Opinion ID: 1959325
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: MACK, Associate Judge, dissenting:

Text: The majority's admittedly irrational conclusion in this case is reached not because of the Supreme Court's holding in Rakas v. Illinois , [1] but because of an erroneous premise embraced by this court in Johnson I [2]  that the outcome of Johnson's motion to suppress a gun and ammunition found on his person should turn upon the legality or illegality of the seizure of the driver of the car in which Johnson had been seated prior to his apprehension. In fact, Rakas has no application to this case. In reshaping Rakas to fit the circumstances here, the majority has introduced into an already sufficiently tortuous law of Fourth Amendment standing a new and bizarre element: that a defendant can be required to prove an expectation of privacy ( Rakas ) in facts alleged to comprise the articulable basis for his apprehension by the police ( Terry ). We are met here with a comedy of errors. In Johnson I, the majority found that the police had illegally seized Johnson's companion, the driver of the car in which Johnson was seated when the police arrived. Since the driver had been illegally seized, his reaction to the police's actions  his flight  was termed a fruit of that seizure. Describing the flight as a fruit, however, leads to the inexorable conclusion that as a fruit it can be suppressed (even though it is not tangible evidence that the government seeks to admit to prove a substantive offense, but is a mere element upon which reasonable suspicion is based). This was faulty reasoning. [3] Now, on petition for rehearing, the Rakas analysis is applied (adding insult to injury): although flight as a fruit can be suppressed, only the person who flies has an expectation of privacy in his own flight, and therefore only the driver can move to suppress this particular fruit. The flight as a fruit analysis of Johnson I has thus paved the way (with the help of the government) for the majority's conclusion here, that since Johnson has no expectation of privacy in the driver's person, he cannot suppress his flight; and that the flight may therefore form the basis for a finding that the police had reasonable suspicion that Johnson was involved in illegal activity. Rakas, however, held only that in order to suppress tangible evidence at trial, a defendant must have an expectation of privacy in the place from which that evidence is recovered. Johnson clearly had such an expectation in this case, since the tangible evidence was seized from his person and his bag. The majority's reasoning has the effect of extending Rakas to require an expectation of privacy not only in the place from which evidence is recovered, but also in certain elements of articulable suspicion  i.e., events, or facts  relied upon by the police in their decision to make an investigative stop of the defendant. [4] The majority has reached this strange result because it is building on a strange premise: that the seizure of the driver is at issue in Johnson's challenge to the admission of evidence. A long line of Supreme Court precedents establishes, however, that the only seizure that a criminal defendant may challenge is his own. See, e.g., Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 171, 89 S.Ct. 961, 965, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1969); Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 389, 88 S.Ct. 967, 973, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968); Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 261, 80 S.Ct. 725, 731, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960). [5] Not surprisingly, the trial court made no findings regarding the interaction between the police and the driver, and Johnson did not even attempt to assert that the driver's seizure was illegal at any stage of the proceedings, either in the trial court or on appeal. There is no question that had an action been brought against the driver, he could have challenged his own seizure, and if that seizure was found to be without support ab initio, of course his flight at police instigation could not be used to justify it after the fact. In this proceeding, however, the question of the seizure of the driver is irrelevant.