Court Opinion

ID: 9648889
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:37:23.47694+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:08:15.423876
License: Public Domain

Peck, J.,
dissenting. I am compelled to dissent from the result reached by the majority as well as from the rationale upon which it is based.
The primary purpose of a criminal trial is to enable the court and jury to determine the truth and, in so doing, to exonerate the *357innocent as well as to convict the guilty. I recognize that there are limits which must be rigidly enforced, including physical or mental cruelty by the authorities, even when redolent of pure technicality. Nevertheless, any judicially imposed devise which results in withholding facts from the jury, which would otherwise aid in the search for truth, and which not only condones but licenses perjury as well, as does today’s decision, is from the very purpose of trial; it should be adopted only with reluctance and after careful scrutiny.
Defendants in criminal cases have a right to a fair trial, but in their zeal to protect that right, too many courts long ago lost sight of the fact that fairness is, in a sense, a two-edged sword. We must not divorce the concept of the word “state” from the people who are the state. The Preamble to our Federal Constitution begins with the phrase “We the people.” These people are much more than a sort of collective “person.” Each one is an individual, a citizen of the state and nation created by their ancestors; as much so as a defendant. They have the right to be secure in their homes and possessions; to be free to walk the streets alone at any hour of the day or night without fear of the violence which is so prevalent in today’s society; to drive in their automobiles, also without fear of irresponsible drunks behind the wheel of another vehicle; to send their children to school free from the seductive blandishments and pressures of peers, drug dealers and pushers, and from those with a propensity for child abuse.
The motor vehicle accident which gave rise to this proceeding was particularly tragic. As the majority notes, one person was killed — deprived of life — and another seriously injured. It is ironic that the record in this case indicates that the test of the blood sample taken from defendant showed an alcohol content more than half again above the legal maximum. And yet, because of a relatively inoffensive error on the part of the police in acquiring the sample, the test result cannot be considered by the court or known to the jury, even if the defendant takes the witness stand and, during cross-examination, deliberately lies under oath. Thus are the interests of the people “fairly” served by today’s decision.
The majority opinion laments the defendant’s “difficult dilemma” in facing the truth unless he is sheltered by the court:
*358The defendant must choose between not testifying, and thus foregoing the opportunity to present his account of the incident, or testifying, and running the risk of being impeached with illegally obtained evidence.
This distorts the true situation. Placed in its proper perspective, the majority is saying that, in the face of suppressed evidence against him, a defendant has a constitutional right to take the stand and, regardless of his oath to tell the truth, lie with impunity under cross-examination; to give “his account of the incident” which is not only false, but protected. Whether a given defendant will lie in fact is irrelevant to the principle; the fact is, the majority has placed its imprimatur upon a constitutional right to commit perjury.
But a criminal defendant who takes the stand as a witness in his own behalf as he has the right to do, is subject to the same oath-bound duty as any other witness; that is, to tell the truth. If he is prepared to do that, and he is indeed innocent, he has little to fear, at least from evidence that would be fully admissible were it not for police error. If he is not willing to be truthful notwithstanding his oath, he has the proper alternative of not taking the stand at all, leaving the State to its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. A defendant has no right, certainly not a constitutional right, to an “opportunity to present his account of the incident” which is perjurious. It is important to remember that, once suppressed, evidence remains suppressed, even under the less truth-strangling federal rule of United States v. Havens, 446 U.S. 620 (1980). Therefore, a defendant has no cause to fear suppressed evidence, unless, by his own voluntary conduct as a witness, he creates the justification for its use: the protection of truth and the concern of the people for safety and justice.
The majority’s “analysis,” shorn of its trappings, concludes that the right of a defendant to testify in his own defense, under Chapter I, Article 10 of the Vermont Constitution, carries with it the right to commit perjury. This is contrary to common sense and demeans valid analytical reasoning. Like Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” it discloses clearly what it is meant to conceal: the conclusion is reached by a result-oriented approach.
The real choice confronting a criminal defendant who knows of the existence of suppressed evidence should be whether to take *359the stand and face his obligation to tell the truth, or to remain silent with the protective guarantee of the State’s burden, and the knowledge that the prosecution may not comment on his silence. Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609 (1965); see, e.g., State v. Hamlin, 146 Vt. 97, 103-04, 499 A.2d 45, 50-51 (1985).
