Beck v. Ohio/Dissent Clark

Mr. Justice CLARK, with whom Mr. Justice BLACK joins, dissenting.

The Supreme Court of Ohio, 175 Ohio St. 73, 74, 191 N.E.2d 825, 827, 'determined' the following facts in this case:

'The Cleveland police had good reason to believe that     defendant was regularly engaged in carrying on a scheme of chance involving clearing-house slips. There was     testimony that he had previously been convicted on that      score. Information was given to the police by an informer     that defendant would be in a certain locality at a certain      time pursuing his unlawful activities. He was found in that     locality, as predicted, driving an automobile. Police     officers stopped the car and searched it, without result. Defendant was then arrested and taken to a police station,     and his clothing was examined, resulting in the discovery and      seizure of the illegal clearing-house slips, which formed the      basis of the charge against him and his subsequent      conviction.'

These are the facts upon which Ohio's highest court based its opinion and they have support in the record.

The syllabus rule, Rule VI, peculiar to that State and of which the majority speaks, was promulgated in 1858, 5 Ohio St. vii, and provides:

'A syllabus of the points decided by the Court in each case,     shall be stated, in writing, by the Judge assigned to deliver      the opinion of the Court, which shall be confined to the      points of law, arising from the facts of the case, that have      been determined by the Court. * *  * ' (Emphasis supplied.)

As my late Brother of revered memory, Mr. Justice Burton of Ohio, said in the Ohio case of Perkins v. Benguet Consol. Mining Co., 342 U.S. 437, 442, n. 3, 72 S.Ct. 413, 417, 96 L.Ed. 485 (1952), '(a) syllabus must be read in the light of the facts in the case, even where brought out in the accompanying opinion rather than in the syllabus itself.' The good Justice was only following Ohio's own cases. See Williamson Heater Co. v. Radich, 128 Ohio St. 124, 190 N.E. 403 (1934); Perkins v. Bright, 109 Ohio St. 14, 19-20, 141 N.E. 689, 690 (1923); In re Poage, 87 Ohio St. 72, 82-83, 100 N.E. 125, 127-128 (1912).

The Court ignores these findings entirely. Where the highest court of a State after detailed and earnest consideration determines the facts and they are reasonably supportable, I would let them stand. And I would, of course, give the same respect to findings of probable cause by United States district courts when approved by United States courts of appeals. Otherwise, this Court will be continually disputing with state and federal courts over the minutiae of facts in every search and seizure case. Especially is this true if the Court disputes the findings sua sponte where, as here, no attack is leveled at them.

Believing that the Ohio Supreme Court's findings, set out above, fully support its conclusion that probable cause existed in this case in support of the arrest and the search incident thereto, I would affirm.