James v. Illinois

Citation493 U.S. 307,107 L.Ed.2d 676,110 S.Ct. 648
Decision Date10 January 1990
Docket NumberNo. 88-6075,88-6075
PartiesDarryl JAMES, Petitioner v. ILLINOIS
CourtUnited States Supreme Court
Syllabus

The day after a shooting which left one of a group of eight boys dead and another seriously injured, police took petitioner James into custody as a suspect. James, who then had black curly hair, admitted under police questioning that the previous day his hair had been reddish brown, long, and combed straight back, and that he had just dyed and curled it in order to change his appearance. After James was indicted for murder and attempted murder, the trial court sustained his motion to suppress the statements about his hair as fruit of an unlawful arrest. At trial, five members of the group of boys testified that the shooter had slicked-back, shoulder-length, reddish hair, and that they had seen James several weeks earlier with hair that color and style. Each boy identified James as the shooter even though at trial he had black hair worn in a "natural" style. James did not testify in his defense, but called one Henderson, who testified that on the day of the shooting James had had black hair. The court permitted the State to introduce James' illegally obtained statements to impeach Henderson's testimony. James was convicted on both counts. The Illinois Appellate Court reversed the convictions on the ground that the exclusionary rule barred the admission of the illegally obtained statements for the purpose of impeaching a defense witness' testimony. The State Supreme Court reversed, reasoning that the impeachment exception to the exclusionary rule—which permits the prosecution to introduce illegally obtained evidence to impeach the defendant's own testimony—should be expanded to include the testimony of other defense witnesses in order to deter the defendant from engaging in perjury "by proxy."

Held: The State Supreme Court erred in expanding the impeachment exception to encompass the testimony of all defense witnesses. Such expansion would frustrate rather than further the purposes underlying the exclusionary rule. The truth seeking rationale supporting the impeachment of defendants does not apply with equal force to other witnesses. The State Supreme Court's "perjury by proxy" premise is suspect, since the threat of a criminal prosecution for perjury is far more likely to deter a witness from intentionally lying than to deter a defendant, already facing conviction, from lying on his own behalf. Moreover, some defendants likely would be chilled from calling witnesses who would otherwise offer probative evidence out of fear that those witnesses might make some statement in sufficient tension with the tainted evidence to allow the prosecutor to introduce that evidence for impeachment. Finally, expansion of the exception would significantly weaken the exclusionary rule's deterrent effect on police misconduct by enhancing the expected value to the prosecution of illegally obtained evidence, both by vastly increasing the number of occasions on which such evidence could be used and also, due to the chilling effect, by deterring defendants from calling witnesses in the first place and thereby keeping exculpatory evidence from the jury. The exclusion of illegal evidence from the prosecution's case in chief would not provide sufficient deterrence to protect the privacy interests underlying the rule. When police officers confront opportunities to obtain illegal evidence after they have legally obtained sufficient evidence to sustain a prima facie case, excluding such evidence from only the case in chief would leave officers with little to lose and much to gain by overstepping the constitutional limits on evidence gathering. Pp. 311-319.

123 Ill.2d 523, 124 Ill.Dec. 35, 528 N.E.2d 723, reversed and remanded.

BRENNAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which WHITE, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 320. KENNEDY, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and O'CONNOR and SCALIA, JJ., joined, post, p. 322.

Martin S. Carlson, Chicago, Ill., for petitioner.

Terence M. Madsen for respondent.

Justice BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.

The impeachment exception to the exclusionary rule permits the prosecution in a criminal proceeding to introduce il- legally obtained evidence to impeach the defendant's own testimony. The Illinois Supreme Court extended this exception to permit the prosecution to impeach the testimony of all defense witnesses with illegally obtained evidence. 123 Ill.2d 523, 124 Ill.Dec. 35, 528 N.E.2d 723 (1988). Finding this extension inconsistent with the balance of values underlying our previous applications of the exclusionary rule, we reverse.

