ONE 1958 PLYMOUTH SEDAN v. PENNSYLVANIA.
No. 294
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 31, 1965.—Decided April 29, 1965.
380 U.S. 693
Thomas J. Shannon, Assistant Attorney General of Pennsylvania, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Walter E. Alessandroni, Attorney General of Pennsylvania, and Edward Friedman and Frank P. Lawley, Deputy Attorneys General.
At approximately 6:30 a. m. on December 16, 1960, two law enforcement officers of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board stationed near Camden, New Jersey, at the approach to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, observed a 1958 Plymouth sedan bearing Pennsylvania license plates proceeding toward the bridge in the direction of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The officers, noting that “[t]he car was low in the rear, quite low,” followed it across the bridge into Philadelphia. They stopped the automobile a short distance within the city, identified themselves and questioned the owner, George McGonigle. The officers then searched the car and, in the rear and the trunk, found 31 cases of liquor not bearing Pennsylvania tax seals. The car and liquor were seized and McGonigle was arrested and charged with violation of Pennsylvania law.1 The officers did not have either a search or arrest warrant.
Pursuant to a Pennsylvania statute2 the Commonwealth filed a petition for forfeiture of the automobile.3 At the hearing McGonigle, by timely objection, sought dismissal of the forfeiture petition on the ground that the forfeiture of the automobile depended upon the admis-
The basis of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court‘s decision was that the exclusionary rule, which this Court in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 657, held “is an essential part of both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments,” applies only to criminal prosecutions and is not applicable in a forfeiture proceeding which the Pennsylvania court deemed civil in nature. In light of this disposition of the case, the State Supreme Court did not review the trial court‘s finding of lack of probable cause, stating:
“The thrust of the arguments, both of the appellant and the Commonwealth, is directed to the validity and propriety of the search and the subsequent seizure by the officers of this Plymouth automobile. In our view, such arguments are beyond the point. By reason of the nature of the present proceeding, i. e., a forfeiture procedure, we consider it unnecessary to determine the propriety and validity of the search and the seizure of this automobile.” 414 Pa., at 542; 201 A. 2d, at 429.
As this Court has acknowledged, “[t]he leading case on the subject of search and seizure is Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616.” Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 147. See Mapp v. Ohio, supra, at 646-647. Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, itself was not a criminal case but was a proceeding by the United States to forfeit 35 cases of plate glass which had allegedly been imported without payment of the customs duty. The District Judge in the case entered an order compelling the owners of the plate glass to produce certain records which would aid the United States in proving its case for forfeiture. The question before the Court in Boyd was whether the compulsory production of a man‘s private papers for their evidentiary use against him in a proceeding to forfeit his property for alleged fraud against the revenue laws constituted an unreasonable search and seizure within the
“We are also clearly of opinion that proceedings instituted for the purpose of declaring the forfeiture of a man‘s property by reason of offences committed by him, though they may be civil in form, are in their nature criminal. In this very case, the ground of forfeiture as declared in the 12th section of the act of 1874, on which the information is based, consists of certain acts of fraud committed against the public revenue in relation to imported merchandise, which are made criminal by the statute; and it is declared, that the offender shall be fined not exceeding $5000 nor less than $50, or be imprisoned not exceeding two years, or both; and in addition to such fine such merchandise shall be forfeited. These are the penalties affixed to the criminal acts; the forfeiture sought by this suit being one of them. If an indictment had been presented against the claimants, upon conviction the forfeiture of the goods could have been included in the judgment. If the government prosecutor elects to waive an indictment, and to file a civil information against the claimants—that is, civil in form—can he by this device take from the proceeding its criminal aspect and deprive the claimants of their immunities as citizens, and extort from them a production of their private papers, or, as an alternative, a confession of guilt? This cannot be. The information, though technically a civil proceeding, is in substance and effect a criminal one. . . . As, therefore, suits for penalties and forfeitures incurred by the commission of offences against the law, are of this quasi-criminal nature, we think that they are within the reason of criminal proceedings for all
the purposes of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution . . . .” Boyd v. United States, supra, at 633-634.
This authoritative statement and the holding by the Court in Boyd that the Government could not seize evidence in violation of the Fourth Amendment for use in a forfeiture proceeding would seem to be dispositive of this case. The Commonwealth, however, argues that Boyd is factually distinguishable as it involved a subpoena sought by the Government for the production of evidence whereas the issue here is the admissibility of illegally seized evidence already in the Government‘s possession. Although there is this factual difference between Boyd and the case at bar, nevertheless the basic holding of Boyd applies with equal, if not greater, force to the case before us. In both the Boyd situation and here the essential question is whether evidence—in Boyd the books and records, here the results of the search of the car—the obtaining of which violates the Fourth Amendment may be relied upon to sustain a forfeiture. Boyd holds that it may not.
