Coolidge v. New Hampshire/Dissent Burger

Mr. Chief Justice BURGER, dissenting in part and concurring in part.

I join the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice WHITE and in Parts II and III of Mr. Justice BLACK's concurring and dissenting opinion. I also agree with most of what is said in Part I of Mr. Justice BLACK's opinion, but I am not prepared to accept the proposition that the Fifth Amendment requires the exclusion of evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. I join in Part III of Mr. Justice STEWART's opinion.

This case illustrates graphically the monstrous price we pay for the exclusionary rule in which we seem to have imprisoned ourselves. See my dissent in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619.

On the merits of the case I find not the slightest basis in the record to reverse this conviction. Here again the Court reaches out, strains, and distorts rules that were showing some signs of stabilizing, and directs a new trial which will be held more than seven years after the criminal acts charged.

Mr. Justice Stone, of the Minnesota Supreme Court, called the kind of judicial functioning in which the Court indulges today 'bifurcating elements too infinitesimal to be split.'

Mr. Justice BLACK, concurring and dissenting.

After a jury trial in a New Hampshire state court, petitioner was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Holding that certain evidence introduced by the State was seized during an 'unreasonable' search and that the evidence was inadmissible under the judicially created exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment, the majority reverses that conviction. Believing that the search and seizure here was reasonable and that the Fourth Amendment properly construed contains no such exclusionary rule, I dissent.

The relevant facts are these. Pamela Mason, a 14-year-old school girl, lived with her mother and younger brother in Manchester, New Hampshire. She occasionally worked after school as a baby sitter and sought such work by posting a notice on a bulletin board in a local laundromat. On January 13, 1964, she arrived home from school about 4:15 p.m. Pamela's mother told her that a man had called seeking a babysitter for that evening and said that he would call again later. About 4:30 p.m. after Pamela's mother had left for her job as a waitress at a nearby restaurant, Pamela received a phone call. Her younger brother, who answered the call but did not overhear the conversation, later reported that the caller was a man. After the call, Pamela prepared dinner for her brother and herself, then left the house about 6 p.m. Her family never again saw her alive. Eight days later, on January 21, 1964, Pamela's frozen body was discovered in a snowdrift beside an interstate highway a few miles from her home. Her throat had been slashed and she had been shot in the head. Medical evidence showed that she died some time between 8 and 10 p.m. on January 13, the night she left home.

A manhunt ensued. The witnesses informed the police that about 9:30 p.m. on the night of the murder they had stopped to offer assistance to a man in a 1951 Pontiac automobile which was parked beside the interstate highway near the point where the little girl's dead body was later found. Petitioner came under suspicion seven days after the body was discovered when one of his neighbors reported to the police that petitioner had been absent from his home between 5 and 11 p.m. on January 13, the night of the murder. Petitioner owned a 1951 Pontiac automobile that matched the description of the car which the two witnesses reported seeing parked where the girl's body had been found. The police first talked with petitioner at his home on the evening of January 28, fifteen days after the girl was killed, and arranged for him to come to the police station the following Sunday, February 2, 1964. He went to the station that Sunday and answered questions concerning his activities on the night of the murder, telling the police that he had been shopping in a neighboring town at the time the murder was committed. During questioning, petitioner confessed to having committed an unrelated larceny from his employer and was held overnight at the police station in connection with that offense. On the next day, he was permitted to go home.

While petitioner was being questioned at the police station on February 2, two policemen went to petitioner's home to talk with his wife. They asked what firearms the petitioner owned and his wife produced two shotguns and two rifles which she voluntarily offered to the police. Upon examination the University of Rhode Island Criminal Investigation Laboratory concluded that one of the firearms, a Mossberg .22-caliber rifle, had fired the bullet found in the murdered girl's brain.

Petitioner admitted that he was a frequent visitor to the laundromat where Pamela posted her babysitting notice and that he had been there on the night of the murder. The following day a knife belonging to petitioner, which could have inflicted the murdered girl's knife wounds, was found near that laundromat. The police also learned that petitioner had unsuccessfully contacted four different persons before the girl's body had been discovered in an attempt to fabricate an alibi for the night of January 13.

On February 19, 1964, all this evidence was presented to the state attorney general who was authorized under New Hampshire law to issue arrest and search warrants. The attorney general considered the evidence and issued a warrant for petitioner's arrest and four search warrants including a warrant for the seizure and search of petitioner's Pontiac automobile.