The majority argues that its new rule will “preclude the State from misusing inadmissible evidence while at the same time it will prohibit a defendant from using to . . . advantage the State’s inability to rebut clearly suspect testimony”; this rationale is flawed. Far from prohibiting “a defendant from using to . . . advantage the State’s inability to rebut clearly suspect testimony,” the majority decision condones and encourages it. I recognize that the decision departs from the federal rule only in relation to testimony first elicited on cross-examination. Nevertheless, it is news to me, and certainly a novel concept, that “clearly suspect testimony” is never elicited from a criminal defendant for the first time on cross-examination.
Suspect testimony is as likely to emerge for the first time during cross-examination as it is on direct; perhaps more so because it is always difficult to anticipate either the form or substance of a prosecutor’s questions. Cross-examination by a competent trial attorney is one of the best means for testing truth known to the judicial system, and yet, by throwing the cloak of an extreme technicality about defendants as a matter of law, the majority has frustrated the search for truth and enfeebled the very raison d’etre of cross-examination, not only for this case, but for similar cases in the future.
The real irony inherent in a criminal defendant’s motion to suppress evidence lies in the obvious fact that the constitutional principle claimed, however eloquently it may be urged, is a secondary motive at best; as a practical reality it is a peg to hang a hat on. No doubt there are those who have died or suffered upon the barricades of a principle; I doubt much, however, that there are many defendants, however innocent or guilty in a particular case, among that heroic number. The motivation for a defendant’s motion to suppress is, obviously, in almost every instance, filed with the sole objective in mind, not of upholding or establishing a principle, but of withholding truth which is inculpatory or otherwise damaging to the defense; in short, to insure that the case will be decided without the full truth ever becoming known to the jury.
*360Given the obvious fact that the real purpose of most motions to suppress is to withhold truth, the egregious nature of the new majority rule is highlighted, rather than disguised, by the fact that it is only suppressed truth relating to a defendant’s guilt of the crime itself which may not be explored in the face of perjury. Mere collateral matters, which frequently have little effect on the outcome, if crime-related evidence is to remain suppressed even in the face of perjury, may be explored. This exception does little if anything to mitigate the consequences of denying a jury the whole truth relating to a defendant’s involvement in the crime itself. Granting that the majority rule carves out a limited exception, it is nevertheless a grievous one against the concern for truth. The ubiquitous camel has succeeded in thrusting its nose under one more tent.
My second objection to the majority’s opinion relates to its reliance on the Vermont Constitution to justify, if not mandate, the result. If the language of the Constitution is clear in awarding criminal defendants greater rights than they enjoy under the Federal Constitution, then I will join without hesitation in enforcing these expanded protections regardless of any personal belief I may have that they are unwise or even detrimental to the welfare and safety of the people. See State v. Jewett, 146 Vt. 221, 500 A.2d 233 (1985). I will not try to circumvent them by judicial rhetoric. The Constitution belongs to the people, not to the courts.
Notwithstanding the above, I object and will continue to do so strongly, whenever this Court undertakes to read into our State Constitution language which is simply not there, or a mandate which does not rationally and logically derive from the wording which has been employed by its framers and adopted by the people; such results are whim-motivated and result-oriented. But that is precisely what has happened here, and I see no other demonstrable reasons than to activate a rule, sub silentio, which the majority believes the Federal Court should, and this Court would have adopted under the Federal Constitution had it the power to do so. In other words the United States Supreme Court is wrong; it is as simple as that. But since this Court has no power to abrogate or affect United States Supreme court interpretations of the Federal Constitution, the same objective can be accomplished, as far as this state is concerned, merely by saying the Vermont Constitution requires it.
*361The majority may have found its inspiration from our opinion in Jewett. In that case, we directed the parties to prepare and file supplemental briefs addressing a state constitutional issue which had been raised by the defendant but inadequately briefed. The Jewett opinion noted that state constitutions may provide broader protections for criminal defendants than its federal counterpart.1 Thereupon, the opinion continued by suggesting several approaches which might be employed in analyzing a state constitution, including, inter alia, historical, textual, examining what the courts of other states have done under similar constitutional provisions, economic and sociological concerns, and others.
