People v. Pennington

178 N.W.2d 471, 383 Mich. 611, 1970 Mich. LEXIS 180
CourtMichigan Supreme Court
DecidedJuly 11, 1970
DocketCalendar 13, Docket 52,516
StatusPublished
Cited by28 cases

This text of 178 N.W.2d 471 (People v. Pennington) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Michigan Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Pennington, 178 N.W.2d 471, 383 Mich. 611, 1970 Mich. LEXIS 180 (Mich. 1970).

Opinions

Dethmers, J.

This is a search and seizure case involving the admissibility into evidence of the fruits thereof. Two questions are presented. First, was the search of defendant’s automobile and seizure of a loaded revolver from its glove compartment violative of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and of Article 1, § 11, of the Michigan Constitution of 1963, guaranteeing security from unreasonable searches and seizures? Second, should that portion of Article 1, § 11, Michigan Constitution of 1963, expressly making the exclusionary rule in criminal proceedings inapplicable with respect to drugs and certain dangerous weapons unlawfully seized by a peace officer outside the curtilage of any dwelling house in this state, be held to be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution as applied to state action by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution by reason of the decision of a majority of the United States Supreme Court in Mapp v. Ohio (1961), 367 US 643 (81 S Ct 1684, 6 L Ed 2d 1081, 84 ALR2d 933) ?

Pertinent facts in this case follow: A private citizen saw defendant driving an automobile on Telegraph Road in Detroit in what he described as an erratic manner. He reported it at a State Police post. An officer answered the call, followed defendant’s car and observed defendant driving in [614]*614the manner as reported. The officer ordered defendant to the curb, found him to be intoxicated, and placed him under arrest for drunk driving. He took defendant’s car keys, placed defendant in the police car and called a wrecker to tow defendant’s automobile to a gas station across the street from the police post.

The officer took defendant into the post, interrogated him for approximately 15 minutes and turned him over to the custody of the desk officer. He then went to the gas station and searched defendant’s car without defendant’s consent and without a search warrant. He entered the car, found the glove compartment locked, and opened it with a key taken from defendant. In the glove compartment he found a partly filled bottle containing some whiskey and a loaded revolver. These he took. He then returned to the post and informed defendant that he was under arrest for carrying a concealed weapon. Soon thereafter defendant was charged with carrying a dangerous weapon in a motor vehicle contrary to MCLA § 750.227 (Stat Ann 1962 Rev § 28.424).

On trial the people offered the bottle containing whiskey and the revolver and bullets found in it into evidence. The trial court ruled the search and seizure unlawful and excluded the bottle of whiskey for that reason, but received the revolver and bullets because of the provision in Michigan Constitution of 1963, Article 1, § 11, forbidding the barring of the gun and bullets, for that reason, from evidence. Defendant was found guilty of carrying a dangerous weapon in a motor vehicle contrary to the said statute.

Defendant appealed to the Court of Appeals. It affirmed for the expressed reason that this Court had not yet determined the anti-exclusionary pro[615]*615vision of Article 1, § 11, to be. unconstitutional under the United States Constitution despite the holding in Mapp v. Ohio, supra. The case is now here on leave granted to defendant to appeal.

Considering now the first question- — were the search and seizure lawful? While differences in the facts between this case and those about to be considered are pointed out by the people, such as length of time between the arrest and the search, we do not deem those differences to be decisive or controlling, so as to require a different result, and, hence, think that under our decision in People v. Carr (1963), 370 Mich 251, and the decisions of the United States Supreme Court in Preston v. United States (1964), 376 US 364 (84 S Ct 881, 11 L Ed 2d 777), and Dyke v. Taylor Implement Manufacturing Co., Inc. (1968), 391 US 216 (88 S Ct 1472, 20 L Ed 2d 538), it must be held that the search and seizure in the instant case were too remote in time or place to be incidental to the arrest which was made for driving while under the influence of intoxicating liquor, as to which offense the search and seizure and fruits thereof could have had no reasonable relationship whatsoever. The reason for the arrest gave no cause for the search of the automobile after defendant was already in custody. We are satisfied with the trial court’s finding that the search and seizure were unlawful. Defendant says the trial court erred, after finding the search and seizure unlawful, in receiving the revolver and bullets into evidence. This he did under the anti-exclusionary provision of Article 1, § 11, Michigan Constitution of 1963, reading as follows:

“The provisions of this section [prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures] shall not be construed to bar from evidence in any criminal proceeding any narcotic drug, firearm, bomb, explosive [616]*616or any other dangerous weapon, seized by a peace officer outside the curtilage of any dwelling house in this state.”

This brings us to the second question in this case: Is that provision of the Michigan Constitution unconstitutional under the federal Constitution?

G-oing back to the doctrine of Weeks v. United States, 232 US 383 (34 S Ct 341, 58 L Ed 652), decided in 1914, evidence secured in violation of the Fourth Amendment was inadmissible in federal courts. In Wolf v. Colorado, 338 US 25 (69 S Ct 1359, 93 L Ed 1782), decided in 1949, the United States Supreme Court held that such exclusionary rule was not, by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, made applicable to a prosecution in a state court for a state crime. That holding in Wolf was overruled in Mapp v. Ohio, supra, decided in 1961. The court then held that evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Federal Constitution is inadmissible in a criminal trial in a state court by reason of the provisions of that and the Fourteenth Amendment. The court said:

“Since the Fourth Amendment’s right of privacy has been declared enforceable against the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth, it is enforceable against them by the same sanction of exclusion as is used against the federal government. Were it otherwise, then just as without the Weeks rule the assurance against unreasonable federal searches and seizures would be ‘a form of words,’ valueless and undeserving of mention in a perpetual charter of inestimable human liberties, so too, without that rule the freedom from state invasions of privacy would be so ephemeral and so neatly severed from its conceptual nexus with the freedom from all brutish means of coercing evidence [617]*617as not to merit this court’s high regard as a freedom ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’ ”

In Malloy v. Hogan (1964), 378 US 1 (84 S Ct 1489, 12 L Ed 2d 653), the United States Supreme Court said:

“* * * the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures of the Fourth Amendment # * * are * * * to he enforced against the states under the Fourteenth Amendment according to the same standards that protect those personal rights against federal encroachment.”

Article VI, clause 2, of the United States Constitution provides:

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People v. Pennington
178 N.W.2d 471 (Michigan Supreme Court, 1970)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
178 N.W.2d 471, 383 Mich. 611, 1970 Mich. LEXIS 180, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-pennington-mich-1970.