On the day the warrants issued, the police went to the petitioner's residence and placed him under arrest. They took charge of his 1951 Pontiac which was parked in plain view in the driveway in front of the house, and two hours later, towed the car to the police station. During the search of the automobile at the station, the police obtained vacuum sweepings of dirt and other fine particles which matched like sweepings taken from the clothes of the murdered girl. Based on the similarity between the sweepings taken from petitioner's automobile and those taken from the girl's clothes, experts who testified at trial concluded that Pamela had been in the petitioner's car. The rifle given to the police by petitioner's wife was also received in evidence.

Petitioner challenges his conviction on the ground that the rifle obtained from his wife and the vacuum sweepings taken from his car were seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment and were improperly admitted at trial. With respect to the rifle voluntarily given to the police by petitioner's wife, the majority holds that it was properly received in evidence. I agree. But the Court reverses petitioner's conviction on the ground that the sweepings taken from his car were seized during an illegal search and for this reason the admission of the sweepings into evidence violated the Fourth Amendment. I dissent.

* The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The Amendment says nothing about consequences. It certainly nowhere provides for the exclusion of evidence as the remedy for violation. The Amendment states: 'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.' No examination of that text can find an exclusionary rule by a mere process of construction. Apparently the first suggestion that the Fourth Amendment somehow embodied a rule of evidence came in Justice Bradley's majority opinion in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886). The holding in that case was that ordinarily a person may not be compelled to produce his private books and papers for use against him as proof of crime. That decision was a sound application of accepted principles of common law and the command of the Fifth Amendment that no person shall be compelled to be a witness against himself. But Justice Bradley apparently preferred to formulate a new exclusionary rule from the Fourth Amendment rather than rely on the already existing exclusionary rule contained in the language of the Fifth Amendment. His opinion indicated that compulsory production of such evidence at trial violated the Fourth Amendment. Mr. Justice Miller, with whom Chief Justice Waite joined, concurred solely on the basis of the Fifth Amendment, and explicitly refused to go along with Justice Bradley's novel reading of the Fourth Amendment. It was not until 1914, some 28 years after Boyd and when no member of the Boyd Court remained, that the Court in Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652, stated that the Fourth Amendment itself barred the admission of evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Weeks opinion made no express confession of a break with the past. But if it was merely a proper reading of the Fourth Amendment, it seems strange that it took this Court nearly 125 years to discover the true meaning of those words. The truth is that the source of the exclusionary rule simply cannot be found in the Fourth Amendment. That Amendment did not when adopted, and does not now, contain any constitutional rule barring the admission of illegally seized evidence.

In striking contrast to the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment states in express, unambiguous terms that no person 'shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.' The Fifth Amendment in and of itself directly and explicitly commands its own exclusionary rule a defendant cannot be compelled to give evidence against himself. Absent congressional action taken pursuant to the Fourth Amendment, if evidence is to be excluded, it must be under the Fifth Amendment, not the Fourth. That was the point so ably made in the concurring opinion of Justice Miller, joined by Chief Justice Waite, in Boyd v. United States, supra, and that was the thrust of my concurring opinion in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 661, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 1694, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961).

The evidence seized by breaking into Mrs. Mapp's house and the search of all her possessions, was excluded from evidence, not by the Fourth Amendment which contains no exclusionary rule, but by the Fifth Amendment which does. The introduction of such evidence compels a man to be a witness against himself, and evidence so compelled must be excluded under the Fifth Amendment, not because the Court says so, but because the Fifth Amendment commands it.

The Fourth Amendment provides a constitutional means by which the Government can act to obtain evidence to be used in criminal prosecutions. The people are obliged to yield to a proper exercise of authority under that Amendment. Evidence properly seized under the Fourth Amendment, of course, is admissible at trial. But nothing in the Fourth Amendment provides that evidence seized in violation of that Amendment must be excluded.

The majority holds that evidence it views as improperly seized in violation of its ever changing concept of the Fourth Amendment is inadmissible. The majority treats the exclusionary rule as a judge-made rule of evidence designed and utilized to enforce the majority's own notions of proper police conduct. The Court today announces its new rules of police procedure in the name of the Fourth Amendment, then holds that evidence seized in violation of the new 'guidelines' is automatically inadmissible at trial. The majority does not purport to rely on the Fifth Amendment to exclude the evidence in this case. Indeed it could not. The majority prefers instead to rely on 'changing times' and the Court's role as it sees it, as the administrator in charge of regulating the contacts of officials with citizens. The majority states that in the absence of a better means of regulation, it applies a court-created rule of evidence.

