State v. McFarland

526 P.2d 361, 84 Wash. 2d 391, 1974 Wash. LEXIS 742

• Court: Washington Supreme Court
• Decided: September 12, 1974
• Docket: 42929
• Status: Published

Opinions

Finley, J.

— James E. McFarland was found guilty of unlawful possession of a controlled substance by a Pierce County Superior Court jury. The trial court denied a motion to suppress and admitted certain evidence allegedly tainted under the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine of Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 9 L. Ed. 2d 441, 83 S. Ct. 407 (1963), a derivative of the exclusionary rule created in Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 58 L. Ed. 652, 34 S. Ct. 341 (1914), and extended to the states in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 6 L. Ed. 2d 1081, 81 S. Ct. 1684, 84 A.L.R.2d 933 (1961). The Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict of the jury in an unpublished opinion. We granted a petition for review. Herein, we affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals and the trial court.

Prior to the advent of the criminal prosecution in the Superior Court involved in the instant case, petitioner McFarland was involved in a criminal prosecution in the Tacoma Municipal Court in which he pleaded guilty to two traffic counts and was convicted on a third count of assault. It must be conceded that he was not adequately apprised of his right to counsel and was not, in fact, represented by counsel at his trial and conviction on the assault charge in the Tacoma Municipal Court. Furthermore, the municipal court judgment might well have been set aside or voided on appeal, but no such definitive action was or has been taken to date. After his conviction in municipal court, McFarland was sentenced to 90 days in the city jail and ordered committed. Thereupon, before leaving the court room, he gave oral notice of appeal, an appeal bond was set, and McFarland was immediately taken to the city jail. Shortly thereafter at the city jail he was booked and searched. Approximately 20 amphetamine tablets were found on his person. As a result of this, he was charged in the Superior Court in the instant case with unlawful possession of á controlled substance, and counsel was appointed for him. He pleaded not guilty and, as hereinbefore indicated, moved to suppress the evidence obtained at the city jail as having been acquired during a search incident to a commitment declared unlawful by Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U.S. 25, 32 L. Ed. 2d 530, 92 S. Ct. 2006 (1972).

The exclusionary rule of Weeks and Mapp has spawned the so-called “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine which requires the suppression of all evidence that is derived as a consequence of an illegal search or seizure.

Commentators agree that the most important social good or purpose of the so-called exclusionary rule, described in the common vernacular, is to “police the police,” i.e., to discourage and deter police conduct violative of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. Thus, in situations where there is no police deterrent effect to be served by exclusion of particular evidence, the United States Supreme Court has steadfastly rejected application of the exclusionary rule. See, e.g., United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 38 L. Ed. 2d 561, 94 S. Ct. 613 (1974); Brown v. United States, 411 U.S. 223, 36 L. Ed. 2d 208, 93 S. Ct. 1565 (1973); Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 22 L. Ed. 2d 176, 89 S. Ct. 961 (1969). Cf. Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 41 L. Ed. 2d 325, 94 S. Ct. 2464 (1974).

In our judgment, the instant case does not involve an unwarranted intrusion by the police violative of the “unreasonable search and seizure” provisions of the Fourth Amendment. It does involve a routine and, we daresay, justifiable booking and an administrative search when McFarland arrived at the jail pursuant to a then outstanding Tacoma Municipal Court judgment. Assuming at the present that the Tacoma Municipal Court judgment was not only voidable but void on due process constitutional grounds, cf. Haislip v. Morris, 84 Wn.2d 106, 524 P.2d 405 (1974), this has not, in fact, depreciated in any way the actual probative value of the 20 amphetamine tablets as evidence. Now, in retrospect, it is claimed that by some kind, of legal alchemy or relation-back theory or, at best, by a dubious collateral attack on the Tacoma Municipal Court judgment, the evidence, i.e., the 20 amphetamine tablets should be labelled verboten — “fruit of the poisonous tree” —and properly subject to McFarland’s motion to suppress in the instant case.

By way of summary, it seems to us significant that in the instant case, an independent judicial proceeding in the Tacoma Municipal Court, was followed by the necessary and routine custodial jail search. Hence, there was no police misconduct directly involving an unlawful search and seizure violative of the Fourth Amendment, and thus, the ostensible purpose of the exclusionary rule as embodied in the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine is in no way to be served in the instant case by exclusion of the allegedly tainted evidence, 20 amphetamine tablets found on McFarland’s person at the time he was searched and transferred to the custody of the Tacoma city jail. For the reasons indicated, the judgment of the trial court should be affirmed. It is so ordered.

Hale, C.J., and Hunter, Hamilton, Wright, and Brachtenbach, JJ., concur.