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State v. Dearmas2/13/2004
2-5-2 provides, in pertinent part, that a warrant may issue "to search for and seize any property * * * (4) hich is evidence of the commission of a crime." Therefore, § 12-5-2 expressly limited the trial justice's authority in this case to issue search warrants only to "search for and seize any property." The trial justice did not have carte blanche to issue warrants and seizure orders permitting the state to seize any type of evidence if that evidence did not also constitute "property," a term that the statute does not define.
"It is well settled that when the language of a statute is clear and unambiguous, this Court must interpret the statute literally and must give the words of the statute their plain and ordinary meanings." Granoff Realty II Limited Partnership v. Rossi, 833 A.2d 354, 361 (R.I. 2003) (per curiam) (quoting Accent Store Design, Inc. v. Marathon House, Inc. , 674 A.2d 1223, 1226 (R.I. 1996)). Considering the plain and ordinary meaning of the word "property," it is difficult for us to construe it in such a way as to include the involuntary seizure of a blood sample extracted from within a living person's body, especially when the person in question has not consented to such an extraction. As this Court noted many years ago in Pierce v. Proprietors of Swan Point Cemetery, 10 R.I. 227, 237 (1872), "there is no right of property in a dead body, using the word in its ordinary sense":
" he body is not property in the usually recognized sense of the word, yet we may consider it as a sort of quasi property, to which certain persons may have rights, as they have duties to perform towards it arising out of our common humanity. But the person having charge of it cannot be considered as the owner of it in any sense whatever; he holds it only as a sacred trust * * *." Id. at 242-43. (Emphasis added.) See also Sullivan v. Catholic Cemeteries, Inc., 113 R.I. 65, 68, 317 A.2d 430, 432 (1974).
In addition, Black's Law Dictionary defines property as: "The right to possess, use, and enjoy a determinate thing (either a tract of land or a chattel); the right of ownership[; or] * * * ny external thing over which the rights of possession, use, and enjoyment are exercised * * *." Black's Law Dictionary, 1232 (7th ed. 1999). In our view, blood samples taken from a living person's body without his or her consent do not fit into any one of these definitions. Indeed, ever since the enactment of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and the consequent overruling of the infamous Dred Scott case, no living person or people, nor their constituent living parts, can be lawfully considered as "property." Thus, the plain and ordinary understanding of the word "property" excludes blood samples, forcibly taken from living human beings, from the ambit of that term as it is used in § 12-5-2.
In addition, although § 12-5-2 does not define "property," in DiStefano, two justices of this Court, in an opinion authored by Justice Goldberg and joined by Chief Justice Weisberger, said that "we are not satisfied that one's bodily fluid is 'property' or evidence of the commission of a crime," even though "it is not the blood itself that is the 'evidence of the commission of a crime,' but rather the test results that are relevant in a criminal trial." DiStefano, 764 A.2d at 1167. To be sure, a majority of this Court in DiStefano did not need to decide that precise issue to conclude that the "none shall be given" language in G.L. 1956 § 31-27-2.1(b) (the drivingunder-the-influence statute) barred the use of a search warrant to seize a non-consenting motorist's blood after the state arrested the motorist for driving under the influence, death resulting. See DiStefano
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