Dooming the Dragnet

After an 86-year-old white woman was raped in Meridian, Miss., in 1965. she could say only that her assailant was a Negro youth. During the next ten days, Meridian police resorted to the "dragnet" technique--stopping and questioning nearly 75 young Negroes at random. Many were fingerprinted, questioned and released. The Fourth Amendment bars any search or seizure without probable cause. But as it turned out, the fingerprints of one of the Negroes, John Davis, then 14, matched a set found on the windowsill of the victim's home. He was tried and subsequently convicted.

Last week, by a vote of six to two, the Supreme Court reversed Davis' conviction and, in effect, declared the practice of dragnet arrests unconstitutional. More surprising to lawyers, the court held that any evidence--including fingerprints--gathered as a result of dragnets is inadmissible. Though the decision was overshadowed by the implications of the court's voiding of state-residency requirements for welfare recipients (see THE NATION), it could eventually have considerable impact on police procedures.

Wholesale Intrusions. In the Davis case, the state contended that because the detention occurred during the investigatory rather than accusatory stage, there was no need to establish probable cause. Not so, wrote Justice William Brennan; to allow such investigatory seizures "would subject unlimited numbers of innocent persons to harassment and ignominy. Nothing is more clear than that the Fourth Amendment was meant to prevent wholesale intrusions on the personal security of our citizenry, whether these intrusions be termed 'arrests' or 'investigatory detentions.' " Since the seizure was improper, Brennan continued, the resulting fingerprints could not be used in evidence.*

Wholesale detentions are a common tool of investigation, and doubtless have value. While placing its emphasis on the dozens of innocent people who are seriously inconvenienced by the practice, the court made it clear that it hoped the police would find another way of sifting out suspects. Whether the police will do so, however, is uncertain. As Justice Potter Stewart pointed out in dissent, even if a suspect's prints were obtained improperly, the police might be able to rearrest him properly later and take his fingerprints then. That being so, it may be some time before police are willing to abandon as handy a device as the dragnet.

* The decision recalls last month's dragnet episode in Detroit (TIME, April 11). After a policeman was killed, 142 Negroes were taken to police headquarters. A local judge, George Crockett, declared the mass arrests illegal and released all but two. The police were enraged, but Judge Crockett appears to have anticipated the high court's reasoning.

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