Stanford v. State of Texas, 40

• Court: U.S. Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: STEWART
• Citation: Stanford v. State of Texas, 379 U.S. 476, 85 S.Ct. 506, 13 L.Ed.2d 431 (1965)
• Decision Date: 18 January 1965
• Docket Number: No. 40,40
• Parties: John W. STANFORD, Jr., Petitioner, v. STATE OF TEXAS

379 U.S. 476

85 S.Ct. 506

13 L.Ed.2d 431

John W. STANFORD, Jr., Petitioner,

v STATE OF TEXAS.

No. 40.

Argued Nov. 12, 1964.

Decided Jan. 18, 1965.

Rehearing Denied March 1, 1965.

See 380 U.S. 926, 85 S.Ct. 879.

Maury Maverick, Jr., San Antonio, Tex., and John J. McAvoy, New York City, for petitioner.

James E. Barlow, San Antonio, Tex., and Hawthorne Phillips, Brownsville, Tex., for respondent.

Mr. Justice STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court.

On December 27, 1963, several Texas law-enforcement officers presented themselves at the petitioner's San Antonio home for the purpose of searching it under authority of a warrant issued by a local magistrate. By the time they had finished, five hours later, they had seized some 2,000 of the petitioner's books, pamphlets, and papers. The question presented by this case is whether the search and seizure were constitutionally valid.

The warrant was issued under § 9 of Art. 6889—3A of the Revised Civil Statutes of Texas. The Article, enacted in 1955 and known as the Suppression Act, is a sweeping and many-faceted law which, among other things, outlaws the Communist Party and creates various individual criminal offenses, each punishable by imprisonment for up to 20 years. Section 9 authorizes the issuance of a warrant 'for the purpose of searching for and seizing any books, records, pamphlets, cards, receipts, lists, memoranda, pictures, recordings, or any written instruments showing that a person or organization is violating or has violated any provision of this Act.' The section sets forth various procedural requirements, among them that 'if the premises to be searched constitute a private residence, such application for a search warrant shall be accompanied by the affidavits of two credible citizens.'

The application for the warrant was filed in a Bexar County court by the Criminal District Attorney of that County. It recited that the applicant

'* * * has good reason to believe and does believe that a certain place and premises in Bexar County, Texas, described as two white frame houses and one garage, located at the address of 1118 West Rosewood, in the City of San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, and being the premises under the control and in charge of Hohn William Stanford, Jr., is a place where books, records, pamphlets, cards, receipts, lists, memoranda, pictures, recordings and other written instruments concerning the Communist Party of Texas, and the operations of the Communist Party in Texas are unlawfully possessed and used in violation of Articles 6889—3¹ and 6889—3A, Revised Civil Statutes of the State of Texas, and that such belief of this officer is founded upon the following information:

'That this officer has received information from two credible persons that the party named above has such books and records in his possession which are books and records of the Communist Party including party lists and dues payments, and in addition other items listed above. That such information is of recent origin and has been confirmed by recent mailings by Stanford on the 12th of December, 1963 of pro-Communist material.'

Attached to the application was an affidavit signed by two Assistant Attorneys General of Texas. The affidavit repeated the words of the application, except that the basis for the affiants' belief was stated to be as follows:

'Recent mailings by Stanford on the 12th of December, 1963, of material from his home address, such material being identified as pro-Communist material and other information received in the course of investigation that Stanford has in his possession the books and records of the Texas Communist Party.'

The district judge issued a warrant which specifically described the premises to be searched, recited the allegations of the applicant's and affiants' belief that the premises were 'a place where books, records, pamphlets cards, receipts, lists, memoranda, pictures, recordings and other written instruments concerning the Communist Party of Texas, and the operations of the Communist Party in Texas are unlawfully possessed and used in violation of Article 6889—3 and Article 6889 3A, Revised Civil Statutes of the State of Texas,' and ordered the executing officers 'to enter immediately and search the above described premises for such items listed above unlawfully possessed in violation of Article 6889—3 and Article 6889—3A, Revised Civil Statutes, State of Texas, and to take possession of same.'

