Court Opinion

ID: 9664152
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:04:44.831285+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:02.618491
License: Public Domain

Heffernan, J.
(dissenting). The police practice which led to the search of Betty Veronica Jean Guy is revealed by the testimony of a policewoman at the hearing on the motion to suppress evidence. The following exchange took place between defense counsel and the police witness:
“Q. Now, why did you search her privates ?
“A. It’s a routine search of female prisoners.
“Q. You search all the privates of all female prisoners.
“A. Yes, I do.”
Police Officer Randa was asked why this particular defendant was directed to be searched in the bathroom by the policewoman. He answered, “This is common to make a detailed custodial search for — fruits or instru-mentalities of crime.” When Officer Randa was asked whether the policewoman was given directions as to “how or where this defendant should be searched,” he answered, “No, I just told the policewoman to search her and these policewomen know how to search her.”
*93The record reveals a common police practice of searching the body cavities of female prisoners. The attorney general defended this unconstitutional intrusion and stated that it was permissible as a search incident to arrest or as a routine custodial search at the time of booking.
I applaud the majority opinion in its refusal to justify the search on the basis urged by the attorney general’s office. Also, the trial judge sternly and properly admonished the Milwaukee police department, stating:
“I think that the police department should be advised that they are not to have people completely undressed and examine the orifices of their body without probable cause as a routine matter, absolutely not acceptable under constitutional law . . .
The trial judge, while concluding that the evidence in this case should not be suppressed, said:
“I point out to the police department particularly, beware of going beyond this particular area, I am not making any kind of a rule of law that says that you can go into the orifices of a person’s body under any and all circumstances, you have got to start with probable cause, you have got to start with search incident of arrest to protect evidence, you have got to have the time element involved where you cannot get to a court without danger of destroying the evidence and you must use sanitary conditions and good medical procedures.”
I agree with the opinion of this court and the trial court in their holding that the search must be justified by a finding of probable cause. I disagree with the finding that probable cause was demonstrated. The majority opinion overlooks the essential elements that must be demonstrated to show probable cause and which are required by Spinelli v. United States (1969), 393 U. S. 410, 89 Sup. Ct. 584, 21 L. Ed. 2d 637. The same omission was pointed out in the dissent to Molina v. State (1972), 53 Wis. 2d 662, 193 N. W. 2d 874. In my dissent to that case and to which I adhere, it was stated:
*94“There must be evidence that the person giving the information was of proved reliability and there must, be a showing of the underlying circumstances revealing how the informer received his information, so that the reliability of the informant’s tip can be appraised.” (P. 686)
Spinelli, supra, page 415, points out that a magistrate fails in his constitutional duty if in determining probable cause he relies upon an informer whose reliability has not been demonstrated in accordance with the tests of Aguilar v. Texas (1964), 378 U. S. 108, 84 Sup. Ct. 1509, 12 L. Ed. 2d 723, and of Spinelli, supra. The twofold test must be satisfied.
A review of the record is appropriate. Betty Guy, on October 16, 1970, in her home sold cocaine to a plainclothes member of the vice squad. She has been separately charged and convicted for that sale, and that conviction is not at issue in the present appeal. The officer made the purchase in Betty Guy’s bedroom. He asked her if she had “horse” (heroin). She said no that she only had “coke” (cocaine). The packet of cocaine was taken by Betty Guy from under the pillow of her bed. She asked the officer if he wanted to “shoot it” there. He noticed various narcotics paraphernalia in the bedroom at the time. A warrant for the sale of cocaine was issued, and on December 5, 1970, police officers armed with the warrant broke down the door of the apartment and made the arrest. The defendant was clothed only in a nightgown and pantyhose at the time of the arrest at approximately noon on December 5th. She was immediately taken to the bathroom, where she was ordered to strip, bend over, and spread her buttocks. Although a policewoman attempted to peer into her vagina, the bathroom was small, the lighting poor, and, since the defendant was seven months pregnant, she was unable to bend over very far. When she was taken to the Safety Building, another examination was made. One police*95woman held a flashlight while the defendant leaned on a chair and the other policewoman, wearing rubber gloves, spread the defendant’s buttocks. It was at this time that a plastic bag, later determined to contain heroin, was found in the defendant’s vagina.
The defendant was charged with the possession of heroin and prior to a trial to the court, a motion was brought to suppress the evidence obtained in the course of the search. The trial judge, as stated above, immediately refused to accede to the prosecutor’s contention that a body-cavity search could be justified as a routine search incident to arrest or as part of a custodial search upon incarceration. He insisted that probable cause be shown and, on the evidence before him, made the finding that probable cause existed for the search of Betty Guy’s privates in the police station.
