Court Opinion

ID: 9478057
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:38:59.575328+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:12.851726
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent.
Contrary to the majority’s contention, the facts underlying the warrantless search in the present case do not mirror the facts in United States v. Knobeloch, 746 F.2d 1366 (8th Cir.1984), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1006, 105 S.Ct. 1362, 84 L.Ed.2d 383 (1985), a case which, it seems to me, tested the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement to its outer limits.1 In that case, immediately upon his arrest, defendant Knobeloch’s confederate told the arresting officers that Knobeloch expected him back immediately with the proceeds of *1121the drug sale. The police officers, realizing that Knobeloch would discover that the deal had gone sour well before they could obtain a warrant, immediately proceeded to Knobeloch’s hotel room. After they identified themselves as police officers, they heard a scuffling sound in the room. Fearing that the drugs would be destroyed, they entered the room and found cocaine on Knobeloch’s person. This court held that the possibility that Knobeloch would take warning from his confederate’s delay in returning, together with the scurrying sounds heard in Knobeloch’s hotel room, justified a fear that evidence would be destroyed. The court thus upheld the search despite the law enforcement officials’ failure to obtain a warrant.
Here, however, there is nothing in the record to suggest that Clement was awaiting McDade and Stephenson’s return and that the evidence was in danger of destruction. The Magistrate simply held that, from the evidence presented at the suppression hearing, “this deduction was reasonably inferred by the agents who made the arrest.” However, to dispense with the warrant requirement simply on the mere possibility that evidence will be destroyed renders the Fourth Amendment impotent. This is particularly true in drug cases, where the evidence is capable of quick destruction. See United States v. Diaz, 814 F.2d 454, 458-59 (7th Cir.1987).
This case is virtually indistinguishable from United States v. Williams, 604 F.2d 1102 (8th Cir.1979), where we refused to dispense with the warrant requirement where the only asserted exigent circumstances were the subject matter of the investigation, i.e., drugs, and the sound of running feet. Williams is still good law and controls the facts of this case.
The Fourth Amendment guarantees that absent special circumstances reflecting a compelling need for official action and no time to obtain a warrant, law enforcement officials must obtain a warrant before they search an individual’s private dwelling. Id. at 1122-23. No such special circumstances exist here. The agents prepared for a non-consensual search when they brought a sledgehammer to the hotel at 11:30 a.m. on the day before the search. The drug enforcement agents simply chose to dispense with the Fourth Amendment safeguard of a neutral magistrate who determines probable cause. In so doing they leave the individual at the whim of law enforcement authorities.
The Fourth Amendment is central to our Constitution. It is important, not for the criminal but for the individual, as it is the individual’s only protection from unwarranted invasions into his or her privacy. The majority’s willingness to read the Fourth Amendment out of the Constitution in this case bodes ill for the protection of an individual’s privacy against uncontrolled invasion by police. The Fourth Amendment protects us all against that evil. That on occasion the guilty might escape prompt punishment is a price society must pay for the protection of the individual — yes, even rights of innocent individuals.
But here let us note that enforcement of the Fourth Amendment will not necessarily free the guilty. The government has the right to retry Clement and, as the facts set forth in the majority opinion demonstrate, the government has ample evidence, even without the tainted search, with which to retry him and in all likelihood obtain a conviction on retrial.
But instead, the majority here has ignored the constitutional protection of the Fourth Amendment and allowed the exception for exigent circumstances to swallow the constitutional rule. I reject that approach.

. I served on the panel that decided Knobeloch.