708 SW2D 140 - State v. Brown

How this case has been cited

Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently September 2004

16 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

DONNELLY, Judge,

¶1dissenting.

¶2 Article I, § 15 of the Constitution of Missouri provides “[t]hat the people shall be secure in their persons, papers, home and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures....”

¶3In Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886), and Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914), the United States Supreme Court articulated The Exclusionary Rule (which holds that evidence obtained by illegal search is not admissible at trial when timely objection is made).

¶4In State v. Owens, 302 Mo. 348, 259 S.W. 100 (banc 1924), a case which did not involve the United States Constitution, The Exclusionary Rule was adopted as Missouri law.

¶5Today, the principal opinion confirms that the Owensrule was “implicitly modified” in a footnote in Sweeney.

¶6This may be the most cavalier treatment ever given by this Court to a question of such importance.

¶7In such circumstance, I make two tentative observations:

¶8(1) that a search is unreasonable only when it is pretextual; and

¶9(2) that we should overrule Owensand wash our hands of The Exclusionary Rule except as it may implicate the provision “[t]hat no person shall be compelled to *149testify against himself in a criminal cause-” Mo. Const, art. I, § 19.

¶10I dissent.