I disagree with his conclusion that probable cause was shown. The majority opinion and the trial judge underpin their finding of probable cause on the fact that Betty Guy had been known to be a heroin user and that there had been prior information that she had concealed narcotics in her vaginal opening. This evidence was introduced by the testimony of Officer Randa of the Milwaukee police department’s vice squad. The trial judge characterized Randa’s testimony as “weak,” but nevertheless he based his findings and conclusion upon such testimony. In my opinion, the testimony was so weak that it could not constitutionally support the inferences necessary to make a finding of probable cause. Officer Randa stated that he had been told in 1965 or 1966 that Betty Guy had concealed heroin in her vagina. In response to questioning, he stated that he had known the informer for several years and that he considered him reliable. While this court has repeatedly said that the identity of an informer need not be revealed, there must be sufficient evidence to show why he was reliable and how he obtained the information upon which *96the particular search was based. The trial judge made a specific finding that there was no evidence to show how the unnamed informer had obtained his information. On the face of the record, under the rule of Spinelli and Aguilar, a finding of probable cause constitutionally could not have been made. The rule was restated by this court in State v. Paszek (1971), 50 Wis. 2d 619, 627, 184 N. W. 2d 836:
“. . . the officer must establish: (1) The underlying circumstances from which he concludes that the informant is reliable; and (2) that the underlying circumstances or manner in which the informant obtained his information is reliable.”
The majority opinion rests on the officer’s characterization of the informant as “reliable” and completely ignores the second criterion of the Aguilar-Spinelli test. The majority opinion bases the finding of probable cause on whether a reasonable police officer would believe, under the circumstances, that a certain fact or situation existed. This is exactly what is not reasonable and permissible where the information is based upon a tip from an informer, unless that information meets the Aguilar test. Johnson v. United States (1948), 383 U. S. 10, 14, 68 Sup. Ct. 367, 92 L. Ed. 436, and Spinelli, supra, page 415, point out that the tests to be applied to an informant’s information are “designed to implement the long-standing principle that probable cause must be determined by a ‘neutral and detached magistrate’ and not by ‘the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.’ ”
It appears from the record that the trial judge found specifically that there was no evidence to show how the informer obtained his information. Accordingly, the search must, as a matter of law, be suppressed. Moreover, it is apparent that the probative value of information, no matter how derived, was insufficient. Officer *97Randa testified that he had been told by an informer approximately five years before that Betty Guy secreted heroin in her vagina. This is hardly the contemporaneity required for a probable-cause search. 4 Wharton, Criminal Law and Procedure (Anderson ed., 1957), p. 162, sec. 1542, citing Sgro v. United States (1932), 287 U. S. 206, 53 Sup. Ct. 138, 77 L. Ed. 260, 85 A. L. R. 108; State v. Jaeger (1928), 196 Wis. 99, 101, 219 N. W. 281.
Although the fact was true in 1965, its probative value to support a search in 1970 was zero.
It should also be pointed out that Officer Randa stated that Betty Guy had been searched, presumably in the same way, on several occasions between 1965 and 1970. His testimony is devoid of any showing that the defendant had on those occasions marsupially concealed evidence in her vagina. Certainly there is no evidence to show that this was her usual modus operandi.
The majority opinion correctly states that there was overwhelming independent evidence that Betty Guy was a drug user and a user of heroin. Reliance also is placed upon these facts to support a finding of probable cause. These facts do not serve to underpin the assumption that she concealed heroin in a body cavity. The majority can only support its position by assuming that all female drug users, to a reasonable probability, conceal drugs in their body orifices. I know of no facts that would justify a court to make that assumption as a matter of judicial notice.
The information which is relied upon here is of the type condemned in Spinelli, page 416: “. . . a casual rumor circulating in the underworld or an accusation based merely on an individual’s general reputation.” Certainly, the information was not of the nature and quality that should have induced an experienced vice squad officer, as Randa clearly was, on his own initiative to authorize this kind of a search.
