Court Opinion

ID: 9846511
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:42:51.947055+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:35.906289
License: Public Domain

Steffen, C. J.,
concurring:
I have elected to write separately to register my objection to the exclusionary rule, properly acknowledged in the Majority’s opinion, solely for the purpose of swelling the chorus of voices who *777find the exclusionary rule ill-advised and an anathema to a civilized society. Moreover, I agree with the result reached by the Majority, as I do not find exigent circumstances similar to those in Schmerber involving rapidly dissipating alcohol. Under existing law, the affirmance is warranted absent the finding of a good faith exception under United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984). Since the State has not raised the issue of a Leon exception, I am forced to concur with the Majority’s affirmance, and I will accordingly limit my brief comments to the exclusionary rule.
Rather than re-express views that I have already published on the subject, I will take the liberty of quoting from a segment of my article published in Volume 1988, Number 4 of the Utah Law Review entitled Truth as Second Fiddle: Reevaluating the Place of Truth in the Adversarial Trial Ensemble.
*779Thomas L. Steffen, Truth as Second Fiddle: Reevaluating the Place of Truth in the Adversarial Trial Ensemble, 1988 Utah L. Rev. 788, 831-33 (1988) (footnotes modified).
*777If persons and places are subject to unconstitutional searches and seizures that reveal criminal enterprise, two discrete consequences should follow. First, criminal prosecution should be unimpeded by the exclusion of evidence. Illegal searches and seizures have no bearing on the guilt or innocence of an accused. Second, punitive measures should be taken against law enforcement agents who willfully and in bad faith fail to respect fourth amendment constraints. If these procedures are adopted, facts revealed by searches and seizures will be preserved and used in the accountability process. And the parties who disregard fourth amendment imperatives will suffer appropriate punishment.
Many contend that the [United States Supreme] Court has saddled society with a convoluted formula for dealing with fourth amendment violations. It is easy to envision a scenario where the true malefactor receives a windfall and the police who violate the constitutional standard are unperturbed as they continue earning their daily bread. In this scenario, it is the public that receives the lash. [Former Utah Supreme Court Justice and law professor Dallin H.] Oaks persuasively stated: “Only a system with limitless patience with irrationality could tolerate the fact that where there has been one wrong, the defendant’s, he will be punished, but where there have been two wrongs, the defendant’s and the officer’s, both will go free.”1 And to that I add the postscript that only society will be wounded. This undoubtedly explains why, apparently no other nation has emulated our *778folly.21 offer nothing original, but provide this reminder in the hope that a continuing dialogue will eventually wrest the country from a firmly fastened millstone that was manufactured without constitutional cement or labor.
Justice Powell supplied thematic context for this aspect of this Article’s thesis when he wrote:
The costs of applying the exclusionary rule even at trial and on direct review are well known . . . the physical evidence sought to be excluded is typically reliable and often the most probative information bearing on the guilt or innocence of the defendant .... Application of the rule thus deflects the truth-finding process and often frees the guilty. The disparity in particular cases between the error committed by the police officer and the windfall afforded a guilty defendant by application of the rule is contrary to the idea of proportionality that is essential to the concept of justice.3
Truth and criminal accountability are the primary victims of the exclusionary rule. Today, however, a sense of urgency attaches to this particular obstacle to truth. The enormity of the nation’s current drug problem cannot be overstated, and no one knows the true dimension of its present and future cost in lives, human potential, and material well being. The drug industry thrives in the dark and constantly expands the inventory of hiding places essential to the manufacture, transportation, and distribution of illegal drugs. Even our elementary school children suffer from this evil. Society no longer can afford laws akin to fiddlers preoccupied with dissonance while the drug industry runs wild. Evidence of crime, no matter how obtained, must find no haven behind the fourth amendment. Police officers who consider themselves above constitutional restraint must pay a price commensurate with their offense, thereby perpetuating a vigorous respect for our fundamental law.
Aside from the fact that the exclusionary rule fails to deter police impropriety,4 and provides a motive for police perjury,5 its mischief proliferates as a result of expansive judicial interpretation.
*779In summary, the exclusionary rule fails to deter police misconduct, provides incentive for police perjury, and suppresses the most reliable evidence of guilt. It also immunizes criminals from accountability and conviction, punishes society, and frustrates citizens who are growing increasingly weary and impatient over the criminal justice system. I suggest that reason and common sense demand the long overdue elimination of this jurisprudential aberration.

Dallin H. Oaks, Studying the Exclusionary Rule in Search and Seizure, 37 U. Chi. L. Rev. 665, 755 (1970).

Malcolm R. Wilkey, The Exclusionary Rule: Why Suppress Valid Evidence?, 62 Judicature 214, 216 (1978).

Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 489-90 (1976) (citations omitted; emphasis added).

See Oaks, supra note 1, at 755.

Id.