I

On the night of August 30, 1982, eight young boys returning home from a party were confronted by a trio of other boys who demanded money. When the eight boys refused to comply, one member of the trio produced a gun and fired into the larger group, killing one boy and seriously injuring another. When the police arrived, the remaining members of the larger group provided eyewitness accounts of the event and descriptions of the perpetrators.

The next evening, two detectives of the Chicago Police Department took 15-year-old Darryl James into custody as a suspect in the shooting. James was found at his mother's beauty parlor sitting under a hair dryer; when he emerged, his hair was black and curly. After placing James in their car, the detectives questioned him about his prior hair color. He responded that the previous day his hair had been reddish brown, long, and combed straight back. The detectives questioned James again later at the police station, and he further stated that he had gone to the beauty parlor in order to have his hair "dyed black and curled in order to change his appearance." App. 11.

The State subsequently indicted James for murder and attempted murder. Prior to trial, James moved to suppress the statements regarding his hair, contending that they were the fruit of a Fourth Amendment violation because the detectives lacked probable cause for his warrantless arrest. After an evidentiary hearing, the trial court sustained this motion and ruled that the statements would be inadmissible at trial.

At trial, five members of the larger group of boys testified for the State, and each made an in-court identification of the defendant. Each testified that the person responsible for the shooting had "reddish" hair, worn shoulder length in a slicked-back "butter" style. Each also recalled having seen James several weeks earlier at a parade, at which time James had the aforementioned hair color and style. At trial, however, his hair was black and worn in a "natural" style. Despite the discrepancy between the witnesses' description and his present appearance, the witnesses stood firm in their conviction that James had been present and had fired the shots.

James did not testify in his own defense. He called as a witness Jewel Henderson, a friend of his family. Henderson testified that on the day of the shooting she had taken James to register for high school and that, at that time, his hair was black. The State then sought, over James' objection, to introduce his illegally obtained statements as a means of impeaching the credibility of Henderson's testimony. After determining that the suppressed statements had been made voluntarily, the trial court overruled James' objection. One of the interrogating detectives then reported James' prior admissions that he had reddish hair the night of the shooting and he dyed and curled his hair the next day in order to change his appearance. James ultimately was convicted of both murder and attempted murder and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment.

On appeal, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed James' convictions and ordered a new trial. 153 Ill.App.3d 131, 106 Ill.Dec. 327, 505 N.E.2d 1118 (1987). The appellate court held that the exclusionary rule barred admission of James' illegally obtained statements for the purpose of impeaching a defense witness' testimony and that the resulting constitutional error was not harmless. However, the Illinois Supreme Court re- versed. The court reasoned that, in order to deter the defendant from engaging in perjury "by proxy," the impeachment exception to the exclusionary rule ought to be expanded to allow the State to introduce illegally obtained evidence to impeach the testimony of defense witnesses other than the defendant himself. The court therefore ordered James' convictions reinstated. We granted certiorari. 489 U.S. 1010, 109 S.Ct. 1117, 103 L.Ed.2d 180 (1989).

II

"There is no gainsaying that arriving at the truth is a fundamental goal of our legal system." United States v. Havens, 446 U.S. 620, 626, 100 S.Ct. 1912, 1916, 64 L.Ed.2d 559 (1980). But various constitutional rules limit the means by which government may conduct this search for truth in order to promote other values embraced by the Framers and cherished throughout our Nation's history. "Ever since its inception, the rule excluding evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment has been recognized as a principal mode of discouraging lawless police conduct. . . . [W]ithout it the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures would be a mere 'form of words.' " Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 12, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1875, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), quoting Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 1691, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961). The occasional suppression of illegally obtained yet probative evidence has long been considered a necessary cost of preserving overriding constitutional values: "[T]here is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all." Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 329, 107 S.Ct. 1149, 1154-55, 94 L.Ed.2d 347 (1987).

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