Court Opinion

ID: 9766206
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:36:54.89068+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:20.344568
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge
(concurring and dissenting).
In other areas of the law, both criminal and civil, the courts have been resourceful in fashioning remedies to deter lawless official conduct. For example, in the criminal law, the exclusionary rule was made applicable to the states in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), as a deterrent to official violations of the personal privacy and security guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment, and in the civil, the federal courts have not hesitated to order reapportionment of state legislatures where official inaction or purposeful discrimination has diluted a citizen’s right to vote. See, e. g., Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 567, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 1384, 12 L.Ed. 506 (1964) (“[t]o the extent that a citizen’s right to vote is debased, he is that much less a citizen”); Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 347, 81 S.Ct. 125, 130, 5 L.Ed.2d 110 (1960) ([w]hile in form this is merely an act redefining metes and bounds, if the allegations *188are established, the inescapable human effect of this essay in geometry and geography is to despoil colored citizens, and only colored citizens, of their theretofore enjoyed voting rights”). The reason for such decisions is set forth by Mr. Justice BRANDEIS in his dissenting opinion in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 485, 48 S.Ct. 564, 575, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928):
Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face.
It is therefore not sufficient simply to invoke Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U.S. 519, 72 S.Ct. 112, 96 L.Ed. 651 (1952), to defeat appellant’s jurisdictional claim without fashioning a remedy for the Commonwealth’s disregard of the procedure delineated by the Interstate Compact on Juveniles, 62 P.S. § 731. It is unrealistic to assume that appellant will assert a civil claim against the officers who took him from Ohio to Pennsylvania, or that they will be criminally prosecuted. See Scott, Criminal Jurisdiction of a State Over a Defendant Based Upon Presence Secured by Force or Fraud, 37 Minn.L.Rev. 91, 101-102 (1953). Furthermore, failure to fashion a remedy for official misconduct calls into question the continued constitutional vitality of the Frisbie rule. See Pitler, *189“The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree” Revisited and Shepardized, 56 Calif.L.Rev. 579, 600 (1968).
Since the violation of the Interstate Compact is inextricably related to the very power of the Commonwealth to assert its jurisdiction over appellant, I do not think we make our insistence on compliance with the Compact adequately emphatic by confining appellant’s relief to suppression of the statements he made while in transit from Ohio to Pennsylvania. Therefore, although I agree that appellant must be afforded a new delinquency hearing, I would direct the court below to order the Commonwealth to disclose its entire file to appellant, including all of the discovery sought by appellant’s pre-trial motions. Cf. Coleman v. Burnett, 155 U.S.App.D.C. 302, 477 F.2d 1187, 1210-1212 (1973); United States v. Pollard, 335 F.Supp. 868 (D.D.C.1971) (subsequent indictment does not bar affording preliminary hearing to defendant where official misconduct aborts preliminary hearing or renders it meaningless.)