Court Opinion

ID: 9450421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:47:02.305963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:18.675757
License: Public Domain

ALDRICH, Chief Judge
(concurring).
Senior Judge Woodbury and I cannot subscribe to Judge Wyzanski’s opinion. Particularly we do not see the difficulties to which he refers, or the need, or the correctness, of tailoring 26 U.S.C. § 7302 *174to make it say what to us it quite obviously does not. The issue here is a narrow one. It is not whether Congress can declare without limitation that no property rights exist in property, here currency, intended for unlawful use, but is whether the government should be permitted to enforce a forfeiture (§ 7321) when it discovered and seized that money only by virtue of a direct invasion of Berkowitz’s constitutional rights. We think the answer clear, not because it would be unauthorized or unconstitutional, but because it would be attaching too great a premium upon unconstitutional conduct in this instance.
It is, of course, true that Weeks v. United States, 1914, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652, and other cases barring the use of illegally seized evidence, have been determined to rest upon constitutional grounds. Nonetheless, even as recently as Mapp v. Ohio, 1961, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081, the court appears to consider that the use of the evidence is not unconstitutional per se, but that deterrence is required to negate the effect of the unconstitutional seizure. In many ways this may seem a distinction without a difference, but we think not altogether so. We have held in forfeiture cases that the illegality of a seizure, without warrant, of personalty left unattended on a public street, where knowledge of its existence, and of its illegal character or, more exactly, use, was discovered by entirely lawful means, did not sufficiently taint the government’s claim. Interbartolo v. United States, 1 Cir., 1962, 303 F.2d 34.1 It would seem to us that even if the government’s unconstitutional conduct went to the heart of the apprehension, as in the case at bar, principles of deterrence should not prevent forfeiture of property the possession of which is per se contrary to public policy, as, for example, counterfeiting plates, or narcotics. Cf. United States v. Jeffers, 1951, 342 U.S. 48, 54, 72 S.Ct. 93, 96 L.Ed. 59. We do not ordinarily think of statutes specifying acts to be criminal as containing an implied proviso that no illegality exists if the discovery was unconstitutionally effected. We hold against the government in the present case not by a process of interpretation, but because under the circumstances shown it should not, and clearly should not, be permitted to assert its statutory claim.

. Whether this ease was correctly decided or not, it represents the general view of the circuits. See United States v. $1,058 in U. S. Currency, 3 Cir., 1963, 323 F.2d 211.