Court Opinion

ID: 9737918
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:36:56.3822+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:02.454937
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE CAHILL, dissenting: Dunaway concludes with these words: "To admit petitioner’s confession in such a case would allow 'law enforcement officers to violate the Fourth Amendment with impunity, safe in the knowledge that they could wash their hands in the "procedural safeguards” of the Fifth.’ ” (Dunaway, 442 U.S. at 219, 60 L. Ed. 2d at 840, 99 S. Ct. at 2260, quoting Comment, Criminal Procedure — Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule — Miranda Warnings Do Not Per Se Render Admissible A Confession Following An Arrest Which Violates Fourth Amendment Rights, 25 Emory L.J. 227, 238 (1976).) A little later, in a concurring opinion, Justice Stevens writes: "The justification for the exclusion of evidence obtained by improper methods is to motivate the law enforcement profession as a whole — not the aberrant individual officer — to adopt and enforce regular procedures that will avoid the future invasion of the citizen’s constitutional rights.” Dunaway, 442 U.S. at 221, 60 L. Ed. 2d at 841, 99 S. Ct. at 2261 (Stevens, J., concurring). With the majority, I defer to the credibility findings of the trial court. That disposes of the voluntary nature of Ricky Hill’s confession as an issue under the fifth amendment, but it is only a threshold issue under the fourth amendment. Dunaway, 442 U.S. at 217, 60 L. Ed. 2d at 839, 99 S. Ct. at 2259; Brown v. Illinois (1975), 422 U.S. 590, 604, 45 L. Ed. 2d 416, 427, 95 S. Ct. 2254, 2262. The difficulty we face in this case is created by the testimony in support of voluntary behavior dating back to the moment the police officers encountered Hill on the street. The majority accepts the elapsed time and circumstances as allowable under a fourth amendment analysis because Hill’s presence was voluntary. I do not. We part company because I believe the circumstances of Hill’s interrogation require us, under Dunaway, to examine the conduct of the police independently of Hill’s cooperation. So examined, I believe the conduct of the police officers falls far short of the "regular procedures” urged by the concurrence in Dunaway and is a good example of the "purposefulness” of police conduct criticized in the Dunaway majority opinion. I reach the same conclusion here that the United States Supreme Court reached in Brown v. Illinois: "The detectives embarked upon this expedition for evidence in the hope that something might turn up.” Brown, 422 U.S. at 605, 45 L. Ed. 2d at 428, 95 S. Ct. at 2262. We do no violence to effective law enforcement, even in cities troubled by crime, nor to the right of police officers to conduct reasonable interrogations, even in murder cases, if we conclude that 23 hours in a police station and an overnight stay in a bedless interrogation room are unacceptable procedures in a democracy that honors the fourth amendment. I respectfully dissent.