State v. Dearmas, 2002-189-M.P.

• Decision Date: 13 February 2004
• Docket Number: No. 2002-189-M.P.,2002-189-M.P.
• Citation: 841 A.2d 659
• Parties: STATE v. Jose DEARMAS.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

841 A.2d 659

STATE v. Jose DEARMAS.

No. 2002-189-M.P.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

February 13, 2004.

Aaron L. Weisman, Providence, for Plaintiff.

Paula Lynch, for Defendant.

Present: WILLIAMS, C.J., FLANDERS, GOLDBERG, FLAHERTY, and SUTTELL, JJ.

OPINION

FLANDERS, Justice.

We review here a Superior Court order granting the state's motion to seize a blood sample from the petitioner, Jose Dearmas, as well as a search warrant issued by that same court to the same effect. The petitioner is a defendant in a pending criminal case charging him with two counts of first-degree child molestation. The state requested and obtained the blood-seizure order and search warrant because it sought to conduct tests on the petitioner's blood to ascertain whether the petitioner's DNA matched the DNA obtained from body-fluid evidence that the perpetrator left at the crime scene after he molested the victim. In asking us to quash the blood-seizure order and search warrant, the petitioner argues that the Superior Court exceeded its authority in granting the motion and issuing the warrant because a blood sample does not constitute "property" as that term is used in G.L. 1956 § 12-5-2, the statute that defines the grounds upon which trial-court judges may issue search warrants for the seizure of certain types of evidence. For the reasons set forth below, we agree with the petitioner and hold that blood seized from an unconsenting person does not constitute "property" as that term is used in § 12-5-2. Accordingly, we reverse, quash the blood-seizure order and the warrant, and remand this case to the Superior Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Facts and Travel

On August 27, 2001, a grand jury indicted petitioner, charging him with two counts of first-degree child molestation.¹ The Superior Court arraigned petitioner and he pled not guilty. Thereafter, on January 29, 2002, the state asked the Providence County Superior Court to issue an order "granting the seizure of blood" from petitioner. The petitioner objected to this request, and the court held a hearing on the state's motion. At the conclusion of the hearing, the Superior Court granted the state's request, issued a blood-seizure order, and instructed the state to apply for the issuance of a search warrant. After the state did so, the court issued the warrant, but stayed its execution pending our review of the legality of the order and warrant. On March 26, 2002, a duty justice of this Court stayed the Superior Court blood-seizure order. Thereafter, on March 28, 2002, this Court issued an order granting the petition for a writ of certiorari and continued the stay until further order of this Court.

Analysis

The narrow question before us today is whether the Superior Court exceeded its jurisdiction under § 12-5-2 by issuing an order granting the state's motion to seize a sample of petitioner's blood, authorizing the state to apply for a search warrant to effectuate this seizure, and then issuing a search warrant for the police to seize a vial of petitioner's blood. In State v. DiStefano, 764 A.2d 1156 (R.I.2000), a majority of this Court noted that "the Superior Court is statutory in origin and derives its powers from statutes duly enacted by the Legislature." Id. at 1167-68, 1168 n. 27 (quoting R.I. Const. art. 10, sec. 2, which provides: "The inferior courts shall have such jurisdiction as may, from time to time, be prescribed by law."). Thus, the Superior Court does not possess any inherent authority to issue blood-seizure orders or to authorize the use of search warrants to accomplish such seizures; instead, it may exercise only those powers that the General Assembly has granted to it. See DiStefano, 764 A.2d at 1168

(citing Kass v. Retirement Board of the Employees' Retirement System, 567 A.2d 358, 361 (R.I.1989)).

Section 12-5-1(a) and G.L. 1956 § 8-3-6 vest the justices of the District and Superior Courts with the authority to issue search warrants.² Section 12-5-2³ a provides, in pertinent part, that a warrant may issue "to search for and seize any property * * * (4) [w]hich is evidence of the commission of a crime." Therefore, § 12-5-2 expressly limited the trial justice's authority in this case to issue search warrants only to "search for and seize any property." The trial justice did not have carte blanche to issue warrants and seizure orders permitting the state to seize any type of evidence if that evidence did not also constitute "property," a term that the statute does not define.

