Rochin v. California (1952)

342 U.S. 165 (1952)

Vote: 8-0
Decision: Reversed
Majority: Frankfurter, joined by Reed, Jackson, Burton, Vinson, and Clark
Concurrence: Black
Concurrence: Douglas
Not participating: Minton

MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER delivered the opinion of the Court.

Having “some information that (the petitioner here) was selling narcotics,” three deputy sheriffs of the County of Los Angeles, on the morning of July 1, 1949, made for the two-story dwelling house in which Rochin lived with his mother, common law wife, brothers and sisters. Finding the outside door open, they entered and then forced open the door to Rochin’s room on the second floor. Inside they found petitioner sitting partly dressed on the side of the bed, upon which his wife was lying. On a “night stand” beside the bed, the deputies spied two capsules. When asked “Whose stuff is this?”, Rochin seized the capsules and put them in his mouth. A struggle ensued in the course of which the three officers “jumped upon him” and attempted to extract the capsules. The force they applied proved unavailing against Rochin’s resistance. He was handcuffed and taken to a hospital. At the direction of one of the officers, a doctor forced an emetic solution through a tube into Rochin’s stomach against his will. This “stomach pumping” produced vomiting. In the vomited matter were found two capsules which proved to contain morphine.

Rochin was brought to trial before a California Superior Court, sitting without a jury, on the charge of possessing “a preparation of morphine” in violation of the California Health and Safety Code. … The chief evidence against him was the two capsules. They were admitted over petitioner’s objection. …

On appeal, the District Court of Appeal affirmed the conviction, despite the finding that the officer. …

“were guilty of unlawfully assaulting, battering, torturing and falsely imprisoning the defendant at the alleged hospital.” One of the three judges, while finding that “the record in this case reveals a shocking series of violations of constitutional rights”, concurred only because he felt bound by decisions of his Supreme Court. … The Supreme Court of California denied without opinion Rochin’s petition for a hearing. …

This Court granted certiorari because a serious question is raised as to the limitations which the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment imposes on the conduct of criminal proceedings by the States.

In our federal system, the administration of criminal justice is predominantly committed to the care of the States. The power to define crimes belongs to Congress only as an appropriate means of carrying into execution its limited grant of legislative powers. … Broadly speaking, crimes in the United States are what the laws of the individual States make them, subject to the limitations … in the original Constitution

These limitations, in the main, concern not restrictions upon the powers of the States to define crime, except in the restricted area where federal authority has pre-empted the field, but restrictions upon the manner in which the States may enforce their penal codes. Accordingly, in reviewing a State criminal conviction under a claim of right guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, from which is derived the most far reaching and most frequent federal basis of challenging State criminal justice, “we must be deeply mindful of the responsibilities of the States for the enforcement of criminal laws, and exercise with due humility our merely negative function in subjecting convictions from state courts to the very narrow scrutiny which the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment authorizes.” Malinski v. New York. [(1945)]. These standards of justice are not authoritatively formulated anywhere as though they were specifics. Due process of law is a summarized constitutional guarantee of respect for those personal immunities which, as Mr. Justice Cardozo twice wrote for the Court, are ‘so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental’, Snyder v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts [(1934)] … Due process of law, “itself a historical product,” Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co., is not to be turned into a destructive dogma against the States in the administration of their systems of criminal justice. …

. … Due process of law is a summarized constitutional guarantee of respect for those personal immunities which, as Mr. Justice Cardozo twice wrote for the Court, are “so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental,” Snyder v. Massachusetts. …

The vague contours of the Due Process Clause do not leave judges at large. We may not draw on our merely personal and private notions and disregard the limits that bind judges in their judicial function. Even though the concept of due process of law is not final and fixed, these limits are derived from considerations that are fused in the whole nature of or judicial process. … The Due Process Clause places upon this Court the duty of exercising a judgment, within the narrow confines of judicial power in reviewing State convictions, upon interests of society pushing in opposite directions. …

Applying these general considerations to the circumstances of the present case, we are compelled to conclude that the proceedings by which this conviction was obtained do more than offend some fastidious squeamishness or private sentimentalism about combatting crime too energetically. This is conduct that shocks the conscience. Illegally breaking into the privacy of the petitioner, the struggle to open his mouth and remove what was there, the forcible extraction of his stomach’s contents — this course of proceeding by agents of government to obtain evidence is bound to offend even hardened sensibilities. They are methods too close to the rack and the screw to permit of constitutional differentiation.

