Davis v. Mississippi (394 U.S. 721)/Dissent Black

by Hugo Black

United States Supreme Court

394 U.S. 721

Davis  v.  Mississippi

 Argued: Feb. 26 and 27, 1969. --- Decided: April 22, 1969

Mr. Justice BLACK, dissenting.

The petitioner here was convicted of a brutal rape of a woman, committed in her own home. Fingerprints of the petitioner, left on the window sill of her home, were the clinching evidence bringing about petitioner's conviction. The Court, by once more expanding the reach of the judicially declared exclusionary rule, ostensibly resting on the Fourth Amendment, holds the fingerprint evidence constitutionally inadmissible and thereby reverses petitioner's conviction. The rape occurred on December 2, 1965, and, as was their duty, the police authorities began to make a searching investigation the morning of December 3. The raped woman was originally able to describe the rapist only as a young Negro male. With this evidence the police proceeded to interrogate a number of young Negroes on the streets, at their homes, or at the police station, and then permitted them to go on their way. The petitioner was among those so interrogated on December 3, at which time his fingerprints were made. The fingerprints were again taken on December 14. The record does not show that petitioner or any other young man who was questioned and fingerprinted over made the slightest objection. Apparently all of them cooperated with the police in efforts to find out who had committed the rape. This case is but one more in an ever-expanding list of cases in which this Court has been so widely blowing up the Fourth Amendment's scope that its original authors would be hard put to recognize their creation. For this most unnecessary expansion of the Amendment, the Court is compelled to put its chief reliance on a Court of Appeals decision, Bynum v. United States, 104 U.S.App.D.C. 368, 262 F.2d 465. I think it is high time this Court, in the interest of the administration of criminal justice, made a new appraisal of the language and history of the Fourth Amendment and cut it down to its intended size. Such a judicial action would, I believe, make our cities a safer place for men, women, and children to life.

I dissent from this reversal.

Notes