Court Opinion

ID: 9431874
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:33:25.920401+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:30.724058
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
concurring.
While I join the opinion of the Court, certain comments in the dissent prompt this postscript. The dissent answers the wrong question when it states that “[t]he interest in protecting the truth-seeking function of the criminal trial is every bit as strong in this case as in our earlier cases.” Post, at 324. This is self-evident. The State always has a strong interest in the truth-seeking function. The proper question, however, is whether the admission of the illegally obtained evidence in this case would sufficiently advance the truth-seeking function to overcome the loss to the deterrent value of the exclusionary rule. With respect to this issue, the dissent overestimates the benefit of the exclusionary rule even to the defendant bent on presenting perjured testimony and exaggerates the injury that exclusion of unlawfully obtained evidence causes to the truth-seeking function.
In “contested criminal trials,” post, at 326, the urge to win can unfortunately lead each side to overstate its case. As *321the Court properly observes, the ability of the dishonest defendant to procure false testimony is tempered by the availability of the illegally obtained evidence for use in a subsequent perjury prosecution of the defense witness. Ante, at 314. A witness who is not on trial faces a far different calculus than one whose testimony can mean the difference between acquittal and a prison sentence. He or she will think long and hard before accepting a defendant’s invitation to knowingly offer false testimony that is directly contradicted by the State’s evidence. The dissent ignores this “hard reality,” post, at 326, in presuming that a defense witness will offer false testimony when that testimony is immunized from rebuttal at trial.
While the dissent assumes false testimony or, at least, faulty recollection with respect to defense witnesses, it is unwilling to entertain the same assumption with respect to the prosecution’s witnesses. The evidentiary issue in this case involves the testimony of a police officer about a statement that he allegedly heard the defendant make at the time of his arrest. An officer whose testimony provides the foundation for admission of an oral statement or physical evidence may be influenced by his interest in effective law enforcement or may simply have faulty recollection. It is only by giving 100-percent credence to every word of the officer’s testimony that the dissent can so categorically state that “the defendant himself revealed the witness’ testimony to be false,” post, at 324, that “James. . . said his hair was previously red,” post, at 327, n. 2, or that information presented to the jury was “known to be untrue,” post, at 327. That assumption is no more warranted in the case of prosecution witnesses than the opposite assumption is warranted in the case of defense witnesses.
In this case, in which the guilty verdict is supported by the testimony of five eyewitnesses, it is highly probable that these characterizations are accurate. But the testimony of those five witnesses, on which the dissenters rely for their conclusion that any error committed by the trial court was *322harmless, post, at 380, would also seem to be sufficient to obviate the need to rely on the officer’s rebuttal to discredit the witness Henderson’s testimony. Were the officer’s testimony not so corroborated, it would surely be improper to presume — as the dissenters do — that the conflict between the testimony of the officer and Henderson should necessarily be resolved in the officer’s favor or that exclusion of the evidence would result in a decision by jurors who are “positively misled.” Post, at 324.