Notwithstanding Jewett was a decision of the full Court, the majority in this case has made no valid attempt to analyze the Vermont Constitution. In addressing the state constitutional issue, the majority’s concept of analysis, basically, is to tie a defendant’s right to testify to a right to commit perjury. Then after bemoaning the pickle in which a perjuring defendant may find himself as a result of impeachment through the use of otherwise suppressed truth, the majority simply plucks its holding out of thin air, concluding that “the Vermont Constitution gives a defendant greater rights than are afforded under Havens . . . .” This conclusion, as being legitimately derived from the Constitution, as distinguished from mere personal preference, is baffling. The greater right awarded is to commit perjury with impunity, a defendant’s obligation to tell the truth becoming meaningless. If the result, which licenses and applauds perjury under certain circumstances, “will achieve a fair balance” under the Vermont Constitution, as the majority claims it does, the fairness discoverable in condoned lying under oath somehow escapes me.
In responding to the question “what process is due?” under the Vermont Constitution, the majority does not point to any language or resort to any analysis that justifies treating a criminal defendant with greater leniency under the fundamental Vermont law than under the Federal Constitution. The constitutional claim in Jewett was based, in part at least, on an actual and arguably significant difference between the language in the search and seizure provisions of the two constitutions. No significant dif*362ference exists here; the majority virtually concede this. Yet, adding to the bewilderment generated by today’s decision, the Court in a later Jewett case, State v. Jewett, 148 Vt. 324, 532 A.2d 958 (1987), which followed the remand for further briefing as ordered in the original 1985 case, held against the defendant’s claim under the Vermont Constitution, whereas, in this case, where there are no meaningful distinctions between the relevant wording of the two constitutions, the majority says there is one. This is an extract of thin air. The majority, for all the world like a prestidigitator, has simply plucked a legal bunny from its hat.
I believe there is much merit in looking to decisions of the United States Supreme Court for guidance in construing provisions in state constitutions unless the local provisions are so clear that a different result is inescapable rather than merely contrived. I will mention some of my reasons.
All the courts of this country, federal and state, face identical problems relating to the rights of criminal defendants vis-a-vis the rights of the people to be safe from violence against their persons, and secure in their property against robbery, arson, and the like. Except to the extent the clear language of a particular state constitution compels a different result, I see no reason why the “process due” criminal defendants should have the potential for varying not only from state to state, but also as between defendants in the federal and state courts. This potential is anomalous and a legal absurdity based on the transitory personal whims and philosophies of the members of fifty different state high courts as they are constituted at a particular point in time. It calls to mind George Orwell’s famous line in his book “Animal Farm”: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”2
We have all the interstate and sectional xenophobia we need in athletic rivalries, where state and sectional teams, professional and collegiate, and others, strive to outdo each other and are supported locally to the point of near public hysteria. There is no reason for such chauvinism among the courts of the several states to the extent that the “process due” a criminal defendant in one state is greater or less than it is in another, unless the language of a given state constitution leaves no other choice. Frequent reference to, and adoption of, constitutional principles established by the highest Court in the country will help to assure and inform, *363not only criminal defendants, but all people, that entitlement to due process is the same throughout the land and does not change simply because a man steps across the invisible line known as a state boundary.
I would point out the danger of proving the validity of Thomas Jefferson’s fear of the judiciary. In 1803, Jefferson wrote to a friend: “Let us not make it [the Constitution] a blank paper by construction.”3 Sixteen years later, he wrote in a similar vein: “The Constitution, on this hypothesis [the power of the courts alone to declare the meaning of the Constitution], is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please,”4 to which I would add: and whenever they please.
The inherent danger which lies in the unbridled power of the courts over American-type constitutions was recognized abroad as well as at home. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the English historian, author and statesman, Thomas Babington Macauley wrote to an American correspondent: “Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor”;5 a most apt and astute analogy.
Even more recently, former Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes said in a speech:6 “the Constitution is what the judges say it is.” In more esoteric, and perhaps (to the layman) obscure phraseology, Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., said essentially the same thing when he wrote, “It is, after all, a national Constitution we are expounding.” Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 195 (1964).
Returning to literary analogies, I cannot help speculating that Chief Justice Hughes, in recognizing that courts have exclusive, or at least final power to say what the Constitution means, may have read and remembered Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass.” I am intrigued by an interesting similarity to Hughes’ statement and a dialogue between Alice and Humpty Dumpty, in which the former questioned the latter as to his proper use of a word (which was, of course, wrong):