It has long since ceased to be true that due process of law is heedless of the means by which otherwise relevant and credible evidence is obtained. … Due process of law, as a historic and generative principle, precludes defining, and thereby confining, these standards of conduct more precisely than to say that convictions cannot be brought about by methods that offend “a sense of justice.” See Mr. Chief Justice Hughes, speaking for a unanimous Court in Brown v. Mississippi. It would be a stultification of the responsibility which the course of constitutional history has cast upon this Court to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind but can extract what is in his stomach.

To attempt in this case to distinguish what lawyers call “real evidence” from verbal evidence is to ignore the reasons for excluding coerced confessions. …

In deciding this, case we do not heedlessly bring into question decisions in many States dealing with essentially different, even if related, problems. We therefore put to one side cases which have arisen in the State courts through use of modern methods and devices for discovering wrongdoers and bringing them to book. …

On the facts of this case, the conviction of the petitioner has been obtained by methods that offend the Due Process Clause. The judgment below must be reversed.

Reversed.

Excerpted by Jacob Staab

Schmerber v. California (1966)

384 U.S. 757 (1966)

Vote: 5-4
Decision: Affirmed
Majority: Brennan, joined by Clark, Harlan, Stewart, and White
Concurrence: Harlan, joined by Stewart
Dissent: Warren
Dissent: Black, joined by Douglas,
Dissent Douglas
Dissent: Fortas

MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner was convicted in Los Angeles Municipal Court of the criminal offense of driving an automobile while under the influence of intoxicating liquor. … At the direction of a police officer, a blood sample was then withdrawn from petitioner’s body by a physician at the hospital.

The chemical analysis of this sample revealed a percent by weight of alcohol in his blood at the time of the offense which indicated intoxication. … Petitioner objected to receipt of this evidence … on the ground that the blood had been withdrawn despite his refusal, on the advice of his counsel, to consent to the test. He contended that … the withdrawal of the blood and the admission of the analysis in evidence denied him due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment … his privilege against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment; his right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment; and his right not to be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Appellate Department of the California Superior Court rejected these contentions and affirmed the conviction. In view of constitutional decisions since we last considered these issues in Breithaupt v. Abram [(1957)] … we granted certiorari. We affirm.

THE DUE PROCESS CLAUSE CLAIM

Breithaupt was also a case in which police officers caused blood to be withdrawn from the driver of an automobile involved in an accident, and in which there was ample justification for the officer’s conclusion that the driver was under the influence of alcohol. There, as here, the extraction was made by a physician in a simple, medically acceptable manner in a hospital environment.

There, however, the driver was unconscious at the time the blood was withdrawn, and hence had no opportunity to object to the procedure. We affirmed the conviction there resulting from the use of the test in evidence, holding that, under such circumstances, the withdrawal did not offend “that sense of justice’ of which we spoke in Rochin v. California. Breithaupt thus requires the rejection of petitioner’s due process argument, and nothing in the circumstances of this case or in supervening events persuades us that this aspect of Breithaupt should be overruled.

THE PRIVILEGE AGAINST SELF-INCRIMINATION CLAIM

We … must now decide whether the withdrawal of the blood and admission in evidence of the analysis involved in this case violated petitioner’s privilege. We hold that the privilege protects an accused only from being compelled to testify against himself … and that the withdrawal of blood and use of the analysis in question in this case did not involve compulsion. …

It could not be denied that, in requiring petitioner to submit to the withdrawal and chemical analysis of his blood, the State compelled him to submit to an attempt to discover evidence that might be used to prosecute him for a criminal offense. … The critical question, then, is whether petitioner was thus compelled “to be a witness against himself”. …

The withdrawal of blood necessarily involves puncturing the skin for extraction, and the percent by weight of alcohol in that blood … is evidence of criminal guilt. Compelled submission fails on one view to respect the “inviolability of the human personality.” Moreover, since it enables the State to rely on evidence forced from the accused, the compulsion violates at least one meaning of the requirement that the State procure the evidence against an accused “by its own independent labors.”

