Source: https://openjurist.org/339/us/56
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 08:27:00+00:00

Document:
On February 1, 1943, a printer who possessed plates for forging 'overprints' on canceled stamps was taken into custody. He disclosed that respondent, a dealer in stamps, was one of the customers to whom he had delivered large numbers of stamps bearing forged overprints.1 On Saturday, February 6, 1943, with this information concerning respondent and his activities in the hands of Government officers, a postal employee was sent to respondent's place of business to buy stamps bearing overprints. He bought four stamps. On Monday, February 8, the stamps were sent to an expert to determine whether the overprints were genuine. On February 9 the report was received showing the overprints to be forgeries, having been placed upon the stamps after cancellation, and not before as was the Government's practice. On February 11 a further statement was obtained from the printer who had made the overprints. On February 16, 1943, a warrant for the arrest of respondent was obtained.
Of course, a search without warrant incident to an arrest is dependent initially on a valid arrest. Here the officers had a warrant for respondent's arrest which was, as far as can be ascertained, broad enough to cover the crime of possession charged in the second count, and consequently respondent was properly arrested. Even if the warrant of arrest were not sufficient to authorize the arrest for possession of the stamps, the arrest therefor was valid because the officers had probable cause to believe that a felony was being committed in their very presence. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 156—157, 45 S.Ct. 280, 286, 69 L.Ed. 543, 39 A.L.R. 790.
The right 'to search the place where the arrest is made in order to find and seize things connected with the crime as its fruits or as the means by which it was committed' seems to have stemmed not only from the acknowledged authority to search the person, but also from the longstanding practice of searching for other proofs of guilt within the control of the accused found upon arrest. Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 392, 34 S.Ct. 341, 344, 58 L.Ed. 652, L.R.A.1915B, 834, Ann.Cas.1915C, 1177. It became accepted that the premises where the arrest was made, which premises were under the control of the person arrested and where the crime was being committed, were subject to search without a search warrant. Such a search was not 'unreasonable.' Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 30, 46 S.Ct. 4, 5; Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 158, 45 S.Ct. 280, 287; Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 623—624, 6 S.Ct. 524, 528, 29 L.Ed. 746.
'The officers were authorized to arrest for crime being committed in their presence, and they lawfully arrested Birdsall. They had a right without a warrant contemporaneously to search the place in order to find and seize the things used to carry on the criminal enterprise. * * * The closet in which liquor and the ledger were found was used as a part of the saloon. And, if the ledger was not as essential to the maintenance of the establishment as were bottles, liquors and glasses, it was none the less a part of the outfit or equipment actually used to commit the offense. And, while it was not on Birdsall's person at the time of his arrest, it was in his immediate possession and control. The authority of officers to search and seize the things by which the nuisance was being maintained extended to all parts of the premises used for the unlawful purpose.' Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 198—199, 48 S.Ct. 74, 76, 77.
We do not understand the Marron case to have been drained of contemporary vitality by Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 344, 51 S.Ct. 153, 75 L.Ed. 374, and United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U.S. 452, 52 S.Ct. 420, 76 L.Ed. 877, 82 A.L.R. 775. Those cases condemned general exploratory searches, which cannot be undertaken by officers with or without a warrant. In the instant case the search was not general or exploratory for whatever might be turned up. Specificity was the mark of the search and seizure here. There was probable cause to believe that respondent was conducting his business illegally. The search was for stamps overprinted illegally, which were though upon the most reliable information to be in the possession of and concealed by respondent in the very room where he was arrested, over which room he had immediate control and in which he had been selling such stamps unlawfully. Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145, 67 S.Ct. 1098, 91 L.Ed. 1399, which has not been overruled, is ample authority for the more limited search here considered. In all the years of our Nation's existence, with special attention to the Prohibition Era, it seems never to have been questioned seriously that a limited search such as here conducted as incident to a lawful arrest was a reasonable search and therefore valid.5 It has been considered in the same pattern as search of the person after lawful arrest.
