Court Opinion

ID: 9449715
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:20:38.403968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:57.360705
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
To “avoid all the evil implications of secret interrogation,” McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 344, 63 S.Ct. 608, 87 L.Ed. 819 (1943), Rule 5(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure requires police to bring an arrested person before a committing magistrate “without unnecessary delay.” Experience shows the temptation to violate this command is so great that police will not voluntarily comply, and the legislature and executive have been either unable or unwilling to employ effective methods to insure compliance.1 To protect the rights of arrested persons, the Supreme Court has found it necessary to exclude evidence obtained through violation of Rule 5(a). McNabb v. United States, supra; Mallory v. United States, 354 U.S. 449, 77 S.Ct. 1356, 1 L.Ed.2d 1479 (1957). The circumstances revealed by the record in this case plainly demonstrate that these rights will be a dead-letter unless courts continue to apply McNabb-Mallory when evidence is obtained in violation of the Rule.
Not only evidence directly obtained by illegal detention of a suspect but also the “fruit” or “product” of information so obtained must be excluded from use at *884trial.2 What is a “fruit” or “product” must be determined in the light of the need to discourage violation of the Rule. In the present case, police detained appellant Smith and questioned him intermittently for forty hours 3 before eliciting both his confession and substantial clues to the identity of an eyewitness. Since the clues thus obtained enabled the police to locate the witness Holman with little difficulty and thereafter obtain his testimony,4 the link between the illegal questioning of Smith and the testimony of Holman was not attenuated.5 To admit Holman’s testimony puts a premium on violation of Rule 5(a) and provides an incentive for continuing to violate it.6
I would therefore reverse Smith’s conviction and order a new trial. Since Holman’s testimony implicated not only Smith but his co-defendant Bowden as well, I would also reverse and order a new trial as to Bowden. Anderson v. United States, 318 U.S. 350, 63 S.Ct. 599, 87 L.Ed. 829 (1943); see MacDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 69 S.Ct. 191, 93 L.Ed. 153 (1948).

. Por a discussion of proposed methods, see Poote, Tort Remedies for Police Violations of Individual Bights, 39 Minn.L, Rev. 493 (1955).

. Killough v. United States, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 305, 315 F.2d 241, 244 (1962) (later confession held inadmissible as the “fruit” of an earlier one); see also concurring opinion of Judge Wright, id. at 316, 315 F.2d at 252; United States v. Smith and Bowden, 31 F.R.D. 553, 563-67 (D.D.C.1962) (Judge Toungdahl’s Memorandum on Motions to Suppress. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963); Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 40 S.Ct. 182, 64 L.Ed. 319 (1920); Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338, 60 S.Ct. 266, 84 L.Ed. 307 (1939).

. Even after obtaining the confession and the information, the police did not take Smith before a commissioner until the following morning (Monday). His detention thus totaled sixty hours.

. After Smith had described Holman, the juvenile Bowden also did so. But the record shows that Bowden’s description resulted from Smith’s and was not an independent lead to Holman. Record, pp. 223-25.

. Nor do I think attenuation is shown by the refusal of Holman, who testified against appellants at trial, to do so at the coroner’s inquest.

. The majority would except the oral testimony of a “living witness” from the “fruit of the poisoned tree” doctrine, on the ground that a witness is an “individual human personality” possessing “attributes of will, perception, memory and volition.” The reasoning seems to be that since these human faculties operate in deciding what evidence the witness will give, the decision is an intervening voluntary act which dissipates the taint of the original illegality. But this contradicts Wong Sun v. United States. In that case, where an “individual human personality” named Tee gave narcotics to the police, the Supreme Court excluded the narcotics as “poisoned fruit” because the police learned of Tee from the illegally-arrested Toy. 371 U.S. 471, 487-488, 83 S.Ct. 407, 417, 9 L.Ed.2d 44 (1963). Thus it appears that the decision to give certain evidence is not the kind of intervening voluntary act of an “individual human personality” that dissipates the taint of original illegality.