To Balance the Scales

"Justice does not belong exclusively to the criminal. Society as a whole is also entitled to justice." These were the key sentences in Arizona Lawyer Charles N. Ronan's opening remarks at the annual convention of the National District Attorneys' Association in Phoenix. Ronan, who is the D.A. in Phoenix, argued that concern for the rights of criminals must be balanced by concern for society's interests. "The time has come," he said, "to balance the scales."

The view that the scales are unbalanced is shared by many of Ronan's colleagues. In decision after decision over the years, the U.S. Supreme Court has written an expanding definition of the rights of persons accused of crimes. Many state and local law-enforcement officials feel that solicitude for the rights of the accused has been stretched to the point of impairing the capacity of the police to cope with crime.

Conventioneers in Phoenix hit especially hard at the Supreme Court's 1961 decision in Mapp v. Ohio, a case involving seizure of obscene materials without a warrant. The court held that evidence obtained through "unreasonable searches and seizures" should be barred from criminal prosecutions in state courts, just as the Fourth Amendment bars such evidence from federal courts. "The effect," said Maryland D.A. William J. O'Donnell, "is almost making the streets safe for criminals."

Burst of Denunciation. While the D.A.s were speaking their minds in Phoenix, New York State put on the books two new anticrime statutes. But when Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed the measures into law, he provoked a vehement burst of criticism.

One of the New York statutes authorizes the police, after obtaining court approval, to break into buildings or apartments without announcing themselves in advance--a far cry from the old open-up-in-the-name-of-the-law ceremony that, police say, often gave the occupants time to destroy such evidence as narcotics or gambling records by flushing them down the toilet. The other new measure, promptly labeled the stop-and-frisk law, permits a policeman to stop, search and demand identification of "any person abroad in public whom he reasonably suspects is committing, has committed or is about to commit a felony."

Overheated Rhetoric. While the anti-crime bills were being considered by the legislature, they got strong support from law-enforcement agencies, but many lawyers were loud in their disapproval. Said the State Bar Association in denouncing the stop-and-frisk proposal: "Nowhere in the history of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence have we so closely approached a police state." When Rockefeller signed the bills anyway, another organization, made up largely of lawyers and called the Emergency Committee for Public Safety, attacked the new laws as "the worst police state measures ever enacted in the history of our nation--ominously dangerous enactments threatening a reign of unrestrained terror in our state."

On both sides, the overheated rhetoric promised that the Supreme Court would soon be asked to hand down further definitions of the rights of persons suspected of crimes.

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