I readily concede that there is much recent precedent for the majority's present announcement of yet another new set of police operating procedures. By invoking this rulemaking power found not in the words but somewhere in the 'spirit' of the Fourth Amendment, the Court has expanded that Amendment beyond recognition. And each new step is justified as merely a logical extension of the step before.

It is difficult for me to believe the Framers of the Bill of Rights intended that the police be required to prove a defendant's guilt in a 'little trial' before the issuance of a search warrant. But see Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964); Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969). No such proceeding was required before or after the adoption of the Fourth Amendment, until this Court decided Aguilar and Spinelli. Likewise, eavesdroppers were deemed to be competent witnesses in both English and American courts up until this Court in its Fourth Amendment 'rulemaking' capacity undertook to lay down rules for electronic surveillance. Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41, 70, 87 S.Ct. 1873, 1889, 18 L.Ed.2d 1040 (1967) (Black, J., dissenting); Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 364, 88 S.Ct. 507, 518, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (Black, J., dissenting). The reasonableness of a search incident to an arrest, extending to areas under the control of the defendant and areas where evidence may be found, was an established tenet of English common law, and American constitutional law after adoption of the Fourth Amendment-that is, until Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969). The broad, abstract, and ambiguous concept of 'privacy' is now unjustifiably urged as a comprehensive substitute for the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against 'unreasonable searches and seizures.' Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965).

Our Government is founded upon a written Constitution. The draftsmen expressed themselves in careful and measured terms corresponding with the immense importance of the powers delegated to them. The Framers of the Constitution, and the people who adopted it, must be understood to have used words in their natural meaning, and to have intended what they said, the Constitution itself contains the standards by which the seizure of evidence challenged in the present case and the admissibility of that evidence at trial is to be measured in the absence of congressional legislation. It is my conclusion that both the seizure of the rifle offered by petitioner's wife and the seizure of the automobile at the time of petitioner's arrest were consistent with the Fourth Amendment and that the evidence so obtained under the circumstances shown in the record in this case could not be excluded under the Fifth Amendment.

The majority holds that the warrant authorizing the seizure and search of petitioner's automobile was constitutionally defective and void. With respect to search warrants, the Fourth Amendment provides that 'no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.' The majority concedes that the police did show probable cause for the issuance of the warrant. The majority does not contest that the warrant particularly described the place to be searched, and the thing to be seized.

But compliance with state law and the requirements of the Fourth Amendment apparently is not enough. The majority holds that the state attorney general's connection with the investigation automatically rendered the search warrant invalid. In the first place, there is no language in the Fourth Amendment which provides any basis for the disqualification of the state attorney general to act as a magistrate. He is a state official of high office. The Fourth Amendment does not indicate that his position of authority over state law enforcement renders him ineligible to issue warrants upon a showing of probable cause supported by oath or affirmation. The majority's argument proceeds on the 'little trial' theory that the magistrate is to sit as a judge and weigh the evidence and practically determine guilt or innocence before issuing a warrant. There is nothing in the Fourth Amendment to support such a magnified view of the magistrate's authority. The state attorney general was not barred by the Fourth Amendment or any other constitutional provision from issuing the warrant.

In the second place, the New Hampshire Supreme Court held in effect that the state attorney general's participation in the investigation of the case at the time he issued the search warrant was 'harmless error' if it was error at all. I agree. It is difficult to imagine a clearer showing of probable cause. There was no possibility of prejudice because there was no room for discretion. Indeed, it could be said that a refusal to issue a warrant on the showing of probable cause made in this case would have been an abuse of discretion. In light of the showing made by the police, there is no reasonable possibility that the state attorney general's own knowledge of the investigation contributed to the issuance of the warrant. I see no error in the state attorney general's action. But even if there was error, it was harmless beyond reasonable doubt. See Harrington v. California, 395 U.S. 250, 89 S.Ct. 1726, 23 L.Ed.2d 284 (1969); Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967).