As the passage in Miranda implicitly recognizes, however, the privilege has never been given the full scope which the values it helps to protect suggest. …

The leading case in this Court is Holt v. United States. There the question was whether evidence was admissible that the accused, prior to trial and over his protest, put on a blouse that fitted him. It was contended that compelling the accused to submit to the demand that he model the blouse violated the privilege. Mr. Justice Holmes, speaking for the Court, rejected the argument … and went on to say:

“[T]he prohibition of compelling a man in a criminal court to be witness against himself is a prohibition of the use of physical or moral compulsion to extort communications from him, not an exclusion of his body as evidence when it may be material. The objection in principle would forbid a jury to look at a prisoner and compare his features with a photograph in proof.”

It is clear that the protection of the privilege reaches an accused’s communications, whatever form they might take, and the compulsion of responses which are also communications … but that compulsion which makes a suspect or accused the source of “real or physical evidence” does not violate it.

Although we agree that this distinction is a helpful framework for analysis, we are not to be understood to agree with past applications in all instances. …

In the present case, however, no such problem of application is presented. Not even a shadow of testimonial compulsion … was involved either in the extraction or in the chemical analysis. … Since the blood test evidence, although an incriminating product of compulsion, was neither petitioner’s testimony nor evidence relating to some communicative act or writing by the petitioner, it was not inadmissible on privilege grounds.

THE RIGHT TO COUNSEL CLAIM

This conclusion also answers petitioner’s claim that, in compelling him to submit to the test in face of the fact that his objection was made on the advice of counsel, he was denied his Sixth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel. Since petitioner was not entitled to assert the privilege, he has no greater right because counsel erroneously advised him that he could assert it. …

THE SEARCH AND SEIZURE CLAIM

In Breithaupt, as here, it was also contended that the chemical analysis should be excluded from evidence as the product of an unlawful search and seizure in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court did not decide whether the extraction of blood in that case was unlawful. … The question is squarely presented therefore, whether the chemical analysis introduced in evidence in this case should have been excluded. …

The overriding function of the Fourth Amendment is to protect personal privacy and dignity against unwarranted intrusion by the State. …

… [I]f compulsory administration of a blood test does not implicate the Fifth Amendment, it plainly involves the broadly conceived reach of a search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. … It could not reasonably be argued, and indeed respondent does not argue, that the administration of the blood test in this case was free of the constraints of the Fourth Amendment. …

Because we are dealing with intrusions into the human body, rather than with state interferences with property relationships or private papers — “houses, papers, and effects” — we write on a clean slate. … We begin with the assumption that, once the privilege against self-incrimination has been found not to bar compelled intrusions into the body for blood to be analyzed for alcohol contest, the Fourth Amendment’s proper function is to constrain not against all intrusions as such, but against intrusions which are not justified in the circumstances, or which are made in an improper manner. In other words, the questions we must decide in this case are whether the police were justified in requiring petitioner to submit to the blood test, and whether the means and procedures employed in taking his blood respected relevant Fourth Amendment standards of reasonableness.

In this case … these questions arise in the context of an arrest made by an officer without a warrant. Here, there was plainly probable cause for the officer to arrest petitioner and charge him. … The police officer who arrived at the scene … smelled liquor on petitioner’s breath, and testified that petitioner’s eyes were “bloodshot, watery, sort of a glassy appearance.” The officer saw petitioner again at the hospital, within two hours of the accident. There, he noticed similar symptoms of drunkenness. He thereupon informed petitioner

“that he was under arrest and that he was entitled to the services of an attorney, and that he could remain silent, and that anything that he told me would be used against him in evidence.”. …

… [T]he mere fact of a lawful arrest does not end our inquiry. … The interests in human dignity and privacy which the Fourth Amendment protects forbid any such intrusions on the mere chance that desired evidence might be obtained. In the absence of a clear indication that in fact such evidence will be found, these fundamental human interests require law officers to suffer the risk that such evidence may disappear unless there is an immediate search.

