Opinion ID: 3049651
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Manner and Scope of the Search

Text: Seljan argues that the search, regardless of its authorization, was unreasonably intrusive in manner and scope because, upon opening the FedEx package and examining the size and appearance of the letter contained within the package, it should have been clear, without having to read the letter’s content, that the FedEx package contained no contraband relating to undeclared currency. [5] Under our precedents, we have considered only a limited number of distinct scenarios where we might invalidate a border search under the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness command because of the highly intrusive manner or scope of the search. In United States v. Vance, despite the border search context, we held that customs officials must have “real suspicion” that a traveler is carrying contraband before they may proceed beyond a pat-down or luggage search and UNITED STATES v. SELJAN 9851 subject the traveler to a strip-search. 62 F.3d 1152, 1156 (9th Cir. 1995) (finding sufficient predicate to undertake a strip search where a traveler was returning from an unusually short trip, showed external signs of intoxication, was wearing clothing inappropriate for the climate, and had a suspicious bulge beneath his clothes); see also United States v. Ramos-Saenz, 36 F.3d 59, 61 (9th Cir. 1994) (concluding that a border search goes beyond the routine “only when it reaches the degree of intrusiveness present in a strip search or body cavity search”). In Alfonso, we held that “in the context of a border search, the search of private living quarters on a ship should require something more than naked suspicion.” 759 F.2d at 738 (concluding that other evidence of drug shipments aboard vessel sufficed to justify search). In the context of vehicle searches, we have accepted the possibility that a search could conceivably be so destructive that it would exceed its reasonable scope. See, e.g., United States v. Hernandez, 424 F.3d 1056, 1059 (9th Cir. 2005) (dismantling internal car door panels not excessively destructive as to be unreasonable); United States v. Chaudhry, 424 F.3d 1051, 1053 (9th Cir. 2005), cert. denied, 126 S. Ct. (2006) (concluding that exploratory drilling during suspicionless vehicle search at the border was done in reasonable manner where a “single 5/16-inch hole [was] drilled in the bed of a pickup truck”). Finally, we have also considered the question of whether a prolonged detention pursuant to a suspicionless border search might be unreasonable. See United States v. Gonzalez-Rincon, 36 F.3d 859, 861, 86364 (9th Cir. 1994) (holding that scope of border search was reasonable where nervous defendant arriving from Colombia was detained for several hours to monitor for bowel movements before she expelled seventy-three balloons containing cocaine). [6] We do not conclude that the scope or manner of the customs inspection here falls into the limited category of overly intrusive searches at the border. The customs official could ascertain by a glance that evidence of pedophilia was present in personal correspondence enclosed in a FedEx package that 9852 UNITED STATES v. SELJAN could be lawfully inspected. In conducting the suspicionless search under 31 U.S.C. § 5317(b), customs officials were authorized to open “any envelope.” In addition, Inspector LeBlanc, Supervisory Customs Inspector and team leader during the operation, stated that “[i]n inspecting [outbound] packages, Customs inspectors adopt a two-tier approach. First, they scan, not read, any documents. If something during their scan gives them reasonable suspicion to suspect a violation of the law, the inspectors give a closer inspection to the contents of the package.” Decl. Tom LeBlanc, Ex. to Gov. Opp. to Mot. to Suppress. This “scanning” protocol, not required under § 5317(b), provided a second layer of protection against over-intrusive searches. [7] During the course of this inspection, Inspector Oliva testified that he adhered to the scanning protocol when inspecting Seljan’s FedEx package and the second enclosed envelope: A: . . . I opened up the second letter, and I scanned the letter that was in the second envelope. Q: Did you notice anything during your scan? A: I was reading as I was scanning. I caught a cou- ple of sentences on there, something about an eight-year-old girl, something about “I love you,” and there was a final sentence at the bot- tom stating that . . . .... . . . “little girl’s peanuts smells like roses,” and at that time I reread the letter thoroughly to understand what the letter was saying. Rep.’s Tr. of Trial Proceedings 23, 25 (Nov. 16, 2004). Inspector Oliva’s method of “scanning,” even though it UNITED STATES v. SELJAN 9853 included reading a few