Court Opinion

ID: 9684147
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:48:02.612506+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:53.280231
License: Public Domain

DONNELLY, Judge,
dissenting.
Article I, § 15 of the Constitution of Missouri provides “[t]hat the people shall be secure in their persons, papers, home and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures....”
In Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886), and Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914), the United States Supreme Court articulated The Exclusionary Rule (which holds that evidence obtained by illegal search is not admissible at trial when timely objection is made).
In State v. Owens, 302 Mo. 348, 259 S.W. 100 (banc 1924), a case which did not involve the United States Constitution, The Exclusionary Rule was adopted as Missouri law.
Today, the principal opinion confirms that the Owens rule was “implicitly modified” in a footnote in Sweeney.
This may be the most cavalier treatment ever given by this Court to a question of such importance.
In such circumstance, I make two tentative observations:
(1) that a search is unreasonable only when it is pretextual; and
(2) that we should overrule Owens and wash our hands of The Exclusionary Rule except as it may implicate the provision “[t]hat no person shall be compelled to *149testify against himself in a criminal cause-” Mo. Const, art. I, § 19.
I dissent.