Although the facts which established probable cause to arrest in this case also suggested the required relevance and likely success of a test of petitioner’s blood for alcohol, the question remains whether the arresting officer was permitted to draw these inferences himself, or was required instead to procure a warrant before proceeding with the test. …

The officer in the present case, however, might reasonably have believed that he was confronted with an emergency. … We are told that the percentage of alcohol in the blood begins to diminish shortly after drinking stops. … Given these special facts, we conclude that the attempt to secure evidence of blood alcohol content … was … appropriate. …

Similarly, we are satisfied that the test chosen to measure petitioner’s blood alcohol level was a reasonable one … Such tests are a commonplace in these days of periodic physical examination and experience with them teaches that the quantity of blood extracted is minimal, and that, for most people, the procedure involves virtually no risk, trauma, or pain. …

Finally, the record shows that the test was performed in a reasonable manner. …

We thus conclude that the present record shows no violation of petitioner’s right under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. …

Affirmed.

Excerpted by Jacob Staab

Winston v. Lee (1985)

470 U.S. 753 (1985)

Vote: 9-0
Decision: Affirmed
Majority: Brennan, joined by Burger, White, Marshall, Powell, Stevens, and O’Connor
Concurrence: Burger
Concurrence: Blackmun
Concurrence: Rehnquist (in judgement)

JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.

Schmerber v. California (1966) held, inter alia, that a State may, over the suspect’s protest, have a physician extract blood from a person suspected of drunken driving without violation of the suspect’s right secured by the Fourth Amendment not to be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures. However, Schmerber cautioned:

“That we today hold that the Constitution does not forbid the States[‘] minor intrusions into an individual’s body under stringently limited conditions in no way indicates that it permits more substantial intrusions, or intrusions under other conditions.”

In this case, the Commonwealth of Virginia seeks to compel the respondent … to undergo a surgical procedure under a general anesthetic for removal of a bullet lodged in his chest. Petitioners allege that the bullet will provide evidence of respondent’s guilt or innocence. We conclude that the procedure sought here is an example of the “more substantial intrusion” cautioned against in Schmerber. …

… Ralph E. Watkinson was closing his shop for the night. … [H]e observed someone armed with a gun coming toward him from across the street. Watkinson was also armed. … Watkinson then fired at the other person, who returned his fire. … The police arrived on the scene shortly thereafter, and Watkinson was taken by ambulance to the emergency room of the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) Hospital.

Approximately 20 minutes later, police officers responding to another call found respondent eight blocks from where the earlier shooting occurred. Respondent was suffering from a gunshot wound to his left chest area, and told the police that he had been shot when two individuals attempted to rob him. An ambulance took respondent to the MCV Hospital. Watkinson was still in the MCV emergency room and, when respondent entered that room, said “[t]hat’s the man that shot me”. …

The Commonwealth shortly thereafter moved in state court for an order directing respondent to undergo surgery to remove an object thought to be a bullet lodged under his left collarbone. … At the second hearing, the expert testified that, on reexamination of respondent, he discovered that the bullet was not “back inside close to the nerves and arteries,” as he originally had thought. Instead, he now believed the bullet to be located “just beneath the skin.” He testified that the surgery … could be performed under local anesthesia, and would result in “no danger on the basis that there’s no general anesthesia employed.”

The state trial judge granted the motion to compel surgery. …

On October 18, 1982, just before the surgery was scheduled, the surgeon ordered that X-rays be taken of respondent’s chest. The X-rays revealed that the bullet was in fact lodged … substantially deeper than had been thought when the state court granted the motion to compel surgery. The surgeon now believed that a general anesthetic would be desirable for medical reasons.

Respondent moved the state trial court for a rehearing based on the new evidence. After holding an evidentiary hearing, the state trial court denied the rehearing, and the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed. Respondent then returned to federal court. … After an evidentiary hearing, the District Court enjoined the threatened surgery.

A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed. We granted certiorari to consider whether a State may, consistently with the Fourth Amendment, compel a suspect to undergo surgery of this kind in a search for evidence of a crime.

