Court Opinion

ID: 9518650
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:58:00.125252+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:29:42.299493
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
concurring in result.
When appellant arrived at the police station he was taken to an interrogation room and was joined there by a detective. It soon was evident that appellant was a juvenile and could not be questioned in the absence of a conference with an adult relative or lawyer. Efforts were then made to contact appellant's brother. During this process, the detective received a command from higher up to take appellant's fingerprints. Appellant testified that he was told that he would not be permitted to leave until he provided his prints. The detective testified that if appellant had attempted to leave at that time he would have been stopped. This directive and the detention which it involved constituted a potential Fourth Amendment violation. It is, I believe, helpful to separate it from the events which occurred on the street, the investigative stop, the request to travel to the police station, appellant's assent to go in for questioning, his transportation there, and his placement in an interrogation room. The initial intrusion on the street and the fingerprinting are the two levels involving potential Fourth Amendment violations which are present whenever physical evidence is obtained from a person. United States v. Dionisio, (1973) 410 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 764, 35 L.Ed.2d 67. The initial stopping of appellant on the street is like the intrusion which was sanctioned in Terry v. Ohio, (1968) 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, and unlike the situation condemned in Davis v. Mississippi, (1969) 394 U.S. 721, 89 S.Ct. 1394, 22 L.Ed.2d 676, where a large number of young black males were seized and subjected to fingerprinting where no specific description of a suspect was available. The transportation of appellant to the police station and his placement in an interrogation room for a session of interrogation is justified by appellant's free and voluntary consent. That this consent was more than a mere submission to lawful authority is evident from appellant's conditioning of his consent upon being transported in an unmarked vehicle.
On the basis of the foregoing the conclusion is warranted on this record that appellant's investigative detention in the interrogation room at that point in time when he received the command to give his prints was constitutional. The next question is whether the further detention or restraint for printing was a constitutional violation in itself. The answer must be in the negative in light of the similar situation ad*960dressed in United States v. Dionisio, supra. There a man received a subpoena to appear before a grand jury. He was told that he was a target of the investigation, and ordered to go to a particular place and provide a voice exemplar. He refused and was ordered by a court to comply; he again refused and was found in contempt. The finding was upheld. In the course of doing so, the United States Supreme Court reasoned that at that point in time when the man was ordered to supply the voice exemplars, he was in lawful and constitutional detention or restraint, and rejected the argument that the order to supply the voice exemplars was a further intrusion requiring justification under the Fourth Amendment. A police order to provide prints is, I judge, equal in measure for these purposes to the grand jury order, enforceable by exercise of court contempt powers, to provide voice exemplars. I therefore agree that the prints and their product were admissible, as is concluded in Part II of the majority opinion.