The Fourth Amendment protects a corporation and its officers
from compulsory production of the corporate books and papers for
use in a criminal proceeding against them when the information upon
which the subpoenas were framed was derived by the Government
through a previous unconstitutional search and seizure, planned and
executed by its officials under color of a void writ, provided the
defense of the Amendment be seasonably interposed, and not first
raised as a collateral issue at the trial of the indictment. P.
251 U. S.
391.
The rights of a corporation against unlawful search and seizure
are to be protected even if it be not protected by the Fifth
Amendment from compulsory production of incriminating documents. P.
251 U. S.
362.
Reversed.
The case is stated in the opinion.
Page 251 U. S. 390
MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a writ of error brought to reverse a judgment of the
District Court fining the Silverthorne Lumber Company two hundred
and fifty dollars for contempt of court and ordering Frederick W.
Silverthorne to be imprisoned until he should purge himself of a
similar contempt. The contempt in question was a refusal to obey
subpoenas and an order of Court to produce books and documents of
the company before the grand jury to be used in regard to alleged
violation of the statutes of the United States by the said
Silverthorne and his father. One ground of the refusal was that the
order of the Court infringed the rights of the parties under the
Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
The facts are simple. An indictment upon a single specific
charge having been brought against the two Silverthornes mentioned,
they both were arrested at their homes early in the morning of
February 25, and were detained in custody a number of hours. While
they were thus detained, representatives of the Department of
Justice and the United States marshal, without a shadow of
authority, went to the office of their company and made a clean
sweep of all the books, papers and documents found there. All the
employes were taken or directed to go to the office of the District
Attorney of the United States, to which also the books, &c.,
were taken at once. An application, was made as soon as might be to
the District
Page 251 U. S. 391
Court for a return of what thus had been taken unlawfully. It
was opposed by the District Attorney so far as he had found
evidence against the plaintiffs in error, and it was stated that
the evidence so obtained was before the grand jury. Color had been
given by the District Attorney to the approach of those concerned
in the act by an invalid subpoena for certain documents relating to
the charge in the indictment then on file. Thus, the case is not
that of knowledge acquired through the wrongful act of a stranger,
but it must be assumed that the Government planned or at all events
ratified, the whole performance. Photographs and copies of material
papers were made, and a new indictment was framed based upon the
knowledge thus obtained. The District Court ordered a return of the
originals, but impounded the photographs and copies. Subpoenas to
produce the originals then were served, and, on the refusal of the
plaintiffs in error to produce them, the Court made an order that
the subpoenas should be complied with, although it had found that
all the papers had been seized in violation of the parties'
constitutional rights. The refusal to obey this order is the
contempt alleged. The Government now, while in form repudiating and
condemning the illegal seizure, seeks to maintain its right to
avail itself of the knowledge obtained by that means which
otherwise it would not have had.
The proposition could not be presented more nakedly. It is that,
although, of course, its seizure was an outrage which the
Government now regrets, it may study the papers before it returns
them, copy them, and then may use the knowledge that it has gained
to call upon the owners in a more regular form to produce them;
that the protection of the Constitution covers the physical
possession, but not any advantages that the Government can gain
over the object of its pursuit by doing the forbidden act.
Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, to
be sure, had established that laying the papers directly before the
grand jury was
Page 251 U. S. 392
unwarranted, but it is taken to mean only that two steps are
required instead of one. In our opinion, such is not the law. It
reduces the Fourth Amendment to a form of words.
232 U. S. 232
U.S. 393. The essence of a provision forbidding the acquisition of
evidence in a certain way is that not merely evidence so acquired
shall not be used before the Court, but that it shall not be used
at all. Of course, this does not mean that the facts thus obtained
become sacred and inaccessible. If knowledge of them is gained from
an independent source they may be proved like any others, but the
knowledge gained by the Government's own wrong cannot be used by it
in the way proposed. The numerous decisions, like
Adams v. New
York, 192 U. S. 585,
holding that a collateral inquiry into the mode in which evidence
has been got will not be allowed when the question is raised for
the first time at the trial, are no authority in the present
proceeding, as is explained in
Weeks v. United States,
232 U. S. 383,
232 U. S. 394,
232 U. S. 395.
Whether some of those decisions have gone too far or have given
wrong reasons it is unnecessary to inquire; the principle
applicable to the present case seems to us plain. It is stated
satisfactorily in
Flagg v. United States, 233 Fed.Rep.
481, 483. In
Linn v. United States, 251 Fed.Rep. 476, 480,
it was thought that a different rule applied to a corporation, on
the ground that it was not privileged from producing its books and
papers. But the rights of a corporation against unlawful search and
seizure are to be protected even if the same result might have been
achieved in a lawful way.
Judgment reversed.
THE CHIEF JUSTICE and MR. JUSTICE PITNEY dissent.