words by necessity, was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. In contrast to the limitation on reading correspondence under 19 U.S.C. § 1583(c)(2), there is no similar prohibition under 31 U.S.C. § 5317(b), which authorized the search. [8] More significantly, we cannot reasonably expect customs officials like Inspector Oliva wholly to abandon their sensory faculties when conducting inspections under the plenary authority of a border search. On the facts here, Inspector Oliva did not act contrary to objective reasonableness. Although he was checking for compliance with currency declaration requirements under 31 U.S.C. § 5316, according to his testimony, no more than a glance was necessary to detect evidence of pedophilia. This testimony is not surprising because the letter in the first paragraph unabashedly announces its author’s illegal proclivities: “Yes, Honey, I like little girls like you.” We refuse to impose an unworkable and unreasonable constraint on the nation’s customs officials by requiring that they avert their eyes from obvious unlawfulness.8 We find support for our conclusion from our precedents involving the plain view doctrine. “An example of the applicability of the ‘plain view’ doctrine is the situation in which the police have a warrant to search a given area for specified objects, and in the course of the search come across some other article of incriminating character.” Coolidge v. New 8 In a different context, it is not difficult to imagine that such an imprudent constraint could have disastrous consequences: To avoid detection, a terrorist could simply enclose in a separate sealed envelope within the FedEx package plans for an explosive device, instructions for an attack, the chemical formula for some form of poison, or any other type of document that could, under Seljan’s proposed rule, qualify as unsearchable. Not only is such a rule unsupported under the law, it is unwise. See Cortez-Rocha, 394 F.3d at 1123-24 (underscoring “importance of our policing borders . . . which at this juncture in our history is surely a pressing national special need” in view of the findings of the 9/11 Commission on terrorist travel) (internal quotation marks omitted). 9854 UNITED STATES v. SELJAN Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 465 (1971) (plurality opinion), abrogated on other grounds as recognized by United States v. Ewain, 88 F.3d 689, 693 (9th Cir. 1996). In United States v. Bulacan, we observed that warrantless seizures are constitutional under the plain view doctrine in situations where “the incriminating nature of the object must be immediately apparent and the officer must ‘have a lawful right of access to the object itself.’ ” 156 F.3d 963, 968 (9th Cir. 1998) (quoting Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 137 (1990)). In that case we noted that “[t]he initial intrusion can be justified by a warrant or by one of the recognized exceptions of the warrant requirement.” Id. (emphasis added); see also Coolidge, 403 U.S. at 465 (“Where the initial intrusion that brings the police within plain view of such an article is supported, not by a warrant, but by one of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement, the seizure is also legitimate.”). In Bulacan, we held a regulation authorizing administrative searches at the entrance of a federal building, premised on protecting the safety of its occupants, to be unconstitutional because it was applied to not only weapons and explosives, but also narcotics, alcohol and gambling devices. Id. at 967, 973-74. Because narcotics, alcohol and gambling devices posed no immediate threat to the building’s occupants, the officer’s initial search of the defendant’s bag under the regulation that resulted in the seizure of narcotics and drug paraphernalia was invalid. See id. at 973-74. Because the search was not legitimately initiated, the Bulacan court concluded that the plain view doctrine was inapplicable. See id. at 968-69, 973-74. Significantly, in Bulacan, we distinguished our invalidation of a dual-purpose administrative search from United States v. Soto-Camacho, 58 F.3d 408 (9th Cir. 1995), and United States v. Watson, 678 F.2d 765 (9th Cir. 1982), both of which involved constitutional suspicionless administrative searches that featured a secondary rationale to monitor criminal activity. In Watson, marijuana was discovered when the U.S. Coast Guard was conducting an administrative search of the Globe Trotter, a vessel that fell within the parameters of an adminisUNITED STATES v. SELJAN 9855 trative plan that permitted Coast Guard personnel “to board and inspect all United States vessels less than 200 feet in length found in specific windows or corridors located at established points in the Pacific.” See 678 F.2d at 766. The sole purpose of the