*98Such searches under ordinary circumstances, and under the facts here, should be authorized only by a magistrate who impartially and neutrally can appraise the information and make a judicial determination of probable cause. I would adhere to the admonitions of the American Law Institute, A Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure (Proposed Official Draft No. 1), April 10, 1972. Therein, in discussing body cavity searches, the commentary to the code, page 186, states:
“Searches of the type described in this Subsection are so personally intrusive and uncomfortable that ordinarily they should not be permitted on the decision of the officer alone. Unlike the ordinary application for a search warrant, in which the magistrate is seldom in a position to question effectively the police showing, an application for a warrant for a special search of the body’s interior presents issues of necessity and propriety on which the magistrate’s review of police judgment may be worthwhile.”
In the instant case there was ample opportunity for the interposition of a magistrate’s determination of probable cause prior to the police search. Betty Guy was in custody during the daylight hours of December 5th for almost an hour before the search at the police station was made. The police officer may well have suspected that drugs might be concealed in the prisoner’s body orifices, but there was ample time to secure a judicial determination of ' the necessity and propriety of the search. If the same police energy had been used to keep Betty Guy under surveillance as was used to make the examination, the chances that she could have disposed of the evidence while a search warrant was sought would be minimal. The search here without a warrant cannot be defended on the basis that an immediate search was necessary to preserve the evidence.
A search must be justified on the basis of information in the hands of the police or in the hands of a magistrate *99prior to the time the search is made. It cannot be justified post hoc because the search in fact revealed what was suspected. While the majority opinion is commendable in that it makes clear that a search of this type can be made only upon probable cause and effectively shuts off the practice of making these searches a routine for all female prisoners, it is deplorable to the extent that it ex post facto justifies the search because the evidence has in fact been produced.
There is always the danger of the destruction of evidence. That danger in the instant ease, though minimal, existed. The United States Supreme Court addressed itself to that argument in Schmerber v. California (1966), 384 U. S. 757, 769, 770, 86 Sup. Ct. 1826, 16 L. Ed. 2d 908, when it stated:
“Whatever the validity of these considerations in general, they have little applicability with respect to searches involving intrusions beyond the body’s surface. The interests in human dignity and privacy which the Fourth Amendment protects forbid any such intrusions on the mere chance that desired evidence might be obtained. In the absence of a clear indication that in fact such evidence will be found, these fundamental human interests require law officers to suffer the risk that such evidence may disappear unless there is an immediate search.”
While Schmerber permitted the taking of a blood sample as an incident to the arrest, that court pointed out that probable cause, i.e., the defendant’s intoxicated appearance, was apparent and furnished a “clear indication” that the taking of a blood sample would probably reveal a high blood alcohol content. The supreme court was careful to point out that the Schmerber opinion extended only to the blood-test situation. It cautioned against other types of body searches and emphasized that the blood sample was taken by a physician in a hospital environment according to accepted medical practice:
*100“We are thus not presented with the serious questions which would arise if a search involving use of a medical technique, even of the most rudimentary sort, were made by other than medical personnel or in other than a medical environment — for example, if it were administered by police in the privacy of the stationhouse.” Schmerber, supra, pages 771, 772. (Emphasis supplied.)
While we need not reach the point in the instant case, because probable cause for the search does not exist, the vaginal examination of a woman seven months pregnant by nonmedical personnel would appear to be of dubious propriety. Propriety, however, and the dignity of man were apparently farthest from the considerations of the assistant district attorney who defended this police conduct on the trial level. When the trial judge raised the question of the violation of human dignity, the assistant district attorney responded, referring to the fact that Betty Guy was not fully clothed when she was taken into custody at noon on December 5, 1970:
“Now, if she had enough stamina or guts or heart or lack of moral conscience to stand on the front porch during the noon hour in a nightgown and panties, I don’t think there is any greater violation of her right to decency to be disrobed in a bathroom of those things in front of two women, two police officers . . . .”
It is deplorable when public authorities attempt to tailor their standard of conduct to that of those they prosecute as criminals. Whatever may be a defendant’s moral standards, it is to be hoped that the standards of the police and prosecution are higher than those whom they seek to apprehend as disrupters of public order and violators of decency. Mr. Justice Brennan, speaking for the majority in Schmerber, page 772, aptly stated:
“The integrity of an individual’s person is a cherished value of our society. That we today hold that the Constitution does not forbid the States minor intrusions into an individual’s body under stringently limited condi*101tions in no way indicates that it permits more substantial intrusions, or intrusions under other conditions.” (Emphasis supplied.)
I would hold that the search herein was without probable cause and the fruits of that search should be suppressed. I would also conclude that searches of this nature, except under circumstances far more exigent than presented here, should be conducted only after probable cause has been determined by a neutral magistrate.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Wilkie joins in this dissent.