The Commonwealth further argues that Boyd‘s unequivocal statement that the Fourth Amendment applies to forfeiture proceedings as well as criminal prosecutions has been undermined by the statements of this Court in United States v. Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48, 54, and Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S. 699, 710. Jeffers and Trupiano, unlike Boyd, were not forfeiture cases. They were federal criminal prosecutions. In both cases the Court held that evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment was not admissible notwithstanding the fact that the evidence involved was contraband. By way of dictum, however, since the point was not before it, the Court stated in these cases that its ruling that the contraband was excludable as illegally seized did not mean that the
The nature of the contraband involved in these cases clearly explains these statements of the Court. Both Trupiano and Jeffers concerned objects the possession of which, without more, constitutes a crime.6 The repossession of such per se contraband by Jeffers and Trupiano would have subjected them to criminal penalties. The return of the contraband would clearly have frustrated the express public policy against the possession of such objects. See United States v. Jeffers, supra, at 53-54.
It is apparent that the nature of the property here, though termed contraband by Pennsylvania, is quite different. There is nothing even remotely criminal in possessing an automobile. It is only the alleged use to which this particular automobile was put that subjects Mr. McGonigle to its possible loss. And it is conceded here that the Commonwealth could not establish an illegal use without using the evidence resulting from the search which is challenged as having been in violation of the Constitution. Furthermore, the return of the automobile to the owner would not subject him to any possible criminal penalties for possession or frustrate any public policy concerning automobiles, as automobiles. This distinction between what has been described as contraband per se and only derivative contraband has indeed been recognized by Pennsylvania itself in its requirement of mandatory forfeiture of illegal liquor, and stills, and only discretionary forfeiture of such things as automobiles illegally used. See
Finally as Mr. Justice Bradley aptly pointed out in Boyd, a forfeiture proceeding is quasi-criminal in character. Its object, like a criminal proceeding, is to penalize for the commission of an offense against the law. In this case McGonigle, the driver and owner of the automobile, was arrested and charged with a criminal offense against the Pennsylvania liquor laws. The record does not disclose which particular offense or offenses he was charged with committing.8 If convicted of any one of the pos-
“It seemed to the court below that to make this man pay the sum of $500.00 in fines, together with the costs of the proceeding and the storage cost for the automobile, was sufficient punishment under all the circumstances. To forfeit a 1959 Chevrolet Impala coupe in addition to the above seemed to the court below to be entirely out of proportion to the crime involved. We cannot say that the court below abused its discretion in so acting.”
In sum, we conclude that the nature of a forfeiture proceeding, so well described by Mr. Justice Bradley in Boyd, and the reasons which led the Court to hold that the exclusionary rule of Weeks v. United States, supra, is obligatory upon the States under the Fourteenth Amendment, so well articulated by MR. JUSTICE CLARK in Mapp, support the conclusion that the exclusionary rule is applicable to forfeiture proceedings such as the one involved here. This being the case, the judgment of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court must be reversed. Our holding frees the Pennsylvania court on remand to review the trial court‘s finding that the officials did not in this case have probable cause for the search involved, a question which it previously did not consider necessary to decide.12
It is so ordered.
MR. JUSTICE BLACK, concurring.
The language of the Fourth Amendment forbids “unreasonable searches and seizures” but it does not expressly or by implication provide that evidence secured in such a way cannot be used in a prosecution against an accused. Congress could, of course, pass a law to preclude the use of evidence so secured in the federal courts, but I do not believe this Court or any other has constitutional power to pass such a law itself. See Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25, 39 (concurring opinion). For these reasons I cannot agree that because we ourselves might believe the practice of obtaining evidence in that manner “shocks the conscience” or is “shabby” or “arbitrary,” we are commanded or even authorized by the Constitution to prevent its use as evidence. That seems to me to be amending the Constitution, which is the business of the people, not interpreting it, which is the business of the courts. But the Fifth Amendment does specifically provide that “No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” and this Court held in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 634-635, that “a compulsory production of the private books and papers of the owner of goods sought to be forfeited in . . . a suit is compelling him to be a witness against himself, within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, and is the equivalent of a search and seizure—and an unreasonable search and seizure—within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.” Boyd therefore stands for the constitutional principle that evidence secured by unreasonable search and seizure is compelled
This Court in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 646, recognized as the Court had in Boyd that “the Fourth and Fifth Amendments run almost into each other.” 116 U. S., at 630. At the very outset of its opinion in Mapp this Court relied on and quoted at length from the opinion in the Boyd case, which had relied on the Fourth and Fifth Amendments together to forbid the use in court of evidence obtained through an unreasonable search or seizure. 367 U. S., at 646-647. Use of such evidence, the Court said in Mapp, would be “tantamount to coerced testimony.” 367 U. S., at 656. And we said last Term in Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1, 8:
”Mapp held that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination implemented the Fourth Amendment in such cases, and that the two guarantees of personal security conjoined in the Fourteenth Amendment to make the exclusionary rule obligatory on the States. We relied upon the great case of Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616 . . . .”
It was because of the Court‘s reliance on the Boyd doctrine—which held that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments together barred use of unreasonably seized evidence—that I joined the Court‘s opinion in Mapp. See 367 U. S. 643, 661 (concurring opinion). And for that same reason I agree with the Court today that the Fourth Amend-
I also agree with the Court that our remand expresses no view as to whether the trial court was correct in its ruling on the issue of probable cause, and that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is free on remand to review the trial court‘s finding, and that of course, as declared in Mapp, the standard of probable cause is the same in the state courts as in the federal courts.