Court Opinion

ID: 9537636
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:20:42.668533+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:56:50.864208
License: Public Domain

Ringold, J.
(concurring)—The opinion of the court should not be read in any way as encouraging or condoning the actions of the officers in this case. Forgery of the arrest warrant was a crime, RCW 9A.60.020. Despite the officers' concern, there were many other ruses that could be used without forging a court document and compromising the court system. As stated so eloquently by Justice Brandéis:
Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, 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.
Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 485, 72 L. Ed. 944, 48 S. Ct. 564, 66 A.L.R. 376 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
The entry gained here, however, did not violate Myers' due process rights. The forged arrest warrant was irrelevant to the search. It cannot be said nor does the defendant argue that the evidence seized was the fruit of the forged warrant. Myers' motion to suppress the evidence was therefore properly denied.
The proper remedy in this case is not to free the equally culpable defendant, but to prosecute the police. See *552Hampton v. United States, 425 U.S. 484, 48 L. Ed. 2d 113, 96 S. Ct. 1646 (1976).
Reconsideration denied September 20, 1983.
Review granted by Supreme Court January 30, 1984.