Court Opinion

ID: 9843743
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:42:45.975835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:53.901886
License: Public Domain

SÁNDSTROM, Justice,'
concurring specially.
[¶ 30] Although this Court may, in an appropriate case, interpret a provision of our State Constitution differently than the United States Supreme Court has interpreted a parallel provision of the United States Constitution, this Court’s interpretation must be based on the history of the document, not the individual philosophy or views of the justices. As Justice Vande-Walle wrote in his special concurrence in State v. Ringquist, 433 N.W.2d 207, 217 (N.D.1988):
Although I agree we need not merely echo the United States Supreme Court in applying our own constitutional provisions which are identical to the Federal Constitution, I cannot agree that the interpretation and application of those provisions should merely reflect the philosophy or views of the particular justices who happen to be sitting at the time the issue of the application and *836interpretation of our State Constitution is raised.
[¶ 31] The proceedings of the North Dakota Constitutional Convention offer no support for the contention that the drafters of our State Constitution intended greater protections for criminal defendants than those provided by the United States Constitution, except to extend those protections to state court proceedings. As I explained in my concurrence in State v. Herrick, 1999 ND 1, ¶¶ 33-36, 588 N.W.2d 847:
“The framers of North Dakota’s Constitution must have intended more protection under the North Dakota Constitution’s unreasonable searches and seizures clause than that of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, because otherwise the state provision is a meaningless redundancy.” So goes the argument. What the argument lacks is historical perspective.
From its adoption, the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution was considered a limitation only on the federal government. It was not until 1961 that the United States Supreme Court, in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), extended “the Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and to have excluded from criminal trials any evidence illegally seized” to the states. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 148 and n. 6, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968).
When the framers of North Dakota’s Constitution included an unreasonable searches and seizures clause, they were prohibiting the state from doing what the federal government was prohibited from doing. In view of then current federal constitutional jurisprudence, our framers were providing a real protection that would otherwise have been lacking.
A review of the entire proceedings of our State Constitutional Convention offers not one word of support for the concept that the framers intended to do anything other than prohibit the state from doing what the federal government was prohibited from doing. Official Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the First Constitutional Convention of North Dakota (1889); Journal of the Constitutional Convention for North Dakota (1889).
[¶ 32] This Court recently unanimously reaffirmed that we look to historical context in interpreting the meaning of guarantees in our State Constitution. See, e.g., State v. $17,515.00 in Cash Money, 2003 ND 168, ¶ 6, 670 N.W.2d 826 (citations omitted):
N.D. Const, art. I, § 13 ... provides: “The right of trial by jury shall be secured to all, and remain inviolate.” This provision neither enlarges nor restricts the right to a jury trial, but merely preserves the right as it existed at the time of the adoption of our constitution.
[¶ 33] Relating to search and seizure, Justice VandeWalle noted in his Ringquist special concurrence:
[T]he language of our State Constitution, Article I, Section 8, does not significantly differ from the Fourth Amendment language of the United States Constitution. It seems enigmatic to, on the one hand, observe that the history of our State Constitution reveals an intention to make its provisions of basic rights broader than those in the Federal Constitution and, on the other hand, recognize that prior to Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), evidence obtained through a search and seizure without legal justifi*837cation was admissible if it tended to prove that the defendant committed an offense. State v. Lacy, 55 N.D. 83, 212 N.W. 442 (1927).
Ringquist, 433 N.W.2d at 217.
[¶ 34] In the final analysis, we must remember that we who at this time hold these positions of responsibility are not the law, but servants of the law.
[¶ 35] Dale V. Sandstrom