Be Sure It's Legal

SEARCH & SEIZURE

One of the great safeguards of U.S. law is the stern refusal of criminal courts to accept illegally seized evidence. Yet many a lawyer has been moved to ask: Has this well-intentioned "suppression doctrine" reached a point of endangering the public safety?

An uneasy yes is the answer given by Judge Warren E. Burger of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. In a notable lecture at American University, Judge Burger traced the suppression doctrine back to 1886 when the Supreme Court banned evidence consisting of a man's private papers (Boyd v. United States). In subsequent and often conflicting opinions, frets Burger, judges have construed the doctrine as proscribing evidence ranging from narcotics to a murder victim's body. As a result, says Burger, more and more criminals are going free on what newspapers call "technicalities." Those technicalities are clearly the errors of policemen who are so ignorant or complacent about the doctrine that they go on making futile searches and seizures in an illegal manner.

Judge Burger offers a solution: independent boards in each city that would review police illegalities, much as expert investigating teams move in after a plane crash. Consisting mainly of lawyers, but also including policemen, Burger's boards would have the power of subpoena and the authority to recommend disciplinary action. The overriding purpose would not be to subvert the suppression doctrine but to train every policeman to make arrests that will hold up in court.

Burger hopes to provoke criticism and debate, particularly among police themselves. Initial police reaction last week was strongly defensive. "Citizen review boards," snapped former FBI Agent Quinn Tamm, now executive director of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, "would be nothing more than useless superstructures on a system of justice which has proved as workable as any ever devised."

Tamm has a point. More than 100 U.S. municipalities have experimented with citizen review boards in recent years. Nearly all have died aborning--but mainly because their very establishment spurred police to internal reform. In Rochester, for example, a citizens' board set up last year has still heard only one case. Meanwhile, the Rochester police force has organized its first truly effective internal disciplinary system. In light of this reaction, Judge Burger is delighted that Policeman Tamm also extended an olive branch: he wants the judge to state his case before a forthcoming meeting of police chiefs from all over the U.S.

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