The warrant was executed by the two Assistant Attorneys General who had signed the affidavit, accompanied by a number of county officers. They went to the place described in the warrant, which was where the petitioner resided and carried on a mail order book business under the trade name 'All Points of View.'² The petitioner was not at home when the officers arrived, but his wife was, and she let the officers in after one of them had read the warrant to her.

After some delay occasioned by an unsuccessful effort to locate the petitioner in another part of town, the search began. Under the general supervision of one of the Assistant Attorneys General the officers spent more than four hours in gathering up about half the books they found in the house. Most of the material they took came from the stock in trade of the petitioner's business, but they took a number of books from his personal library as well. The books and pamphlets taken comprised approximately 300 separate titles, in addition to numerous issues of several different periodicals. Among the books taken were works by such diverse writers as Karl Marx, Jean Paul Sartre, Theodore Draper, Fidel Castro, Earl Browder, Pope John XXIII, and MR. JUSTICE HUGO L. BLACK. The officers also took possession of many of the petitioner's private documents and papers, including his marriage certificate, his insurance policies, his household bills and receipts, and files of his personal correspondence. All this material was packed into 14 cartons and hauled off to an investigator's office in the county courthouse. The officers did not find any 'records of the Communist Party' or any 'party lists and dues payments.'

The petitioner filed a motion with the magistrate who had issued the warrant, asking him to annul the warrant and order the return of all the property which had been seized under it. The motion asserted several federal constitutional claims. After a hearing the motion was denied without opinion. This order of denial was, as the parties agree, final and not appealable or otherwise reviewable under Texas law. See Ex parte Wolfson, 127 Tex.Cr.R. 277, 75 S.W.2d 440. Accordingly, we granted certiorari, Stanford v. Texas, 377 U.S. 989, 84 S.Ct. 1911, 12 L.Ed.2d 1043. See Thompson v. City of Louisville, 362 U.S. 199, 202—203, 80 S.Ct. 624, 626—627, 4 L.Ed.2d 654.

The petitioner has attacked the constitutional validity of this search and seizure upon several grounds. We rest our decision upon just one, without pausing to assess the substantiality of the others. For we think it is clear that this warrant was of a kind which it was the purpose of the Fourth Amendment to forbid—a general warrant. Therefore, even accepting the premise that some or even all of the substantive provisions of Articles 6889—3 and 6889—3A of the Revised Civil Statutes of Texas are constitutional and have not been pre-empted by federal law,³ even accepting the premise that the warrant sufficiently specified the offense believed to have been committed and was issued upon probable cause,⁴ the magistrate's order denying the motion to annul the warrant and return the property must nonetheless be set aside.

It is now settled that the fundamental protections of the Fourth Amendment are guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment against invasion by the States. Wolf v. People of State of Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 27, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 1361, 93 L.Ed. 1782; Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643; Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 10 L.Ed.2d 726. 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.' (Emphasis supplied.)

These words are precise and clear. They reflect the determination of those who wrote the Bill of Rights that the people of this new Nation should forever 'be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects' from intrusion and seizure by officers acting under the unbridled authority of a general warrant. Vivid in the memory of the newly independent Americans were those general warrants known as writs of assistance under which officers of the Crown had so bedeviled the colonists. The hated writs of assistance had given customs officials blanket authority to search where they pleased for goods imported in violation of the British tax laws. They were denounced by James Otis as 'the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book,' because they placed 'the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.' The historic occasion of that denunciation, in 1761 at Boston, has been characterized as 'perhaps the most prominent event which inaugurated the resistance of the colonies to the oppressions of the mother country. 'Then and there,' said Hohn Adams, 'then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbi- trary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born." Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 625, 6 S.Ct. 524, 529, 29 L.Ed. 746.

But while the Fourth Amendment was most immediately the product of contemporary revulsion against a regime of writs of assistance, its roots go far deeper. Its adoption in the Constitution of this new Nation reflected the culmination in England a few years earlier of a struggle against oppression which had endured for centuries. The story of that...