"It is well settled that when the language of a statute is clear and unambiguous, this Court must interpret the statute literally and must give the words of the statute their plain and ordinary meanings." Granoff Realty II Limited Partnership v. Rossi, 833 A.2d 354, 361 (R.I.2003) (per curiam) (quoting Accent Store Design, Inc. v. Marathon House, Inc., 674 A.2d 1223, 1226 (R.I.1996)). Considering the plain and ordinary meaning of the word "property," it is difficult for us to construe it in such a way as to include the involuntary seizure of a blood sample extracted from within a living person's body, especially when the person in question has not consented to such an extraction. As this Court noted many years ago in Pierce v. Proprietors of Swan Point Cemetery, 10 R.I. 227, 237 (1872), "there is no right of property in a dead body, using the word in its ordinary sense":

"[t]he body is not property in the usually recognized sense of the word, yet we may consider it as a sort of quasi property, to which certain persons may have rights, as they have duties to perform towards it arising out of our common humanity. But the person having charge of it cannot be considered as the owner of it in any sense whatever; he holds it only as a sacred trust * * *." Id. at 242-43. (Emphasis added.) See also Sullivan v. Catholic Cemeteries, Inc., 113 R.I. 65, 68, 317 A.2d 430, 432 (1974)

.

In addition, Black's Law Dictionary defines property as: "The right to possess, use, and enjoy a determinate thing (either a tract of land or a chattel); the right of ownership[; or] * * * [a]ny external thing over which the rights of possession, use, and enjoyment are exercised * * *." Black's Law Dictionary, 1232 (7th ed. 1999). In our view, blood samples taken from a living person's body without his or her consent do not fit into any one of these definitions. Indeed, ever since the enactment of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and the consequent overruling of the infamous Dred Scott case,⁴ no living person or people, nor their constituent living parts, can be lawfully considered as "property." Thus, the plain and ordinary understanding of the word "property" excludes blood samples, forcibly taken from living human beings, from the ambit of that term as it is used in § 12-5-2.

In addition, although § 12-5-2 does not define "property," in DiStefano, two justices of this Court, in an opinion authored by Justice Goldberg and joined by Chief Justice Weisberger, said that "we are not satisfied that one's bodily fluid is `property' or evidence of the commission of a crime," even though "it is not the blood itself that is the `evidence of the commission of a crime,' but rather the test results that are relevant in a criminal trial." DiStefano, 764 A.2d at 1167. To be sure, a majority of this Court in DiStefano did not need to decide that precise issue to conclude that the "none shall be given" language in G.L. 1956 § 31-27-2.1(b) (the driving-under-the-influence statute) barred the use of a search warrant to seize a nonconsenting motorist's blood after the state arrested the motorist for driving under the influence, death resulting. See DiStefano, 764 A.2d at 1163, 1170. Nevertheless, two justices of this Court in DiStefano were of the opinion that § 12-5-2 did not authorize the seizure of a blood sample, while a third justice, although believing that the issue was not properly before the Court, noted that § 12-5-2's "apparent property-seizure limitations * * * as Justice Goldberg's opinion elucidates, raises very difficult and troubling questions about the propriety of issuing search warrants at all to seize a person's blood." DiStefano, 764 A.2d at 1172 (Flanders, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Moreover, despite a plea from Chief Justice Weisberger, in his separate DiStefano opinion, for the Legislature to amend § 12-5-2 and the driving-under-the-influence laws to provide expressly for the seizure of a suspect's blood, DiStefano, 764 A.2d at 1171, no such statutory change has occurred to date.

And so this case squarely and unavoidably presents the question that a majority in DiStefano addressed but did not decide: whether blood is "property" within the meaning of that term as it is used in § 12-5-2. On that issue, we believe the analysis of that statute that is set forth in the plurality opinion authored by Justice Goldberg in DiStefano remains sound, and that the state has not presented us with a compelling reason to deviate from it.

As that opinion elucidates, construing blood and other body parts seized from living human beings as "property" would raise a host of practical and interpretative problems. Similarly, as this Court observed over a century ago in Pierce with respect to dead bodies, we do not believe that living human beings own their bodies, body parts, and bodily fluids in a manner that would allow us to construe a person's blood as property — at least in the absence of any evidence that the individual in question had consented to sell or transfer such fluids to any authority seeking the involuntary seizure of that person's blood.

Moreover, were we to construe blood samples to be seized from unconsenting living people as "property," then we would soon face arguments that courts can issue even more intrusive warrants for the seizure of other body parts and biological material, and, indeed, of even living...