Court Opinion

ID: 9858705
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:35:09.561459+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:55:31.982877
License: Public Domain

BARDGETT, Judge,
concurring in result.
I concur in the principal opinion except as to the issue of removal of the bullet from the defendant, as to which I concur only in result.
The cases bearing upon the issue appear in the principal opinion and the concurring in result opinion of Donnelly, J.
I do not believe Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966) approves any surgery. Schmerber involved a simple blood test and it is obvious from the court’s opinion that it recognized such tests to be so routine and commonplace that common experiences showed there to be virtually no risk, trauma, or pain.
I suggest that no court could realistically say that an incision three-inches deep in one’s buttock is routine and commonplace or that common experience teaches that such wounds involve virtually no risk, trauma, or pain.
The cases subsequent to Schmerber which have approved surgery on a defendant to remove a bullet seem to utilize as their criterion for judging the constitutionality of the operation the predictable danger to the life or health of the defendant. If the *631danger appears to be minimal, then the surgery (search) is held to be reasonable. I do not believe the United States Supreme Court approved the blood test in Schmerber simply on the ground that the test presented virtually no danger to the life or health of the defendant. Danger was a factor considered by the court but the court certainly did not measure the breadth of the Fourth Amendment on that factor alone. It seems to be quite clear that the court viewed a blood test to be so routine and so widely accepted in our society that its performance simply could not be seen as offensive to anyone’s integrity or sensibility and, therefore, it was not unreasonable. In my opinion the same cannot be said of surgery. There is nothing in Schmerber from which one could say it gives implied approval to involuntary surgery. To the contrary, the court went out of its way to explicitly restrict the application of Schmerber when it said at 772, 86 S.Ct. at 1836:
“ . . . It bears repeating, however, that we reach this judgment only on the facts of the present record. The integrity of an individual’s person is a cherished value of our society. That we today hold that the Constitution does not forbid the States minor intrusions into an individual’s body under stringently limited conditions in no way indicates that it permits more substantial intrusions, or intrusions under other conditions.”
It is the integrity of a person’s body that is the cherished value protected by the Fourth Amendment. I believe this value is constitutionally protected even though the surgery will, predictably at least, not threaten the life or health of the person.
Surgery is a “more substantial intrusion” into a person’s body than a hypodermic needle which is used to withdraw a small amount of blood. When the United States Supreme Court says, as it did in Schmerber, that its holding does not authorize a more substantial intrusion that that which is involved in a blood test, I find it impossible to construe that restrictive language as authorizing surgery. I would follow Adams v. State, 260 Ind. 663, 299 N.E.2d 834 (1973), cert. denied sub nom. Indiana v. Adams, 415 U.S. 935, 94 S.Ct. 1452, 39 L.Ed.2d 494 (1974), and hold that involuntary surgery is, per se, a violation of the Fourth Amendment.