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, . . . “it means just what I choose it to mean . . . .”
*364“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”7 (emphasis in original).
The analogy is interesting. The United States Supreme Court is “master” of the Federal Constitution with the final power to say what it means, and this Court has the like power as “master,” in saying what the Vermont Constitution means — regardless of the validity of its reasoning in a particular case.
Judge Learned Hand understood the bench very well when he wrote: “[T]hey [judges] too often wrap their [decisions] in a protective veil of adjectives such as . . . ‘inherent,’ ‘fundamental,’ or ‘essential,’ whose office usually ... is to disguise what they are doing and impute to it a derivation far more impressive than their personal preferences, which are all that in fact lie behind the decision.”8 The majority opinion demonstrates that Judge Hand understood this flaw in the judicial mentality perhaps even better than he knew.
These reflections by eminent men should, with other considerations, it seems to me, endow those appointed or elected to judicial office, particularly those on the courts of final appeal, with a sense of awe, humility, and respect for the incredible power which is vested in the office (let it be remembered, not in the person, per se). They should be inspired to exercise their enormous powers with the greatest caution and restraint, even with reluctance. Instead, this power is all too often looked upon as a license to accomplish whatever passing fancy engages the favor of a court as it happens to be constituted at any given time.
In the field of constitutional law, this enthrallment with, and extravagant use of, the power to interpret, the power to render a constitution little more than a quaint historical document, a tabula rasa upon which may be written whatever the courts desire to write, is the hallmark of egregious judicial activism. I hasten to add, that activism is by no means to be deplored, per se; at its best, great and necessary reforms have resulted from the impact of activism on the Congress and state legislatures. But judicial activism at its worst is the unbridled and irresponsible re*365sort to the unlimited power of constitutional interpretation upon which too many courts have embarked today. This is the surest way to destroy a constitution or at least render it meaningless, except as a judicial toy, that one can imagine.
If, as Hughes and others have recognized, constitutions, state and federal, mean whatever the highest courts having jurisdiction say they mean, and that power of interpretation is not exercised with restraint, we may as well adopt “Mary Had a Little Lamb” for constitutional purposes. The courts can say the nursery rhyme means whatever they wish it to mean, and we can all boast of its wisdom and endurability amid the storms of change and progress. I am reminded of the childhood taunt, “Your sayin’ so don’t make it so.” Quite the opposite is true of the courts, their “sayin’ so” apparently does make it so, regardless of merit.
The majority has reached a conclusion which is without the support of the valid analysis of our State Constitution which we demanded of the bar with great enthusiasm in the first Jewett case (in 146 Vt.); without any reasonable explanation of why the protection of the Vermont Constitution is greater than under the Federal Constitution, carrying with it the right to commit perjury if necessary. It is contrary to plain common sense which would dictate that nothing justifies the licensing of perjury — lying under oath — by a defendant, or any other witness, during the course of trial. I believe that today’s result serves as notice that the majority is joining, like sheep, in the headlong rush of other egregiously activist courts, to grant greater rights to criminal defendants under state constitutions than they enjoy under the Federal Constitution (which are many), while at the same time, and, as a corollary, eroding even further the protections and safety of individual law-abiding citizens.
Crime in this country is increasing rapidly to the point it seems virtually out of control. The cost burden to the public is staggering; crime victims and the public at large cry out for relief and for better protection. In the face of this crisis the courts are busily at work, sapping effective law enforcement with technicalities, and adding more and endlessly more escape routes for the criminal, which are not necessary to protect the truly innocent defendant. I view today’s decision as an egregious example. It is well enough that Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark could write, “there is no war between the Constitution and common sense.” Mapp v. Ohio, *366367 U.S. 643, 657 (1961). The majority appears to think otherwise. I would affirm.

 In Jewett Justice Hayes, writing for the full Court, cautioned: “It would be a serious mistake for this Court to use its state constitution chiefly to evade the impact of the decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Our decisions must be principled not result-oriented.” Id. at 224, 500 A.2d at 235.

 George Orwell, Animal Farm [Chapter 10, 1946].

 Letter to William C. Nichols, Sept. 7, 1803.

 Letter to Spencer Roane, Sept. 6, 1819.

 Letter to H. A. Randall, May 23, 1857.

 To the Elmira, N.Y., Chambers of Commerce, May 3, 1907.

 Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), Through the Looking Glass, Macmillan and Co., London, 1872, * 124.

 Learned Hand, The Bill of Rights 70 (1964 ed.).