Source: https://openjurist.org/565/f2d/577/j-h-devries-and-peter-r-beyerinck-v-vernon-d-acree
Timestamp: 2018-04-22 01:15:57
Document Index: 721500521

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 482', '§ 482', '§ 1582', '§ 145', '§ 482', '§ 145', '§ 482', '§ 482', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 1581', '§ 482', '§ 1581', '§ 1582', '§ 1582']

565 F2d 577 J. H. Devries and Peter R. Beyerinck v. Vernon D. Acree | OpenJurist
565 F. 2d 577 - J. H. Devries and Peter R. Beyerinck v. Vernon D. Acree
565 F2d 577 J. H. Devries and Peter R. Beyerinck v. Vernon D. Acree
565 F.2d 577
J. H. DeVRIES and Peter R. Beyerinck, Plaintiffs-Appellants,
Vernon D. ACREE, Commissioner of Customs, William E. Simon,
Secretary of the Treasury, and U. S. Customs
No. 76-3238.
The Government successfully contended in the district court that customs officers are statutorily and constitutionally entitled to open and to search first class letters from abroad without notice to or consent of the addressees and without any cause to suspect that such letters contain either contraband or dutiable merchandise. The sweeping power over international letter mail that United States v. Ramsey (1977), 431 U.S. 606, 97 S.Ct. 1972, 52 L.Ed.2d 617 said was not asserted by the Government in that case is sought here. If the Government's argument were sustained, every piece of first class letters from abroad addressed to any person or corporation in the United States could be opened and searched by customs officers at will or whim. We reject the Government's contentions on statutory grounds without reaching the constitutional issues engendered by its claims.
Section 145.2 is a regulation implementing 19 U.S.C. § 482, as the Supreme Court points out in United States v. Ramsey, supra, 431 U.S. at 612 n. 8, 97 S.Ct. 1972. The regulation thus necessarily incorporates the " 'reasonable cause to suspect' test adopted by the statute." (Id. at 612, 97 S.Ct. at 1977).
Barclift did not consider or discuss any issue of statutory construction. It cited neither 19 U.S.C. § 482 nor 19 U.S.C. § 1582. Indeed, as far as the opinion reveals, the panel was unaware that 19 C.F.R. § 145.2 was a creature of 19 U.S.C. § 482, thus incorporating the reasonable cause to suspect test in § 145.2. For the purpose of deciding whether the district court correctly denied the appellants' motion to suppress evidence which had its source in an "examination" at the border of some envelopes addressed to a third person from a sender in Bogota, Colombia, Barclift assumed that no limitations had been statutorily imposed upon the customs officers' search of the envelopes.1 In short, the sole issue discussed in Barclift was the validity of Section 145.2 (unmoored from 19 U.S.C. § 482) against Fourth Amendment attack. Because we do not reach either the First or the Fourth Amendment issues in this case, we have no occasion to reconsider the Barclift rationale in the light of United States v. Ramsey, supra, 431 U.S. 606, 97 S.Ct. 1972, 52 L.Ed.2d 617.2
The judgment below cannot stand because, entirely apart from any constitutional question, appellants have alleged that the opening and searching of their letters was in violation of 19 U.S.C. § 482, in that the officers acted without reasonable cause to suspect that the letters contained contraband or dutiable merchandise. (United States v. Ramsey, supra, 431 U.S. 606, 97 S.Ct. 1972, 52 L.Ed.2d 617.
It is manifest that the Congress by the enactment of §§ 2 and 3 of the 1866 legislation and the 1922 and 1930 revisions intended that each section was to apply to a separate and distinct subject. Statutes are to be given, wherever possible, such effect that no clause, sentence or word is rendered superfluous, void, contradictory or insignificant. Ruiz v. Morton, 462 F.2d 818 (CA9 1972), aff'd, 415 U.S. 199, 94 S.Ct. 1055, 39 L.Ed.2d 270 (1974). Interpretations that would nullify a statutory provision or render it superfluous are and should be disfavored. Patagonia Corp. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 517 F.2d 803 (CA9 1975). In other words, all provisions of a statute are intended to have meaning and are to be given effect. The identical rule is stated in United States v. Menasche, 348 U.S. 528, 75 S.Ct. 513, 99 L.Ed. 615 (1955). See also, N. L. R. B. v. Lion Oil Co., 352 U.S. 282, 77 S.Ct. 330, 1 L.Ed.2d 331 (1957); F.P.C. v. Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co., 337 U.S. 498, 69 S.Ct. 1251, 93 L.Ed. 1499 (1949). There is absolutely no way a court can give effect to each of these sections and their revisions and not conclude that § 2 was intended to apply aboard ships and vehicles at the border only, while § 3 was designed to apply to goods after they had entered the country either from foreign ships or across our borders from Mexico or Canada. One of the stated objects of the 1866 Act was to prevent smuggling, especially from Canada along the Canadian and Northwestern frontier. Clearly, § 3 of the Act applied to the situation where the smugglers would cross the United States border at places other than ports of entry and possess contraband at the time of apprehension. The contraband was in the United States and doubtless that is the reason for the use of the past tense in § 3 and the requirement of "reasonable cause to suspect" before a search could be made.