search in accordance with this administrative plan was to inspect for compliance with document and safety regulations; yet the government conceded that the search was also conducted “to attempt to interdict the flow of marijuana.” Id. at 766, 769 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Watson court rejected defendants’ dual motive argument —that the random search was also motivated by criminal law enforcement concerns and thus the Coast Guard required a search predicate—because “the stop and search had an independent administrative justification, and did not exceed in scope what was permissible under that administrative justification.” Id. at 771. In Soto-Camacho, the defendant challenged the admissibility of drugs seized pursuant to an administrative search conducted at a border checkpoint whose primary purpose was to prevent the flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States, yet where the border patrol timed the activation of the checkpoint based in part on intelligence regarding the movement of drugs. Id. at 410-11. As in Watson, the search was legitimate at the outset because it had independent justification and “ ‘did not exceed in scope what was permissible under that administrative justification.’ ” Id. at 412 (quoting Watson, 678 F.2d at 771). Our decision in Bulacan was compelled to distinguish these cases, see 156 F.3d at 971-73, because they provided examples of suspicionless searches that were validly initiated such that narcotics contraband discovered incidental to the main purpose of the administrative search could not be suppressed.9 9 Bulacan distinguished Watson and Soto-Camacho by focusing on the fact that both of those cases dealt with the border context, while Bulacan did not. Bulacan, 156 F.3d at 971-73. That distinction cannot, of course, be drawn here. 9856 UNITED STATES v. SELJAN In light of this authority, we hold that Inspector Oliva’s search of the letter inside the second envelope was not unreasonably intrusive in terms of its scope. Like the searches in Watson and Soto-Camacho, Inspector Oliva was authorized to open the FedEx package and “any” particular envelopes contained within. See 31 U.S.C. § 5317(b). This statutory authority provided the basis for Inspector Oliva to have a “lawful right of access to the object” to be searched, i.e. the FedEx package and all the enclosed contents. See Horton, 496 U.S. at 137. In determining the subject matter of the letter, Inspector Oliva appropriately scanned the document and could not have avoided noticing the “immediately apparent” evidence of pedophilia. See Bulacan, 156 F.3d at 968. Thus the manner of the search, too, was not unreasonable. That the letter contained Seljan’s intimate and illicit thoughts is of little significance since Seljan has only a very limited expectation of privacy during a border search. See Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. at 154 (noting that “the expectation of privacy is less at the border than it is in the interior”); Ramsey, 431 U.S. at 623 n.17 (“Not only is there the longstanding, constitutionally authorized right of customs officials to search incoming persons and goods, . . . there is no statutorily created expectation of privacy[.]”); Bulacan, 156 F.3d at 973 (“The Government’s interests in preventing the entry of contraband at the border is substantial, and the protections of the Fourth Amendment are weakened.”) (citing Watson, 678 F.2d 765, and Soto-Camacho, 58 F.3d 408). In the context of a border search, moreover, we do not draw an artificial line at the sealed envelope within a package. See Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 537 (recognizing that customs authorities have “plenary authority” to execute searches to interdict contraband); Ramsey, 431 U.S. at 619-20 (rejecting lower court’s theory that suspicionless search authority does not extend from travelers’ luggage and sent packages to “mailed lettersized envelopes”) (internal quotation marks omitted). The scope and manner of the search of the letter was constrained, as the letter had to be scanned when the package was UNITED STATES v. SELJAN 9857 opened, and the evidence of pedophilia presented itself. The review of the FedEx package’s contents is nothing like an intrusive body search or the dismantling of a car. The search of the FedEx package was reasonable in manner and scope. [9] We conclude that the district court did not err in finding that the initial search here was reasonable. The unmistakable evidence of pedophilia, which fell within the plain view of Inspector Oliva, permitted him to ascertain the full import of the letter and, in a temporary seizure, to bring the package’s contents to the attention of his superior, Inspector LeBlanc, who in turn properly documented the contraband and the identity of Seljan.