State v. Richter

• Decision Date: 19 February 1965
• Docket Number: No. 39225,39225
• Citation: 270 Minn. 307,133 N.W.2d 537
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Lester L. RICHTER, Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 537

133 N.W.2d 537

270 Minn. 307

STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Lester L. RICHTER, Appellant.

No. 39225.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Feb. 19, 1965.

Syllabus by the Court

1. The unauthorized search, without a warrant, of an apartment occupied by one who has been apprehended on the highway for having an improper driver's license, and the seizure by the police of stolen property found therein, violates U.S.Const. Amends. IV and XIV and Minn. Const. art. 1, § 10.

2. An accused who is under a genuine misapprehension of his constitutional right to exclude from evidence property which has been illegally seized and is thereby induced to plead guilty to the offense charged is not foreclosed from subsequently withdrawing his plea merely because there was no trial at which the evidence was offered and received.

3. Mapp v. State of Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081, 84 A.L.R.2d 933, does not apply retroactively to render invalid an unappealed 1951 conviction based on a plea of guilty induced by evidence obtained in violation of defendant's constitutional right against unreasonable search and seizure.

Vincent P. Courtney, St. Paul, for appellant.

Walter F. Mondale, Atty. Gen., J. Earl Cudd, Sol. Gen., St. Paul, V. W. Lundquist, County Atty., Willmar, for respondent.

OTIS, Justice.

Defendant seeks to vacate a 1951 conviction for grand larceny, claiming that an unconstitutional search and seizure induced his plea of guilty. Thus, we are confronted again with the issue of whether Mapp v. State of Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081, 84 A.L.R.2d 933 (1961), rehearing denied, 368 U.S. 871, 82 S.Ct. 23, 7 L.Ed.2d 72, has retroactive application. ¹

The trial court denied defendant's petition without a hearing and without appointing counsel, stating in effect that Mapp had no bearing where no evidence, tainted or otherwise, was introduced. The appeal is from that order.

Since there is no settled case, we are concerned only with the narrow issue of whether defendant has made a prima facie showing which requires a full hearing on his petition.

1. Defendant's recitation of the facts in his original presentence examination, supplemented by his petitions and affidavits in this court, indicates that on Sunday, May 27, 1951, at 9:30 in the evening, he and an accomplice drove to New London, Minnesota, for the express purpose of burglarizing the Holm Brothers Hardware. They arrived at their destination at 11:30 p.m., forced a back window, and entered the store, where they remained for about 2 hours. They used an acetylene torch which they found on the premises to burn a hole in a vault from which they took $100 in cash. In addition, they stole $150 from a cash register, an outboard motor, various suitcases, a vacuum cleaner, a mixmaster, an electric fan, tools, a toaster, a shotgun, a quantity of ammunition, a wrecking bar, a clock, and a .30--.30 rifle. Defendant returned to Minneapolis without then being apprehended. About a month later, on June 25, 1951, at 10:30 in the evening, defendant had been parked for three-quarters of an hour on the west side of Lake Minnetonka next to a filling station when a patrol car arrived, apparently as the result of the filling station owner's complaint that a window on his premises had just been broken. The curiosity of the police was further aroused by the fact defendant had a lock and key repair set in the back of his car. He was directed to accompany the officers to the Hennepin County courthouse on the technical charge of having an improper driver's license on his person. On the way to the sheriff's office, the police secured a record check which showed defendant had a number of felony convictions. He was taken to the sheriff's office and required to wait for 45 minutes while the officers took his room key and without a warrant entered his apartment and discovered the merchandise which had been stolen from the Holm Brothers Hardware at New London. Upon the officers' return to headquarters, defendant was booked for burglary. On July 5, 1951, he was arraigned on a charge of grand larceny in the first degree for the theft from the Holm Brothers Hardware of the .30--.30 rifle, valued at $54.15. Counsel was appointed on his behalf, and after an interrogation by the court which established that defendant had conferred with counsel, understood his rights, and the consequences of his plea, he entered a plea of guilty. He was thereupon arraigned upon three prior felony convictions and was sentenced to the State Prison for a term not exceeding 25 years. ²

In an affidavit dated December 19, 1963, defendant alleges that prior to his arraignment he was advised the articles stolen from the Holm Brothers Hardware were found in his apartment and, believing that they would be used against him, he concluded he had no alternative but to plead guilty although he knew of no other evidence linking him to the crime.