The Fourth Amendment protects “expectations of privacy,” see Katz v. United States –the individual’s legitimate expectations that, in certain places and at certain times, he has “the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.” Olmstead v. United States (Brandeis, J., dissenting). Putting to one side the procedural protections of the warrant requirement, the Fourth Amendment generally protects the “security” of “persons, houses, papers, and effects” against official intrusions up to the point where the community’s need for evidence surmounts a specified standard, ordinarily “probable cause.” Beyond this point, it is ordinarily justifiable for the community to demand that the individual give up some part of his interest in privacy and security. …

A compelled surgical intrusion into an individual’s body for evidence, however, implicates expectations of privacy and security of such magnitude that the intrusion may be “unreasonable” even if likely to produce evidence of a crime. …

The authorities in Schmerber clearly had probable cause to believe that he had been driving while intoxicated and to believe that a blood test would provide evidence that was exceptionally probative in confirming this belief. Because the case fell within the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement, no warrant was necessary. …

Schmerber noted that

“[t]he overriding function of the Fourth Amendment is to protect personal privacy and dignity against unwarranted intrusion by the State”. …

The intrusion perhaps implicated Schmerber’s most personal and deep-rooted expectations of privacy, and the Court recognized that Fourth Amendment analysis thus required a discerning inquiry into the facts and circumstances to determine whether the intrusion was justifiable. The Fourth Amendment neither forbids nor permits all such intrusions; rather, the Amendment’s

“proper function is to constrain, not against all intrusions as such, but against intrusions which are not justified in the circumstances, or which are made in an improper manner.”

The reasonableness of surgical intrusions beneath the skin depends on a case-by-case approach, in which the individual’s interests in privacy and security are weighed against society’s interests in conducting the procedure. In a given case, the question whether the community’s need for evidence outweighs the substantial privacy interests at stake is a delicate one admitting of few categorical answers. We believe that Schmerber, however, provides the appropriate framework of analysis for such cases.

Schmerber recognized that the ordinary requirements of the Fourth Amendment would be the threshold requirements for conducting this kind of surgical search and seizure. …

Another factor is the extent of intrusion upon the individual’s dignitary interests in personal privacy and bodily integrity. … Schmerber recognized society’s judgment that blood tests do not constitute an unduly extensive imposition on an individual’s personal privacy and bodily integrity.

Weighed against these individual interests is the community’s interest in fairly and accurately determining guilt. … We noted in Schmerber that a blood test is “a highly effective means of determining the degree to which a person is under the influence of alcohol.” Moreover, there was “a clear indication that in fact [desired] evidence [would] be found” if the blood test were undertaken.

Especially given the difficulty of proving drunkenness by other means, these considerations showed that results of the blood test were of vital importance if the State were to enforce its drunken driving laws. …

Applying the Schmerber balancing test in this case, we believe that the Court of Appeals reached the correct result. … Our inquiry therefore must focus on the extent of the intrusion on respondent’s privacy interests and on the State’s need for the evidence.

The threats to the health or safety of respondent posed by the surgery are the subject of sharp dispute between the parties. Before the new revelations of October 18, the District Court found that the procedure could be carried out “with virtually no risk to [respondent].” On rehearing, however, with new evidence before it, the District Court held that “the risks previously involved have increased in magnitude even as new risks are being added.”

The Court of Appeals examined the medical evidence in the record and found that respondent would suffer some risks associated with the surgical procedure. …

Both lower courts in this case believed that the proposed surgery, which for purely medical reasons required the use of a general anesthetic, would be an “extensive” intrusion on respondent’s personal privacy and bodily integrity.

When conducted with the consent of the patient, surgery requiring general anesthesia is not necessarily demeaning or intrusive. … In this case, however, the Court of Appeals noted that the Commonwealth proposes to take control of respondent’s body. …

The other part of the balance concerns the Commonwealth’s need to intrude into respondent’s body to retrieve the bullet. … The Commonwealth has available substantial additional evidence that respondent was the individual who accosted Watkinson on the night of the robbery. …

In weighing the various factors in this case, we therefore reach the same conclusion as the courts below. The operation sought will intrude substantially on respondent’s protected interests. The medical risks of the operation, although apparently not extremely severe, are a subject of considerable dispute; the very uncertainty militates against finding the operation to be “reasonable.” In addition, the intrusion on respondent’s privacy interests entailed by the operation can only be characterized as severe. …

The Fourth Amendment is a vital safeguard of the right of the citizen to be free from unreasonable governmental intrusions into any area in which he has a reasonable expectation of privacy. … Applying these principles, we hold that the proposed search in this case would be “unreasonable” under the Fourth Amendment.

Affirmed.

Excerpted by Jacob Staab