Hugo Black

“ The plain facts here are that the Court's opinion cuts off many defendants who are now in jail from any hope of relief from unconstitutional convictions. The opinion today also beats a timid retreat from the wholesome and refreshing principles announced in Noia. No State should be considered to have a vested interest in keeping prisoners in jail who were convicted because of lawless conduct by the State's officials. ”

“ The Court says that the exclusionary rule's purpose of preventing law enforcement officers from making lawless searches and seizures 'will not at this late date be served by the wholesale release of the guilty victims.' Ante, p. 637. It has not been the usual thing to cut down trial protections guaranteed by the Constitution on the basis that some guilty persons might escape. There is probably no one of the rights in the Bill of Rights that does not make it more difficult to convict defendants. ”

“ Because it is enforceable in the same manner and to like effect as other basic rights secured by the Due Process Clause, we can no longer permit it to be revocable at the whim of any police officer who, in the name of law enforcement itself, chooses to suspend its enjoyment. ”

“ Doubtless there might be circumstances in which applying a new interpretation of the law to past events might lead to unjust consequences which, as we said in Chicot, cannot justly be ignored.' No such unjust consequences to Linkletter, however, can possibly result here by giving him and others like him the benefit of a changed constitutional interpretation where he is languishing in jail on the basis of evidence concededly used unconstitutionally to convict him. ”

“ Noia, supra. Reck was directed to be given a new trial 25 years after his offense and Noia 21 years after conviction. Both were given relief under just 'such an extraordinary procedural weapon' as the Court seems today to inveigh against. Indeed in Noia's case this Court went to great lengths to explain in an exhaustive and in what I consider to be a very notable and worthwhile opinion that habeas corpus was designed to go behind 'final' judgments and release people who were held on convictions obtained by reason of a denial of constitutional rights. ”

“ In reaching the conclusion in Boyd that evidence obtained by unlawful search and seizure could not be admitted nin evidence, the Boyd Court relied on the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against compelling a man to be a witness against himself. ”

“ In refusing to give Linkletter the benefit of the Mapp rule, the Court expresses the view that its 'approach is particularly correct with reference to the Fourth Amendment's prohibitions as to unreasonable searches and seizures,' indicating a disparaging view of the Fourth Amendment that leaves me somewhat puzzled after Mapp and other recent opinions talking about the indispensable protections of the Amendment. ”

“ The Court offers no defense based on any known principle of justice for discriminating among defendants who were similarly convicted by use of evidence unconstitutionally seized. It certainly cannot do so as between Linkletter and Miss Mapp. ”