Court Opinion

ID: 9531721
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:14:10.328166+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:34.295834
License: Public Domain

WAHL, Justice
(dissenting).
I must respectfully dissent from the holding of the majority opinion that the evidence of the defendant’s resistance to the officers’ unconstitutional use of force in seizing him is not the “fruit of the poisonous tree” and therefore need not be suppressed. See generally Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 491, 83 S.Ct. 407, 419, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). Exploitation of illegal police conduct has become the benchmark test of what evidence will or will not be excluded following a Fourth Amendment violation. Wong Sun, 371 U.S. at 488, 83 S.Ct. at 417. The majority concludes, without analysis, that this case involves no exploitation of the unconstitutional use of force to obtain evidence.1 Such a conclusion defies not only constitutional principles but flies in the face of common sense.
The memorandum of the trial court who heard evidence makes clear that the defendant’s violent acts came, if at all, as a direct response to the unconstitutional violence of the police. Such a response is a realistic possibility whenever the police use excessive force. Violence begets violence. When resistance to an unconstitutional use of force is not only direct but predictable that resistance can only be considered a directly caused product of the excessive force.2
Defendant’s attack on the officers, directly related to the unconstitutional seizure, is in what Professor LaFave calls the simplest category of exclusionary rule cases where “the challenged evidence is quite clearly ‘direct’ or ‘primary’ in its relationship” to the unconstitutional conduct. 4 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure, § 11.4 at 369 (2d ed. 1987). Evidence of this type, according to LaFave, ought to be suppressed. Id.
The majority perceives a clear “per se” rule against suppression in our previous decisions, stating “[t]his court has rejected the contention that evidence of a defendant’s resistance to an illegal arrest must be suppressed as forbidden fruit of a Fourth Amendment violation by the police.” While this statement may be an accurate summary of our past cases, it does not free us of the responsibility to analyze this case on its own merits. The United States Supreme Court, in a somewhat different fact situation, has rejected the use of per se tests to determine if evidence was obtained by exploitation of an underlying constitutional violation. See Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 603, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 2261, 45 L.Ed. 2d 416 (1975). It follows from Brown that our previous decisions may be used as a guide in this case but not as the source of a per se rule.
*93The provocativeness of the police misconduct in the case before us distinguishes it from those cases cited by the majority to support its “per se” rule. Not one of those cases involved the unconstitutional use of violence by the police. See State v. Kittleson, 305 N.W.2d 787, 789 (Minn.1981) (after giving notice of desire to speak with defendant police entered room without warrant); State v. Bale, 267 N.W.2d 730, 732 (Minn.1978) (initial warrantless arrest for misdemeanor traffic offense assumed illegal); State v. Combs, 394 N.W.2d 567, 569 (Minn.App.1986) (automobile stop made without particularized, objective basis) (rev’d. but suppression ruling approved by State v. Combs, 398 N.W.2d 563, 565 n. 2 (Minn.1987); Commonwealth v. Saia, 372 Mass. 53, 360 N.E.2d 329, 330, 332 (1977) (warrantless entry after notice assumed illegal). None of the underlying unconstitutional acts in these cases could be predicted to result in violence.
Contrary to the majority’s assertion, Professor LaFave acknowledges that suppression of a suspect’s violent resistance may be required when it is the direct result of the police misconduct. LaFave, supra, § 11.4(j), at 461; see also § 5.1(d), at 413. “It is possible, * * * that the nature of a particular Fourth Amendment violation will be such that defensive action by the victim [suspect] can fairly be characterized as exploitation.” LaFave, supra, § 11.4(j), at 461 (emphasis added). The New York Court of Appeals reached a similar conclusion in the case of People v. Cantor, 36 N.Y.2d 106, 114, 365 N.Y.S.2d 509, 517, 324 N.E.2d 872, 878 (1975). The defendant in Cantor was charged with reckless endangerment as well as with unlawful possession of a weapon. The Cantor court suppressed the evidence obtained by the unconstitutional seizure.
It seems a proposition almost too simple to need stating, that where certain types of unconstitutional police misconduct are easily executed and reasonably likely to produce new evidence, that type of misconduct may be exploited and therefore the evidence such exploitation produces must be excluded in order to deter such misconduct. See LaFave, supra, § 11.4(j), at 459-460. In the case before us, Berg’s defensive response to the bloody beating of his head, while pinned beneath the bed, by the police officers was evidence obtained by exploitation because the officers knew their excessive use of force would elicit just such a response. Our constitution was designed to limit the excesses of government power, not to aid in making our citizens victims of that excess. We would be well advised to reconsider the lessons articulated in Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 222-223, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 1446-47, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669 (1960):
But there is another consideration— the imperative of judicial integrity. It was of this that Mr. Justice Holmes and Mr. Justice Brandéis so eloquently spoke in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, at pages 469, 471, 48 S.Ct. 564, at pages 569, 570, 72 L.Ed. 944, more than 30 years ago. “For those who agree with me,” said Mr. Justice Holmes, “no distinction can be taken between the government as prosecutor and the government as judge.” * * * * “In a government of laws,” said Mr. Justice Brandéis, “existence of the government will be imperilled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face.” [Citations omitted].
I would affirm the decision of the court of appeals and the decision of the trial court.

. The concern of the majority that a future case might involve more complex facts, while a matter for concern, is irrelevant in the relatively simple case before us.

. The majority’s assertion that causation is not the determinative factor when deciding if evidence should be suppressed, while technically correct, somewhat misses the point. The more direct the causal link between the police misconduct and the relevant evidence is the more predictable it becomes that such misconduct will lead to the discovery of such evidence. The more predictable it is that such evidence will be produced, the more likely it is that the police will exploit such misconduct to obtain the desired evidence.