Therefore, it is my conclusion that the warrant authorizing the seizure and search of petitioner's automobile was constitutional under the Fourth Amendment, and that the evidence obtained during that search cannot be excluded under the Fifth Amendment. Moreover, I am of the view that, even if the search warrant had not issued, the search in this case nonetheless would have been constitutional under all three of the principles considered and rejected by the majority.

It is important to point out that the automobile itself was evidence and was seized as such. Prior to the seizure the police had been informed by two witnesses that on the night of the murder they had seen an automobile parked near the point where the little girl's dead body was later discovered. Their description of the parked automobile matched petitioner's car. At the time of the seizure the identification of petitioner's automobile by the witnesses as the car they had seen on the night of the murder was yet to be made. The police had good reason to believe that the identification would be an important element of the case against the petitioner. Preservation of the automobile itself as evidence was a reasonable motivation for its seizure. Considered in light of the information in the hands of the New Hampshire police at the time of the seizure, I conclude that the seizure and search were constitutional, even had there been no search warrant, for the following among other reasons.

* First, the seizure of petitioner's automobile was valid as incident to a lawful arrest. The majority concedes that there was probable cause for petitioner's arrest. Upon arriving at petitioner's residence to make that arrest, the police saw petitioner's automobile which they knew fitted the description of the car observed by two witnesses at the place where the murdered girl's body had been found. The police arrested the petitioner and seized the automobile. The majority holds that because the police had to go into petitioner's residence in order to place petitioner under arrest, the contemporaneous seizure of the automobile outside the house was not incident to that arrest. I cannot accept this elevation of form over reason.

After stating that Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969), is inapplicable to this case, the majority goes on to formulate and apply a per se rule reaching far beyond Chimel. To do so, the majority employs a classic non sequitur. Because this Court has held that police arresting a defendant on the street in front of his house cannot go into that house and make a general search, it follows, says the majority, that the police having entered a house to make an arrest cannot step outside the house to seize clearly visible evidence. Even though the police, upon entering a doorway to make a valid arrest, would be authorized under the pre-Chimel law the majority purports to apply, to make a five-hour search of a four-room apartment, see Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145, 67 S.Ct. 1098, 91 L.Ed. 1399 (1947), the majority holds that the police could not step outside the doorway to seize evidence they passed on their way in. The majority reasons that as the doorway locks the policeman out, once entered, it must lock him in.

The test of reasonableness cannot be governed by such arbitrary rules. Each case must be judged on its own particular facts. Here, there was no general exploration, only a direct seizure of important evidence in plain view from both inside as well as outside the house. On the facts of this case, it is my opinion that the seizure of petitioner's automobile was incident to his arrest and was reasonable under the terms of the Fourth Amendment.

Moreover, under our decision last Term in Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970), the police were entitled not only to seize petitioner's car but also to search the car after it had been taken to the police station. The police had probable cause to believe that the car had been used in the commission of the murder and that it contained evidence of the crime. Under Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925), and Chambers v. Maroney, supra, such belief was sufficient justification for the seizure and the search of petitioner's automobile.

The majority reasons that the Chambers and Carroll rationale, based on the mobility of automobiles, is inapplicable here because the petitioner's car could have been placed under guard and, thereby, rendered immobile. But this Court explicitly rejected such reasoning in Chambers: 'For constitutional purposes, we see no difference between on the one hand seizing and holding a car before presenting the probable cause issue to a magistrate and on the other hand carrying out an immediate search without a warrant. * *  * The probable-cause factor still obtained at the station house and so did the mobility of the car *  *  * .' 399 U.S., at 52, 90 S.Ct., at 1981. This Court held there that the delayed search at the station house, as well as an immediate search at the time of seizure, was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

As a second argument for holding that the Chambers decision does not apply to this case, the majority reasons that the evidence could not have been altered or the car moved because petitioner was in custody and his wife was accompanied by police, at least until the police towed the car to the station. But the majority's reasoning depends on two assumptions: first, that the police should, or even could, continue to keep petitioner's wife effectively under house arrest; and, second, that no one else had any motivation to alter or remove the car. I cannot accept the first assumption, nor do I believe that the police acted unreasonably in refusing to accept the second.

