Court Opinion

ID: 9460148
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:43:02.188342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:30.218440
License: Public Domain

SPRECHER, Circuit Judge,
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in the remanding of the cause for further proceedings regarding the curtilage question, but I dissent from that part of the majority opinion which holds that the affidavit was an insufficient foundation for the warrant because I believe that the opinion pushes the exclusionary rule to its ultimate “ridiculous lengths.” I believe that this is the first case in which a murdered body is to be suppressed by operation of the rule.
Cardozo stated the extreme case hypothetically in People v. Defore, 242 N.Y. 13, 21, 23-24, 150 N.E. 585, 587, 588 (1926):
“The criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered. . A room is searched against the law, and the body of a murdered man is found. . . . The privacy of the home has been infringed, and the murderer goes free.”
Mr. Chief Justice Burger commented upon Cardozo’s hypothetical horrible extreme while a Circuit Judge in Killough v. United States, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 305, 315 F.2d 241, 259 (1962) (dissenting):
“If indeed the evidence relating to the body of a homicide victim is to be excluded because of the manner of its discovery, we will have achieved the distinction of fulfilling Cardozo’s prophetic warning that, once adopted, the Suppression Doctrine might some day be carried to these ridiculous lengths. Cardozo did not really believe this could happen; he was indulging in a form of judicial hyperbole to make a point. It is inconceivable that judges would go to such lengths ignoring a reasonable balance between individual rights and protection of the public.”
Inasmuch as the majority opinion in Killough did not expressly pass upon the suppression of the body as “fruit of the poisonous tree” and remanded that case for a new trial, Mr. Chief Justice Burger in his dissent in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388, 413, n. 3, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 2013, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971) said that
“What Cardozo suggested as an example of the potentially far-reaching consequences of the suppression doctrine was almost realized in Killough. .” (emphasis added).
It has been fully realized for apparently the first time in the portion of the majority opinion which finds that the district court correctly decided that the affidavit was an insufficient foundation for the warrant and consequently suppressed the body of a murdered girl.
This case involved a particularly brutal murder of a 17-year old girl who “was a friend” of both a father and his son. The son, Joel Saiken, accused his father of the murder and the father, *870Samuel Saiken, accused the son.1 People v. Saiken, 49 Ill.2d 504, 275 N.E.2d 381, 383, 384 (1971). The body was found buried on the father’s farm in Indiana after the son told a police officer the specific place where he had buried it after his father admitted to him that he had killed the girl.
A search warrant for the body was issued by an Indiana Justice of the Peace, based upon a police officer’s affidavit, which in pertinent part recited that
“. . . by virtue of information voluntarily conveyed to him by one JOEL SAIKEN . . ., affiant has good reasons to believe, and does believe, that a dead human body, to-wit: a white, female approximately seventeen (17) years of age is secreted in and about the following real estate in Porter County, Indiana:
[Complete legal description of 20-acre farm]
said real estate being the property of Sam D. and Minnie Saiken, said dead body being secreted in the following place and manner, to-wit: [specifying location behind goose house].”
The body was found by the police, digging at the specified location.
The father was indicted for murder and conspiracy to obstruct justice. A jury returned a verdict of not guilty on the murder charge but found him guilty of obstructing justice. He was sentenced to a term of not less than two nor more than three years. The conviction was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Illinois in People v. Saiken, supra, which concluded at 275 N.E.2d at 386-387:
“In the case at bar, the informant, Joel Saiken, personally saw or perceived the facts asserted. He buried the body. A number of facts are recited as to the location of the body, The remaining question is whether there is a basis presented in the affidavit to suggest that the informant is honest in what he has said. The assertions of the informant — -that he buried and hid a dead body — constitutes an admission of his implication in a crime, which is sufficient to lend credence to what he has said. We believe there was substantial basis for crediting the hearsay information, and that the search warrant was properly issued upon the affidavit.”
However, the district court, in granting Samuel Saiken’s petition for habeas corpus, said in United States ex rel. Saiken v. Elrod, 350 F.Supp. 1156, 1158 (N.D.Ill.1972):
