. 447,479. That court has continued to entertain such view consistently down through the years. Only recently Mr. Justice Frankfurter speaking for the court in Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25, 27, declared: “The security of one’s privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police- — which is at the core of the Fourth Amendment — is basic to a free society.”
Many years ago the court protected this right against an act of congress which purported to authorize the use- of evidence obtained in violation of the fourth amendment. Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 630. Relying on principles enunciated by Lord Camden in Entick v. Carrington, 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029, which they said affected “the very essence of constitutional liberty and security,” they denounced that act as an infringement of those- principles. And they pointed out that such principles were incorporated in the fourth amendment and applied “to all invasions^ on the part of the government and its -employes of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life.” Today the Boyd case is considered one of the great landmarks of constitutional law. Mr. Justice Brandéis characterized it in his dissent in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 474, as “a case that will be remembered as long as civil liberty lives in the United States.”
The most recent statement of the supreme court on the scope of the protection afforded by the fourth amendment *43appears in Walder v. United States, 347 U. S. 62, 64. In the following forcible language they said: “The Government cannot violate the Fourth Amendment — in the only way in which the Government can do anything, namely through its agents — and use the fruits of such unlawful conduct to secure a conviction. * * * Nor can the Government make indirect use of such evidence for its case * * * or support a conviction on evidence obtained through leads from the unlawfully obtained evidence * * *. All these methods are outlawed, and convictions obtained by means of them are invalidated, because they encourage the kind of society that is obnoxious to free men.”
The court has also taken a clear and forthright stand as to how this right of privacy may be most effectively enforced. In Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, they marked out the procedure to be followed to- obtain the court’s assistance in preventing the use of such unlawfully acquired evidence. In Byars v. United States, 273 U. S. 28, 32, they made it plain that the “court must be vigilant to scrutinize the attendant facts with an eye to detect and a hand to prevent violations of the Constitution by circuitous and indirect methods.” And they did just that in upholding the contentions of the defendants in the recent cases of McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451, Lustig v. United States, 338 U. S. 74, and United States v. Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48.
In the McDonald case, at page 453, the court said that the fourth amendment “marks the right of privacy as one of the unique values of our civilization and, with few exceptions, stays the hands of the police unless they have a search warrant issued by a magistrate on probable cause supported by oath or affirmation. And the law provides as a sanction against the flouting of this constitutional safeguard the suppression of evidence secured as a result of the violation, when it is tendered in a federal court.” (italics supplied)
That statement is in line with what the court had previously said in Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385, namely, that if such sanction were not ac*44corded to the fourth amendment it would be reduced to “a form of words.” Very recently the court reiterated that view in United States v. Wallace & Tiernan Co., 336 U. S. 793, 799. In fact over the long lapse of time since the Weeks case the court has staunchly adhered to the rule so strongly enunciated therein. Thus Chief Justice Taft, speaking for the court in Olmstead v. United States, supra, at page 462, said: “The striking outcome of the Weeks case and those which followed it was the sweeping declaration that the Fourth Amendment, although not referring to or limiting the use of evidence in courts, really forbade its introduction if obtained by government officers through a violation of the Amendment.” And he further stated that the court there held with great emphasis that the protection of the amendment would be much impaired unless evidence thus obtained was excluded.
Of course the fourth amendment to the United States constitution is not directly applicable to the- states in the manner in which the court applied it to federal prosecutions in Weeks v. United States, supra, and therefore we are not bound to follow that case. However, I have discussed the hereinbefore-cited federal cases not because they are precedents binding upon us but solely to illustrate the supreme court’s view of the need of an effective sanction for the enforcement of the fourth amendment if it were not to fail utterly of its high purpose. As was stated in the Weeks case at page 393, that amendment “might as well be stricken from the Constitution” if such sanction were withheld by admitting evidence obtained in violation of the amendment. One authority on the bill of rights has said that the court, by according that sanction to the amendment, saved it from becoming a dead letter. See 35 Harv. L. R. 673, “The Progress of the Law” by Chafee.
In my opinion this long and unbroken line of decisions of the supreme court of the United States furnishes us with a safe and sure guide, if one were needed, in construing and applying the identical guaranty in our state constitu*45tion against unreasonable searches and seizures. Like that court we, too, are called upon to decide here whether this precious constitutional right shall live as a strong bulwark against a prying police state or become- a dead letter. Free men in our free society cherish the constitution which guarantees their God-given rights and they do not want their courts of justice to tolerate officers of the law who deliberately violate it.
The most distinguished police official in America recently acknowledged this fact. “Our people,” he stated, “may tolerate many mistakes of both intent and performance, but, with unerring instinct, they know that when any person is intentionally deprived of his constitutional rights those responsible have committed no ordinary offense. A crime of this nature, if subtly encouraged by failure to condemn and punish, certainly leads down the road to totalitarianism.” Statement by Director J. Edgar Hoover in F.B.I. Law Enforcement Bulletin, Sept. 1952, p. 1, as quoted by Frankfurter, J. in Irvine v. California, 347 U. S. 128, 149.
I think that the United States supreme court has solved the problem in the way that it should be solved, that is, by serving notice on law enforcement officers that lawless conduct violating the constitutional right of the people to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures will be of no avail in our courts whose judges are sworn to support the constitution. Many of the state courts have now adopted the federal rule, although the majority still adheres to the old rule of the common law. At the time Wolf v. Colorado, supra, was decided ten had elected to follow the Weeks case and had overruled -or distinguished prior decisions to the contrary. Six which had not theretofore passed on the question thereafter decided to follow it. Iowa had formulated the doctrine prior to the Weeks case but subsequently rejected it. Altogether thirty-one states have rejected the doctrine and sixteen have accepted it. But in my opinion the significant thing is not the score, but that ten states rejected their former view to embrace the Weeks doctrine. *46If I were to decide our case simply on a choice of these two rules I would choose the Weeks doctrine because, by sternly discountenancing unconstitutional evidence, it alone accords an effective sanction to a great constitutional right.
However, there is in the language of our declaration of rights in article I of the state constitution, hereinbefore quoted, a more compelling reason that binds us here in Rhode Island to- exclude this evidence. In my opinion that language is a supreme command. We are thereby charged in the judicial proceedings over which we preside to make the enforcement of those rights our paramount obligation. And we are reminded that such rights are essential to freedom and so must be maintained and preserved as we received them from our ancestors SO' that they may be transmitted unimpaired to- our posterity. Such language recalls the long and bitter struggle of the people for freedom and .security against despotism. Those solemn words of adjuration vividly remind us of an unforgettable dark era when government wantonly trampled upon the rights of men. And they speak to us of the people’s fears that such doleful times could come again. In words too plain to be mistaken they charge their servants in the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the government to address themselves in their proceedings, above all other considerations, to the maintenance and preservation of these essential and unquestionable rights.
Unless words have lost their meaning the judges of this court and of every other court in this state are obliged to discountenance any act in violation of those rights. But if courts receive evidence knowing that it has been unconstitutionally obtained they do just the opposite and give judicial countenance to the government’s violation of the constitution. It is no excuse to say such violation is not the act of the government but the act of an officer beyond the scope of his authority. The only way the government acts is through its agents. And surely if it uses the fruits of its agents’ unconstitutional acts it should not be heard to say *47that it did not authorize them. To such a plea the courts of this state, in keeping with the explicit command of the declaration of rights, are under a paramount obligation to turn a deaf ear.
Nor is either of the other two departments of the government less'obligated. The executive department in its proceedings, one of which is enforcement of the criminal laws, is also bound thereunder to respect the constitutional rights of the accused. If it manifests a design to act otherwise this court restrains it. The legislative department may not enact legislation which contravenes those rights. If it does, we declare such legislation void. In these instances we compel compliance with such paramount obligation. In the case of the judicial department the judges must respect that obligation in their proceedings. And if they fail to do so it is our duty to correct them. If we do not, the citizen has no other recourse.
In Wolf v. Colorado, supra, the United States supreme court has ruled that the Weeks case is not applicable to the states, at least as far as the decisions of the state courts admitting evidence obtained in violation of the guaranty of the fourth amendment are concerned. However, they did state in the Wolf case at page 28: “* * * we have no hesitation in saying that were a State affirmatively to sanction such police incursion into privacy it would run counter to the guaranty of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Why they thus differentiate between a decisional rule approving the use of unconstitutional evidence and a statute which would authorize the same practice I do not know, and, since no federal constitutional question is raised here, we need not inquire. Thus what this court decides here is final. And the choice we must make is either to condemn violations of sec. 6 or to condone them. I regret profoundly that the majority has chosen to condone.
In Rhode Island until today a man’s home was his castle. Until today his right of privacy was unquestionable. That *48day is over. Now the constitutional guaranty of that precious right is no more than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Deprived of the only sanction that could give it life, it has lost its efficacy. This decision is in effect a massive breach in that bulwark of liberty. It reassures lawless enforcement officers that they may invade any man’s home and rummage among his private papers and possessions; and that the evidence they thereby secure, stained though it may be by deliberate violation of his constitutional rights, will be received and considered by the courts of this state.
Thus are the lessons of history that impelled our forefathers to include sec. 6 in the constitution disregarded. They placed it there, as they thought, to forestall unlawful and unreasonable searches and seizures. They believed it would be an effective obstacle to a prying police force which they feared and hated. That was the vicious thing which the supreme court aptly described in United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581, 595, as “a too permeating police surveillance” and which they said the founders of our federal constitution seemed to think “was a greater danger to a free people than the escape of some criminals from punishment.”
In this decision today it seems to me that we treat that grave danger lightly. And in doing so we hear but do not heed the solemn adjuration of the framers of the constitution to see to it that in our judicial proceedings the maintenance and preservation of this essential and unquestionable right of privacy be made of paramount obligation. Believing as I do that, under the mandatory language of our declaration of rights, it is the constitutional duty of this court to fully safeguard and protect that right, and that this duty cannot be effectively and faithfully discharged except by excluding evidence secured in violation of it, I dissent.
O’Connell, J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Condon.
*49APRIL 12, 1955.
William E. Powers, Atty. Gen., Raymond J. Pettine, Ass’t Atty. Gen., for State.
Peter W. McKiernan, Charles A. Kiernan, for defendant.
On Motion bob Reabgument.
Per Curiam.
After our decision in the above case the defendant asked and received permission to file a motion for reargument. In support thereof his counsel has stated certain reasons on which he bases his contention that justice requires a reargument of the case. We have carefully considered such motion and reasons and we are of the opinion that they raise no question which in the circumstances warrants reargument.
Motion denied.