Assuming that this recitation of the events which followed defendant's apprehension were to be established by appropriate testimony, we would have little difficulty in holding that the search and seizure were in flagrant violation of U.S.Const. Amends. IV and XIV and Minn.Const. art. 1, § 10. Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 46 S.Ct. 4, 70 L.Ed. 145.

2. The authorities are divided on the question of whether a plea of guilty renders moot a consideration of the status of evidence obtained by an unconstitutional search and seizure. Support for the conclusion of the trial court may be found in decisions of the Ohio court and the Tenth Circuit United States Court of Appeals. ³ However, in an analogous situation the United States Supreme Court has clearly indicated that unconstitutionally obtained confessions may furnish grounds for vacating improvidently entered pleas of guilty. ⁴ This court in a direct appeal has recently recognized a prisoner's right to withdraw a plea of guilty induced by illegally obtained evidence, in State v. Clifford, 267 Minn. 554, 126 N.W.2d 258, where we remanded the proceedings for a determination of whether an involuntary confession had prompted the plea. We therefore hold that if he were permitted to establish that his plea was induced by 'a genuine misapprehension of his legal position and his constitutional rights' defendant would not be foreclosed from withdrawing his plea of guilty merely because the illegally obtained evidence was not in fact used against him. 267 Minn. 555, 126 N.W.2d 259.

3. So much has been written on the retroactivity of Mapp we hesitate to further burden the bench and bar with protracted speculation on how that question will ultimately be resolved. The United States Supreme Court has granted certiorari in at least one case dealing with the problem. ⁵

Since at the time of his conviction the evidence seized in defendant's apartment was admissible under both Federal and state decisions construing the Constitution, Mapp affords him no relief unless we hold that it is not only the law today but was also the law in 1951. We find this a difficult philosophical hurdle to leap. In 1949, the United States Supreme Court squarely held in Wolf v. People of State of Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 33, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 1364, 93 L.Ed. 1782, 1788, that 'in a prosecution in a State court for a State crime the Fourteenth Amendment does not forbid the admission of evidence obtained by an unreasonable search and seizure.' The court adhered to the Wolf rule in Irvine v. People of State of California, 347 U.S. 128, 136, 74 S.Ct. 381, 385, 98 L.Ed. 561, 571, rehearing denied, 347 U.S. 931, 74 S.Ct. 527, 98 L.Ed. 1083, where the majority reaffirmed its position in the following language:

'* * * The disciplinary or educational effect of the court's releasing the defendant for police misbehavior is so indirect as to be no more than a mild deterrent at best. Some discretion is still left to the states in criminal cases, for which they are largely responsible, and we think it is for them to determine which rule best serves them.' (Italics supplied.)

There having been no constitutional impediment to the admissibility of illegally obtained evidence, this court elected to condone its use, looking to other means for enforcing the constitutional rights thus ignored. State v. Siporen, 215 Minn. 438, 441, 10 N.W.2d 353, 354.

Mapp v. State of Ohio, supra, was decided in June 1961 and held that the constitutional right against illegal search and seizure, recognized in Wolf as applicable to the states through the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, at long last required implementation by the exclusion of such evidence in state court proceedings. Wolf was expressly overruled. There have been a number of decisions dealing with the application of the Mapp rule to litigation tried but not yet concluded when the Mapp opinion was rendered. ⁶ We need not concern ourselves at this time with the precise stage of the appeal at which Mapp must be given recognition and effect. We are directing our attention only to collateral proceedings where the time to appeal has long since elapsed.

It has been pointed out that Mapp itself applied retroactively the newly fashioned exclusionary rule governing state courts, and to that extent its announced purpose of deterring unlawful police action was not served. The United States Supreme Court in Mapp did not, however, find that the rule in the Wolf case was wrong for the conditions which existed in 1949 when it was decided. In effect, the Mapp opinion merely held that the course of time had proved the necessity for more drastic measures to implement what had long been the constitutional right against invasion of privacy. The court clearly indicated in Mapp that it had given the states an opportunity to adopt their own methods of enforcement and that these remedies had proved futile. It concluded (367 U.S. 660, 81 S.Ct. 1694, 6 L.Ed.2d 1093, 84 A.L.R.2d 945) by holding that it could no longer permit the...