“It is apparent that the Justice of the Peace must have issued the search warrant because of knowledge or information which he obtained outside of the four corners of the document. Either he knew or was told or surmised that the informant was the defendant’s son and therefore may have been reliable. Also he must have known or surmised that the informant was involved in a crime and was making an admission against his interest in the affidavit. Further, he must have surmised that the informant had been on the scene when the body was buried or had received this information from a reliable source, such as his father. None of this appears from the face of the warrant, however, and therefore none of it can properly be considered in determining the reasonableness of the Justice of the Peace’s determination of probable cause.”
The majority opinion finds that the first prong of the Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964) test (“the magistrate must be informed of . some of the underlying circumstances from which the informant concluded that the property *871sought was where the informant claimed it was”) was met:
“The informant supplied details about sex and age of the body, its location, and the description and owner- • ship of the farm. Assuming credibility of the informant, one could readily infer that he either was present at the burial or was relating a report which he had reason to believe was based on observation.”
But the majority finds that the second prong — “some of the underlying circumstances from which the officer concluded that the informant was credible or his information reliable” — is lacking in this case.
We must begin with the observations made in United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 108, 85 S.Ct. 741, 746, 13 L.Ed. 2d 684 (1965):
“These decisions reflect the recognition that the Fourth Amendment’s commands, like all constitutional requirements, are practical and not abstract. If the teachings of the Court’s cases are to be followed and the constitutional policy served, affidavits for search warrants, such as the one involved here, must be tested and interpreted by magistrates and courts in a commonsense and realistic fashion. They are normally drafted by nonlaw-yers in the midst and haste of a criminal investigation. Technical requirements of elaborate specificity once exacted under common law pleadings have no proper place in this area. A grudging or negative attitude by reviewing courts toward warrants will tend to discourage police officers from submitting their evidence to a judicial officer before acting.”
Second, in United States v. Unger, 469 F.2d 1283, 1286-87, n. 4 (7th Cir. 1972), we emphasized the inherent reliability of an eyewitness, victim or “citizen” as opposed to the ordinarily criminally-oriented government informant.
The very fact that a person named Saiken was giving specific information about property owned by two people named Saiken leads to the strong inference that the informant was either an eyewitness, victim or citizen 2 and not a professional informer inasmuch as it would be incredible that the similarity in names was a pure coincidence.
Third, the courts have had no difficulty whatever in finding an informer’s reliability when he or she is a relative of the person who is the target of the search warrant. Parker v. United States, 407 F.2d 540 (9th Cir. 1969); United States v. Brown, 455 F.2d 1201 (9th Cir. 1972). The similarity in names in the present case gives rise to the inference that the informant was related in some way (whether son, father, brother, cousin) to the target of the search warrant. Presumably the reliability of the informer here would have been fully established if Joel had been characterized as “son” or Samuel as “father.”
Finally, I would apply these principles in this case to avoid reaching the ultimate Cardozo horror of permitting a murderer or an obstructor of justice to go free because of a hyper-technical reading of the text within the four corners of a search warrant affidavit.
This case, much more so than the one in which the quotation was first used, “illustrates graphically the monstrous price we pay for the exclusionary rule in which we seem to have imprisoned ourselves.” Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 493, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2051, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971) (Mr, Chief Justice Burger dissenting). '
I would vacate the order granting the writ of habeas corpus.

. In Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 445, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971), involving the “particularly brutal murder” of a 14-year old girl, sweepings taken from the defendant’s car were suppressed but the cause was remanded for a new trial and there was substantial evidence in addition to the sweepings.

. Or a perpetrator or co-perpetrator, in which case an admission of crime carries its own indicia of credibility. United States v. Harris, 403 U.S. 573, 583, 91 S.Ct. 2075, 29 L.Ed.2d 723 (1971).