Court Opinion

ID: 9446330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:52:24.470312+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:37.140852
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I think there should be a hearing on appellant’s allegations regarding ineffective assistance of counsel.
Although a valid search warrant had been issued for the premises where appellant was arrested and the return on the warrant showed the seizure of narcotics and equipment, it did not show that the narcotics here in question were seized on the premises in question. Appellant says some of them were seized, without warrant, on other premises. He says the only article taken from him personally was a set of keys.
Suppression of these narcotics as evidence might not, but also it might, have materially affected the Government’s case. This distinguishes Martin v. United States, 101 U.S.App.D.C. 329, 330, 248 F.2d 651, 652, in which we said : “Where it does not appear that the mo*418tion could have had a significant effect upon the outcome of the trial, it seems fruitless to conduct an investigation of what counsel did or did not have in mind when he declined to make the motion.” (Emphasis added.)
It is doubtless true that if a motion to suppress had been made, appellant would have had to admit possession of the narcotics. But this admission, which might have established his possession for the purpose of his motion, could not, I think, have been used as evidence for the purpose of proving his guilt. We would be keeping the word of promise to the ear and breaking it to the hope if we held that, although drugs illegally seized from his possession cannot be put in evidence against him, a statement that they were in his possession when they were seized, which he must make in order to prevent them from being put in evidence, can be used to convict him. In the words of the Eighth Circuit, this “would render the constitutional guaranties sonorous but impotent phrases.” Safarik v. United States, 62 F.2d 892, 897. Cf. Fowler v. United States, 10 Cir., 239 F.2d 93.