Court Opinion

ID: 9463574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:10:08.990451+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:10.437382
License: Public Domain

TONE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
While I concur in the result reached by the court, I reach that result by a narrower path and therefore separately state my views.
The defendant was not faced with the dilemma of either not filing and being prosecuted for that omission or filing and being prosecuted for tax fraud. If the seized money was 1971 income he could have included it and declined to state its source if such a statement would incriminate him. He could also, I believe, have declined to state even the amount of his income if that fact alone might have tended to incriminate him, of. Garner v. United States, 424 U.S. 648, 96 S.Ct. 1178, 1186-1187, 47 L.Ed.2d 370 (1976), and California v. Byers, 402 U.S. 424, 439-442, 91 S.Ct. 1535, 29 L.Ed.2d 9 (1971) (Harlan, J., concurring), although it is doubtful that such a possibility existed in view of the dismissal of the state charges. The one course that was not open to defendant was to make a false statement in his income tax return.
If he did make a false statement, which remains to be determined, he is in the same position as a witness who testifies falsely. Illegally obtained evidence that would not otherwise be admissible, becomes admissible for the purpose of proving the falsity of the statement under oath. Walder v. United States, 347 U.S. 62, 74 S.Ct. 354, 98 L.Ed. 503 (1954); Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 91 S.Ct. 643, 28 L.Ed.2d 1 (1971); Oregon v. Hass, 420 U.S. 714, 95 S.Ct. 1215, 43 L.Ed.2d 570 (1975). The illegality of the seizure does not allow him to commit with impunity the new crime of perjury or false statement.
Because the defendant herd did. not have immunity when he filed.his rdturn, United States v. Turk, 526 F.2d 654 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 823, 97 S.Ct. 74, 50 L.Ed.2d 84 (1976), and United States v. Raftery, 534 F.2d 854 (9th Cir. 1976), in each of which the defendant gave grand jury testimony under a grant of immunity, are not precisely in point.* These cases do, however, extend the Walder-Harris-Hass doctrine to a criminal prosecution for the false-statement offense.
The balancing approach required by United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 94 S.Ct. 613, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974), is consistent with this analysis. Inasmuch as “the primary, if not the sole, function of the exclusionary rule is deterrence,” United States v. Janis, 428 U.S. 433, 96 S.Ct. 3021, 3033 n. 34, 49 L.Ed.2d 1046 (1976), there is as little to be said for the need to extend that rule to the facts here as there was in Walder, Harris, or Hass. The rule has already had its deterrent effect when the state criminal charges resulting from the illegal search and seizure are aborted. The social value of any further deterrent effect that would result from applying the rule to bar the use of the evidence to prove the falsity of a later statement made under the penalties of perjury is so attenuated and conjectural as to be entitled to little weight. On the other side of the scale, extending the rule as defendant advocates would not only have the usual truth-suppressing effect, see El-kins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 216, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669 (1960), but would encourage the commission of a future crime of false statement, thus converting the rule into a “personal constitutional right” of the defendant, which, Calandra tells us, it is not.

 In Raftery the evidence was suppressed due to a violation of a California statutory provision concerning the special requirements of nighttime searches, not the Fourth Amendment. Raftery, supra, 534 F.2d at 855; cf. Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 245-249, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669 (1960) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting).