Court Opinion

ID: 9463109
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:58:11.375921+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:02.351526
License: Public Domain

VAN GRAAFEILAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
“Such is the irresistible nature of truth”, said Thomas Paine, “that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.” 1 Nowhere, I submit, is it more important that truth be given the “liberty of appearing” than in the administration of justice. Accordingly, because my brothers continue to draw the tattered curtain of the exclusionary rule ever tighter in the face of truth, I must once again record my dissent.
The Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncement of the exclusionary rule is Stone v. Powell, - U.S. -, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976). There the Court said at p. -, 96 S.Ct. at 3049:
The costs of applying the exclusionary rule even at trial and on direct review are well known: the focus of the trial, and the attention of the participants therein, is diverted from the ultimate question of guilt or innocence that should be the central concern in a criminal proceeding . Application of the rule thus defleets the truthfinding 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. Thus, although the rule is thought to deter unlawful police activity in part through the nurturing of respect for Fourth Amendment values, if applied indiscriminately it may well have the opposite effect of generating disrespect for the law and administration of justice.
In the instant case, the defendant, convicted of perjury, is set free because the testimony of a witness, given freely and without coercion, is stricken from the record. How far have we come from the ennobling statement of Benjamin Disraeli that “Justice is truth in action”? How much farther can we go before we generate the “disrespect for the law and administration of justice” which is the concern of the Supreme Court?
Our nation’s highest court has firmly committed itself to the proposition that statements voluntarily offered as acts of free will may be received despite a primary taint which might otherwise have made them inadmissible. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 486, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963); Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 602, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975).2 In Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 94 S.Ct. 2357, 41 L.Ed.2d 182 (1974), the Supreme Court held that the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine did not require the exclusion of the testimony of a witness who was identified by the defendant while being interrogated without proper Miranda warn*144ings. The Court said at 447 — 448, 94 S.Ct. at 2365:
The statements actually made by respondent to the police, as we have observed, were excluded at trial in accordance with Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U.S. 719, 86 S.Ct. 1772, 16 L.Ed.2d 882 (1966). Whatever deterrent effect on future police conduct the exclusion of those statements may have had, we do not believe it would be significantly augmented by excluding the testimony of the witness Henderson as well.
See also United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 876 n.2, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975).
Although this Circuit has declined to adopt a rule that the testimony of a living witness is per se admissible despite underlying taint, United States v. Kurzer, 534 F.2d 511, 518 (2d Cir. 1976),3 it has recognized that a truly voluntary decision to speak is sufficient to break the causal chain between an illegal search and the statements made. United States v. Mullens, 536 F.2d 997 (2d Cir. 1976). This “attenuation-of-the-taint” doctrine is consistent with the balancing of the “public interest in determination of truth at trial” against the “incremental contribution ... to the protection of Fourth Amendment values by application of the [exclusionary] rule”. Stone v. Powell, supra, -U.S. at -,- n.26, 96 S.Ct. at 3049 n.26.
Here the witness’ “willingness to cooperate with the FBI”4 was clearly established. The interview with Agent Emory that led to her testimony took place fully four months after the Biro incident, in the calm atmosphere of her home and in the presence of her family. Her narration of the events of December 18 came, not in response to questions referring to that date or to Officer Biro, but rather to a general inquiry as to whether she remembered an incident in December. When asked if she would be willing to help the Government, she replied without hesitation in the affirmative, adding that she was studying police science in college and that she was interested in police work. A careful review of the trial transcript- shows her to have been anything but an unwilling witness, a fact highlighted by her statements that she had placed bets with appellant, statements potentially adverse to her penal interests.
The majority appears to concede that this testimony was not coerced and that the witness was not pressured into testifying but finds this not to be dispositive of the issue before us, relying principally on United States v. Karathanos, 531 F.2d 26 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, -U.S. --, 96 S.Ct. 3221, 49 L.Ed.2d 1217 (1976) and United *145States v. Tane, 329 F.2d 848 (2d Cir. 1964). However, in both Karathanos and Tane we carefully pointed out that the testimony precluded was coerced and not the product of an act of free will. In my view, the result reached by the majority can only be attributed to its disenchantment with the attenuation rule itself, not the application of the rule to the facts of this case. Like it or not, this rule has repeatedly been approved by the Supreme Court, and its most recent decisions, such as Stone v. Powell, supra, show no disposition to retreat from such approval.5
In United States v. Janis, -U.S.-, -, 96 S.Ct. 3021, 49 L.Ed.2d 1046 (1976), Mr. Justice Blaekmun, speaking for the majority said:
There comes a point at which courts, consistent with their duty to administer the law, cannot continue to create barriers to law enforcement in the pursuit of a supervisory role that is properly the duty of the Executive and Legislative Branches.
When a court prohibits a willing witness from bringing the truth to light solely because she was employed at a place where a school patrol officer impulsively peeked into an open envelope in plain view before him, I think that point has been reached.
I dissent.

. Foner, The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, 354 (1945).

. Although the Government’s trial memorandum dealt primarily with the independent source issue, it clearly advanced the possibility that “Miss Hennessy might have inculpated the defendant to the Government of her own volition.” The majority correctly points out in a footnote that this argument was set forth in a footnote. However, it must be apparent to the person reading these lines that the contents of footnotes do not escape the attention of careful judges and practitioners.

. There is a marked difference on this point between our holdings and those of the District of Columbia Circuit which should, perhaps, be resolved by the Supreme Court. See, e.g., Brown v. United States, 126 U.S.App.D.C. 134, 375 F.2d 310 (D.C. Cir. 1966), cert. denied, 388 U.S. 915, 87 S.Ct. 2133, 18 L.Ed.2d 1359 (1967); Smith v. United States, 117 U.S.App.D.C. 1, 324 F.2d 879 (D.C. Cir. 1963), cert. denied, 377 U.S. 954, 84 S.Ct. 1632, 12 L.Ed.2d 498 (1964). In Smith, at 881, then Judge Burger said:
Here no confessions or utterances of the appellants were used against them; tangible evidence obtained from appellants, such as the victim’s watch, was suppressed along with the confessions. But a witness is not an inanimate object which like contraband narcotics, a pistol or stolen goods, “speak for themselves.” The proffer of a living witness is not to be mechanically equated with the proffer of inanimate evidentiary objects illegally seized. The fact that the name of a potential witness is disclosed to police is of no evidentiary significance, per se, since the living witness is an individual human personality whose attributes of will, perception, memory and volition interact to determine what testimony he will give. The uniqueness of this human process distinguishes the evidentiary character of a witness from the relative immutability of inanimate evidence. (Footnotes omitted).

. Assuming that the quoted language from Judge Gagliardi’s opinion cannot be construed to be a finding concerning the state of mind of the witness, “the trial resulted in a record of amply sufficient detail and depth from which the determination may be made.” Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 604, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 2262, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975).

. In Stone, -U.S. at- n.26, 96 S.Ct. 3037 n.6. Mr. Justice Powell, citing Brown v. Illinois, supra, and Wong Sun v. United States, supra, stated that the “attenuation-of-the-taint” doctrine is consistent with the balancing approach to the exclusionary rule, the approach advocated by that Court.