I believe the seizure of petitioner's automobile was valid under the well-established right of the police to seize evidence in plain view at the time and place of arrest. The majority concedes that the police were rightfully at petitioner's residence to make a valid arrest at the time of the seizure. To use the majority's words, the 'initial intrusion' which brought the police within plain view of the automobile was legitimate. The majority also concedes that the automobile was 'plainly visible both from the street and from inside the house where Coolidge was actually arrested,' ante, at 448, and that the automobile itself was evidence which the police had probable cause to seize. Ante, at 464. Indeed, the majority appears to concedes that the seizure of petitioner's automobile was valid under the doctrine upholding seizures of evidence in plain view at the scene of arrest, at least as it stood before today. Ante, at 465-466 n. 24.

However, even after conceding that petitioner's automobile itself was evidence of the crime, that the police had probable cause to seize it as such, and that the automobile was in plain view at the time and place of arrest, the majority holds the seizure to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment because the discovery of the automobile was not 'inadvertent.' The majority confidently states: 'What the 'plain view' cases have in common is that the police officer in each of them had a prior justification for an intrusion in the course of which he came inadvertently across a piece of evidence incriminating the accused.' But the prior holdings of this Court not only fail to support the majority statement they flatly contradict it. One need look no further than the cases cited in the majority opinion to discover the invalidity of that assertion.

In one of these cases, Ker v. California 374 U.S. 23, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 10 L.Ed.2d 726 (1963), the police observed the defendant's participation in an illegal marihuana transaction, then went to his apartment to arrest him. After entering the apartment, the police saw and seized a block of marihuana as they placed the defendant under arrest. This Court upheld that seizure on the ground that the police were justifiably in the defendant's apartment to make a valid arrest, there was no search because the evidence was in plain view, and the seizure of such evidence was authorized when incident to a lawful arrest. The discovery of the marihuana there could hardly be described as 'inadvertent.'

In Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 48 S.Ct. 74, 72 L.Ed. 231 (1927), also cited by the majority, the Court upheld the seizure of business records as being incident to a valid arrest for operating an illegal retail whiskey enterprise. The records were discovered in plain view. I cannot say that the seizure of business records from a place of business during the course of an arrest for operating an illegal business was 'inadvertent.'

The majority confuses the historically justified right of the police to seize visible evidence of the crime in open view at the scene of arrest with the 'plain view' exception to the requirement of particular description in search warrants. The majority apparently reasons that unless the seizure made pursuant to authority conferred by a warrant is limited to the particularly described object of seizure, the warrant will become a general writ of assistance. Evidently, as a check on the requirement of particular description in search warrants, the majority announces a new rule that items not named in a warrant cannot be seized unless their discovery was unanticipated or 'inadvertent.' The majority's concern is with the scope of the intrusion authorized by a warrant. But the right to seize items properly subject to seizure because in open view at the time of arrest is quite independent of any power to search for such items pursuant to a warrant. The entry in the present case did not depend for its authority on a search warrant but was concededly authorized by probable cause to effect a valid arrest. The intrusion did not exceed that authority. The intrusion was limited in scope to the circumstances which justified the entry in the first place-the arrest of petitioner. There was no general search; indeed, there was no search at all. The automobile itself was evidence properly subject to seizure and was in open view at the time and place of arrest.

Only rarely can it be said that evidence seized incident to an arrest is truly unexpected or inadvertent. Indeed, if the police officer had no expectation of discovering weapons, contraband, or other evidence, he would make no search. It appears to me that the rule adopted by the Court today, for all practical purposes, abolishes seizure incident to arrest. The majority rejects the test of reasonableness provided in the Fourth Amendment and substitutes a per se rule-if the police could have obtained a warrant and did not, the seizure, no matter how reasonable, is void. But the Fourth Amendment does not require that every search be made pursuant to a warrant. It prohibits only 'unreasonable searches and seizures.' The relevant test is not the reasonableness of the opportunity to procure a warrant, but the reasonableness of the seizure under all the circumstances. The test of reasonableness cannot be fixed by per se rules; each case must be decided on its own facts.

For all the reasons stated above, I believe the seizure and search of petitioner's car was reasonable and, therefore, authorized by the Fourth Amendment. The evidence so obtained violated neither the Fifth Amendment which does contain an exclusionary rule, nor the Fourth Amendment which does not. The jury of petitioner's peers, as conscious as we of the awesome gravity of their decision, heard that evidence and found the petitioner guilty of murder. I cannot in good conscience upset that verdict.

Mr. Justice BLACKMUN joins Mr. Justice BLACK in Parts II and III of this opinion and in that portion of Part I thereof which is to the effect that the Fourth Amendment supports no exclusionary rule.