Turner v. City of Lawton
| Decision Date | 22 July 1986 |
| Docket Number | No. 61399,61399 |
| Citation | 1986 OK 51,733 P.2d 375 |
| Parties | , 1986 OK 51 Leonard Carl TURNER, Appellee, v. CITY OF LAWTON, Oklahoma, a municipal corporation, Appellant. |
| Court | Oklahoma Supreme Court |
Warren H. Crane, Lawton, for appellee.
Gerald S. Rakes, Asst. City Atty., Lawton, for appellant.
The sole question of law presented, which we must answer in the negative, is whether evidence, obtained via a search warrant held invalid and suppressed in a criminal action may be admitted in a related civil administrative proceeding. The validity of the search warrant is not an issue on appeal, thus the underlying facts are irrelevant to our analysis and disposition of the arguments raised by the parties. It is admitted by all of the parties that the search warrant was invalid; hence, the search was conducted as if there were no warrant at all. 1
On October 27, 1983, after the court in the criminal case dismissed all charges against Leonard Carl Turner, appellee, he subsequently filed an action for reinstatement as a firefighter for the City of Lawton in the district court of Comanche County, asserting that he had been fired based on incompetent evidence seized in violation of his constitutional rights. 2 The trial court agreed, finding Turner was terminated based on evidence obtained under a "bogus" warrant, and holding the evidence incompetent, and his dismissal improper. The City appealed, conceding the invalidity of the warrant and contending only that the exclusionary rule is inapplicable to civil proceedings. In a split decision, the Court of Appeals reversed the trial court, and certiorari was granted.
The one procedural safeguard which arose directly from events immediately preceding the revolutionary war was the protection against unreasonable search or seizure. 3 The writ of assistance, although seldom exercised in England, was being used by customs officers in the colonies to enter buildings to search for smuggled merchandise. The controversy over these writs continued until the Revolutionary War--the bill of particulars in the Declaration of Independence contained the complaint that the King had sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people. 4 Even after the United States Constitution was adopted, the citizens of the new country feared a recurrence of governmental violations of personal rights and liberties. 5
When he spoke to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, the Honorable J.K. King of Newkirk, President pro tempore of the convention, said that the force and effect of any law is not written upon the printed page, but in the hearts and the intelligence and the conscience of the people. He noted that although the framers of the federal constitution did not believe a Bill of Rights to be necessary, the people refused to accept it without the assurance that such a bill would be incorporated, 6 and, that the Oklahoma Constitution contained provisions to guide officials and to inspire and protect its people. Thereafter, the Convention adopted art. 2, § 30. 7 King's address to the Constitutional Convention echoed James Madison's speech to the first Congress on June 8, 1789 in which Madison said: 8
"If (these rights) are incorporated into the Constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the Legislative or Executive; they will naturally be led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights.
The thrust of the exclusionary rule is that evidence illegally obtained by government agents cannot be used against a person whose constitutional rights have been violated by an unreasonable search or seizure. The genesis of the rule can be traced to Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 393, 398, 34 S.Ct. 341, 344, 346, 58 L.Ed.652 (1914). In Weeks, the United States Supreme Court unanimously rejected the common law view that exclusion of illegally seized evidence constitutes an unjustified interference with the trial court's obligation to permit presentation of all reliable and probative evidence to the trier of fact--and that because the ends justifies the means, courts would not inquire into about how otherwise admissible evidence is gathered.
Subsequently, in Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 392, 40 S.Ct. 182, 183, 64 L.Ed. 319 (1920), Justice Holmes, speaking for the Court, stated that, "The essence of a provision forbidding the acquisition of evidence in a certain way is that not merely evidence so acquired shall not be used before the Court, but that it should not be used at all." The Oklahoma Supreme Court in Hess v. State, 84 Okl. 73, 202 P. 310, 314-316 (1921) adopted the Silverthorne and Weeks rationale. 9
In Gore v. State, 24 Okl. Cr. 394, 218 P. 545, 547, 550 (1923) the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, acknowledging the Oklahoma Supreme Court decision in Hess, overruled the common law doctrine that the ends of justice permitted the use of evidence by whatever means obtained and refused to admit evidence acquired through an illegal search. The Court held that the use of evidence thus tainted, was not good law, nor even good morals, because the use of unlawful procedures to attain the goals of the state was not calculated to inspire respect for the courts whose primary function is to enforce the law with fairness and impartiality. The Court found that judicial enforcement of the guaranty against unreasonable search or seizure was indispensable to the full enjoyment of personal security, personal liberty, and private property; and that the right to be secure in one's home and person was entitled to the same Constitutional protection as freedom of the press, the right to trial by jury, the writ of habeas corpus, and due process of law.
The federal exclusionary rule was not extended to the states under the due process clause until 1961, when the United States Supreme Court decided Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961). Nonetheless, by 1921, some forty years earlier, the Oklahoma Supreme Court in Hess had incorporated it as a part of the body of Oklahoma law, and the Court of Criminal Appeals had acknowledged it in Gore by 1923. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, in Simmons v. State, 277 P.2d 196, 198 (Okla. Crim. 1954) adopted the Weeks reasoning and the Holmes-Silverthorne language, and, applying them to the Okla. Const. art. 2, § 30, held that the exclusion of evidence acquired by an unconstitutional search or seizure was not merely a rule of procedure, but rather a fundamental right under the Oklahoma Constitution 10--independent of either the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.
PURSUANT TO THE OKLA. CONST. art. 2, § 30,
OKLAHOMA COURTS HAVE FOUND THE EXCLUSIONARY RULE
TO BE A FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT
Even when a search or seizure is patently illegal, the controversial question--whether its fruits should be excluded from evidence--remains. The applicability of the exclusionary rule to civil proceedings has never been resolved completely by the United States Supreme Court. 11 However, the United States Supreme Court has held that the exclusionary rule is a judicially created remedy operating to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights through its deterrent effect, and that the right is separate from the personal constitutional rights of the party seeking to invoke the rule. 12
State statutes or state constitutions which afford greater rights than the federal constitution must be determined by following state law. The state of Oklahoma in the exercise of its sovereign power may provide more expansive individual liberties than those conferred by the United States Constitution--it is only when state law provides less protection that the question must be determined by federal law. 13 The Constitution of the State of Oklahoma contains independent sources of rights and liberties, which may, under some circumstances, offer more protection than the federal constitution. The Oklahoma Constitution does not merely project a mirror image of the federal constitution. The people of this state are governed by the Oklahoma Constitution, and when it grants a right or provides a principle of law or procedure beyond the protections supplied by the federal constitution, it speaks for every person as the supreme law and final authority for everything which is done in pursuance of its provisions. 14
Although the United States Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether illegally seized evidence could be used in a subsequent civil action, it did not resolve it completely in United States v. Janis, 428 U.S. 433, 96 S.Ct. 3021, 49 L.Ed.2d 1046 (1976). In Janis, a state officer notified the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that Janis had been arrested for bookmaking activity. The IRS then assessed wagering excise taxes and levied against the money seized by the officer. The trial court found the police officer's affidavit defective, and granted the motion to quash the warrant. The court did not return the money seized and Janis claimed a refund. The Supreme Court allowed introduction of the evidence illegally seized by state officers to be used in a federal civil proceeding finding that the likelihood of deterring police misconduct by extending the exclusionary rule did not offset the substantial social costs of overturning an otherwise valid conviction.
The Janis rationale, however, is by its own terms applicable only to certain fact situations, namely those in which agents of different sovereigns are involved. The Court said...
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