It is appropriate to note that the Constitution does not say that the right of the people to be secure in their persons should not be violated without a search warrant if it is practicable for the officers to procure one. The mandate of the Fourth Amendment is that the people shall be secure against unreasonable searches. It is not disputed that there may be reasonable searches, incident to an arrest, without a search warrant. Upon acceptance of this established rule that some authority to search follows from lawfully taking the person into custody, it becomes apparent that such searches turn upon the reasonableness under all the circumstances and not upon the practicability of procuring a search warrant, for the warrant is not required. To the extent that Trupiano v. United States, 334 U.S. 699, 68 S.Ct. 1229, 92 L.Ed. 1663, requires a search warrant solely upon the basis of the practicability of procuring it rather than upon the reasonableness of the search after a lawful arrest, that case is overruled. The relevant test is not whether it is reasonable to procure a search warrant, but whether the search was reasonable. That criterion in turn depends upon the facts and circumstances—the total atmosphere of the case. It is a sufficient precaution that law officers must justify their conduct before courts which have always been, and must be, jealous of the individual's right of privacy within the broad sweep of the Fourth Amendment.
Trupiano v. United States, 334 U.S. 699, 68 S.Ct. 1229, 92 L.Ed. 1663, was decided on the unarticulated premise that the Fourth Amendment of itself barred the use of evidence obtained by what the Court considered an 'unreasonable' search. I dissented in that case. Later, concurring in this Court's decision in Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 39—40, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 1367, I stated my agreement with the 'plain implication' of the Wolf opinion that 'the federal exclusionary rule is not a command of the Fourth Amendment but is a judicially created rule of evidence which Congress might negate.' In the light of the Wolf case, the Trupiano rule is not a constitutional command, but rather an evidentiary policy adopted by this Court in the exercise of its supervisory powers over federal courts. Cf. McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 63 S.Ct. 608, 87 L.Ed. 819. The present case comes within that rule: the trial court admitted certain evidence procured by a search and seizure without a search warrant although the officers had ample time and opportunity to get one. Whether this Court should adhere to the Trupiano principle making evidence so obtained inadmissible in federal courts now presents no more than a question of what is wise judicial policy. Although the rule does not in all respects conform to my own ideas, I think that the reasons for changing it are outweighed by reasons against its change.
That rule is based upon very strict requirements designed to narrow the occasions upon which officers can make searches and seizures without judicial warrant. Unquestionably its application will now and then permit a guilty person to escape conviction because of hasty or ill-advised action on the part of enforcement officers. But the same may be said of the requirements of the Fourth Amendment which the exclusionary rule was fashioned to implement. The framers of the Fourth Amendment must have concluded that reasonably strict search and seizure requirements were not too costly a price to pay for protection against the dangers incident to invasion of private premises and papers by officers, some of whom might be overzealous and oppressive. See dissent in Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487, 500—502, 64 S.Ct. 1082, 1088—1089, 88 L.Ed. 1408, 154 A.L.R. 982. Nor can I see where the enforcement of criminal justice is likely to be seriously handicapped by adhering to the Trupiano holding.
4. What, then, is the exception to the prohibition by the Fourth Amendment of search without a warrant in case of a legal arrest, whether the arrest is on a warrant or based on the historic right of arrest without a warrant if a crime is committed in the presence of the arrester? The exception may in part be a surviving incident of the historic role of 'hue and cry' in early Anglo-Saxon law. See Judge Cardozo in People v. Chiagles, 237 N.Y. 193, 196, 142 N.E. 583, 584, 32 A.L.R. 676. Its basic roots, however, lie in necessity. What is the necessity? Why is search of the arrested person permitted? For two reasons: first, in order to protect the arresting officer and to deprive the prisoner of potential means of escape, Closson v. Morrison, 47 N.H. 482, 93 Am.Dec. 459, and, secondly, to avoid destruction of evidence by the arrested person. See Reifsnyder v. Lee, 44 Iowa 101, 103, 24 Am.Rep. 733; Holker v. Hennessey, 141 Mo. 527, 540, 42 S.W. 1090, 1093, 39 L.R.A. 165, 64 Am.St.Rep. 524. From this it follows that officers may search and seize not only the things physically on the person arrested, but those within his immediate physical control. What a farce it makes of the whole Fourth Amendment to say that because for many legal purposes everything in a man's house is under his control therefore his house—his rooms—may be searched. Of course in this field of law, as in others, opinions sometimes use language not with fastidious precision. Apart from such instances of loose use of language, the doctrine of search incidental to arrest has, until very recently, been strictly confined to the necessities of the situation, i.e., the search of the person and those immediate physical surroundings which may fairly be deemed to be an extension of his person.
