Boyd v. United States 116 U.S. 616 (1886)

• Author: Leonard W. Levy
• Pages: 215-216

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Justice LOUIS D. BRANDEIS believed that Boyd will be remembered "as long as civil liberty lives in the United States." The noble sentiments expressed in JOSEPH P. BRADLEY'S opinion for the Court merit that estimate, but like many another historic opinion, this one was not convincingly reasoned. To this day, however, members of the Court return to Boyd to grace their opinions with its authority or with an imperishable line from Bradley's.

Boyd was the first important SEARCH AND SEIZURE case as well as the first important case on the RIGHT AGAINST SELF-INCRIMINATION. It arose not from a criminal prosecution but from a civil action by the United States for the forfeiture of goods imported in violation of customs revenue laws. In such cases an 1874 act of Congress required the importer to produce in court all pertinent records tending to prove the charges against him or suffer the penalty of being taken "as confessed." The Court held the act unconstitutional as a violation of both the FOURTH and FIFTH AMENDMENTS. The penalty made the production of the records compulsory. That compulsion, said Bradley, raised "a very grave question of constitutional law, involving the personal security and PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES of the citizen.?" But did the case involve a search or a seizure, and if so was it "unreasonable," and did it force the importer to be a witness against himself in a criminal case?

Bradley conceded that there was no search and seizure as in the forcible entry into a man's house and examination of his papers. Indeed, there was no search here for evidence of crime. The compulsion was to produce records that the government required importers to keep; no private

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papers were at issue. Moreover, no property was confiscated as in the case of contraband like smuggled goods. The importer, who was not subject to a search, had merely to produce the needed records in court; he kept custody of them. But the Court treated those records as if they were private papers, which could be used as EVIDENCE against him, resulting in the forfeiture of his property, or to establish a criminal charge. Though the proceeding was a civil one, a different section of the same statute did provide criminal penalties for fraud.

Bradley made a remarkable linkage between the right against UNREASONABLE SEARCH and seizure and the right against self-incrimination. The "fourth and fifth amendments," he declared, "almost run into each...