The reasons for the enactment of the two sections in the first instance are well articulated in Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 154, 45 S.Ct. 280, 285, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925), where it said: "Travelers may be so stopped in crossing an international boundary because of national self protection reasonably requiring one entering the country to identify himself as entitled to come in, and his belongings as effects which may be lawfully brought in. But those lawfully within the country, entitled to use the public highways, have a right to free passage without interruption or search . . . ."1
From this analysis of the controlling statutes, it seems quite clear that the general border search statute is 19 U.S.C. § 1581 and that 19 U.S.C. § 482 is a more specialized statutory provision designed to combat smuggled goods already introduced into the United States. Moreover, general mail inspection regulations established by the Secretary of the Treasury must be presumed to be promulgated under the general border search statute. This conclusion is eminently reasonable in light of the absence of any requirement of reasonableness in either the statute or the concomitant regulation. Although this conclusion is contrary to certain footnotes in United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 97 S.Ct. 1972, 52 L.Ed.2d 617 (1977), the author of that opinion overlooked the history and significance of 19 U.S.C. § 1581 and the statutory authority for the regulations at issue in 19 U.S.C. § 1582. Indeed, the Supreme Court admitted in Ramsey, supra, at n. 10 that it did not decide whether the search would have been authorized under some other statutory grant of authority including 19 U.S.C. § 1582.
It is a well recognized rule of law that a regulation should not be disregarded or annulled unless, in the judgment of the court, it is plainly and palpably inconsistent with law. Boske v. Comingore, 177 U.S. 459, 470, 20 S.Ct. 701, 44 L.Ed. 846 (1900). To the same effect, see Ramirez v. I&NS, 550 F.2d 560, 564 (CA9 1977); Soriano v. United States, 494 F.2d 681, 683-84 (CA9 1974), and United States v. Boyd, 491 F.2d 1163, 1167 (CA9 1973).
There can be no doubt but that the analysis at pages 9 through the first full paragraph on page 16 (431 U.S. pp. 616 - 623, 97 S.Ct. pp. 1979-1982) disposes of the Fourth Amendment challenge. True enough, the Supreme Court, for some unstated reasons, referred to searches made where "reasonable cause to suspect" existed. Nonetheless, time after time, the majority opinion makes it clear that the mere entry into this country from without makes a resulting search "reasonable". Sl.Op. 13 (431 U.S. 619, 97 S.Ct. 1980). Moreover, the majority holds that there is no distinction whatsoever between envelopes carried on the person and envelopes entering the country by mail. I quote from page 13 (431 U.S. at page 620, 97 S.Ct. at page 1981): "The critical fact is that the envelopes cross the border and enter this country, not that they are brought in by one mode of transportation rather than another." "The historically recognized scope of the border search doctrine, suggests no distinction in constitutional doctrine stemming from the mode of transportation across our borders." Sl.Op. at 14 (431 U.S. at page 621, 97 S.Ct. at page 1981). Again at page 16, slip sheet (431 U.S. at page 622, 97 S.Ct. at page 1982), "In view of the wealth of authority establishing the border search as 'reasonable' within the Fourth Amendment even though there be neither probable cause nor a warrant, we reject the distinctions made by the Court of Appeals in its opinion."
Additionally, I would hold that Ramsey, the analysis on pages 16, 17 and 18 of the slip sheet (431 U.S. pp. 623 - 625, 97 S.Ct. pp. 1982, 1983), disposes of the First Amendment constitutional challenge. There the Court emphasizes that the existing system of border searches has not been shown to invade protected First Amendment rights. The Court on page 16 (431 U.S. at page 623, 97 S.Ct. at page 1982) emphasizes that the applicable postal regulation, 19 C.F.R. 145.3 (1976) prohibits Customs officers or employees from reading, or authorizing any other person to read any correspondence contained in sealed mail of foreign origin unless a search warrant has been obtained in advance. The Court refused to consider the constitutional reach of the First Amendment in the absence of existing statutory and regulatory protection. To be sure, the Court said that envelopes were opened at the border only when the Customs officers have reason to believe they contain other than correspondence and held they had no occasion to decide whether in the absence of the regulatory restrictions that speech would be chilled. Nonetheless, the Court emphasized language taken from Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 576, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 2984, 41 L.Ed.2d 935, (1974), that " . . . freedom from censorship is not equivalent to freedom from inspection or perusal." Here, of course, we have the regulation prohibiting the reading of the enclosures.
This language from Carroll is quoted with approval in Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 272, 93 S.Ct. 2535, 37 L.Ed.2d 596 (1973), where the Court went on to say:
"Whatever the permissible scope of intrusiveness of a routine border search might be, searches of this kind may in certain circumstances take place not only at the border itself, but at its functional equivalents as well. . . . For another example, a search of the passengers and cargo of an airplane arriving at a St. Louis airport after a nonstop flight from Mexico City would clearly be the functional equivalent of a border search." Id. at 272-73, 93 S.Ct. at 2539.