8. The opinion of the Court insists, however, that its major premise—that an arrest creates a right to search the place of arrest—finds support in decisions beginning with Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341. These decisions do not justify today's decision. They merely prove how a hint becomes a suggestion, is loosely turned into dictum and finally elevated to a decision. This progressive distortion is due to an uncritical confusion of (1) the right to search the person arrested and articles in his immediate physical control and (2) the right to seize visible instruments or fruits of crime at the scene of the arrest with (3) an alleged right to search the place of arrest. It is necessary in this connection to distinguish clearly between prohibited searches and improper seizures. It is unconstitutional to make an improper search even for articles that are appropriately subject to seizure when found by legal means. E.g., Amos v. United States, 255 U.S. 313, 41 S.Ct. 266, 65 L.Ed. 654; Byars v. United States, 273 U.S. 28, 47 S.Ct. 248, 71 L.Ed. 520; Taylor v. United States, 286 U.S. 1, 52 S.Ct. 466, 76 L.Ed. 951. Thus, the seizure of items properly subject to seizure because in open view at the time of arrest does not carry with it the right to search for such items.
12. To say that the search must be reasonable is to require some criterion of reason. It is no guide at all either for a jury or for district judges or the police to say that an 'unreasonable search' is forbidden—that the search must be reasonable. What is the test of reason which makes a search reasonable? The test is the reason underlying and expressed by the Fourth Amendment: the history and the experience which it embodies and the safeguards afforded by it against the evils to which it was a response. There must be a warrant to permit search, barring only inherent limitations upon that requirement when there is a good excuse for not getting a search warrant, i.e., the justifications that dispense with search warrants when searching the person in his extension, which is his body and that which his body can immediately control, and moving vehicles. It is for this Court to lay down criteria that the district judges can apply. It is no criterion of reason to say that the district court must find it reasonable.
It is most relevant that the officers had 'no excuse for not getting a search warrant', 2 Cir., 176 F.2d 732, 735, for that is precisely what the Fourth Amendment was directed against—that some magistrate and not the police officer should determine, if such determination is not precluded by necessity, who shall be rummaging around in my room, whether it be a small room or a very large room, whether it be one room, or two rooms, or three rooms, or four rooms.
14. It is not as though we are asked to extend a mischievous doctrine that has been shown to hamper law enforces. We are asked to overrule decisions based on a long course of prior unanimous decisions, drawn from history and legislative experience. In overruling Trupiano we overrule the underlying principle of a whole series of recent cases: United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 68 S.Ct. 222, 92 L.Ed. 210; Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436; McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 69 S.Ct. 191, based on the earlier cases. For these cases ought not to be allowed to remain as derelicts on the stream of the law, if we overrule Trupiano. These are not outmoded decisions eroded by time. Even under normal circumstances, the Court ought not to overrule such a series of decisions where no mischief flowing from them has been made manifest. Respect for continuity in law, where reasons for change are wanting, alone requires adherence to Trupiano and the other decisions. Especially ought the Court not reenforce needlessly the instabilities of our day by giving fair ground for the belief that Law is the expression of chance—for instance, of unexpected changes in the Court's composition and the contingencies in the choice of successors.
There is no dispute that the objects searched for and seized here, having been utilized in perpetrating a crime for which arrest was made, were properly subject to seizure. Such objects are to be distinguished from merely evidentiary materials which may not be taken into custody. United States v. Lefkowitz, supra, 285 U.S. at page 464—466, 52 S.Ct. 420, 423, 76 L.Ed. 877, 82 A.L.R. 775; Gouled v. United States, 255 U.S. 298, 309—311, 41 S.Ct. 261, 265, 65 L.Ed. 647. This is a distinction of importance, for 'limitations upon the fruit to be gathered tend to limit the quest itself. * * *' United States v. Poller, 2 Cir., 43 F.2d 911, 914, 74 A.L.R. 1382.
For a more detailed summary of the English and American history underlying the Fourth Amendment, see the dissenting opinions in Davis v. United States, 328 U.S. 582, 603—605, 66 S.Ct. 1256, 1266, 1267, 90 L.Ed. 1453, and Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145, 157—162, 67 S.Ct. 1098, 1104, 1107, 91 L.Ed. 1399. The impact of this history was such that every State of the Union now affords constitutional safeguards against governmental search and seizure. Its contemporary vitality is emphasized by New York's adoption of such a provision as recently as 1938. N.Y.Const. of 1938, Art. 1, § 12.

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 Art. 1
 § 12