Court Opinion

ID: 9462926
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:53:32.960509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:51.023167
License: Public Domain

RONEY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in result only.
DYER, Circuit Judge, with whom GOLDBERG, GODBOLD and MORGAN, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting.
With deference I dissent. Nothing said in the majority opinion changes my conviction that the panel opinion applied correct legal principles to the undisputed facts.
I have found no case, Watson, White and Cardwell included,1 that dispenses with exigent circumstances for a search of an automobile without a warrant. Other Circuits are in accord. United States v. Farnkoff, 1 Cir. 1976, 535 F.2d 661 [19 Cr.L. 2205]; United States v. McClain, 9 Cir. 1976, 531 F.2d 431 [18 Cr.L. 2521]; United States v. Robinson, D.C.Cir.1976, 533 F.2d 578 [18 Cr.L. 2534, en banc]; United States v. Kemper, 6 Cir. 1974, 503 F.2d 327, cert. denied, 1975, 419 U.S. 1124, 95 S.Ct. 810, 42 L.Ed.2d 824; United States v. Bozada, 8 Cir. 1973, 473 F.2d 389; United States v. Bradshaw, 4 Cir. 1974, 490 F.2d 1097, cert. denied 1974, 419 U.S. 895, 95 S.Ct. 173, 42 L.Ed.2d 139.
This is factually a unique case. From beginning to end the truck’s trip varied not one iota from the detail worked out in rehearsal — about which all was known by the agents. Even the closed circuit television cameras were in place to photograph and record the arrest and seizure. The agents knew that someone (Mitchell) would get into the truck at the Holiday Inn and attempt to drive away. At the time of the seizure nothing had occurred or did occur that was unanticipated or unexpected. It is semantic aphasia to define these circumstances as exigent.
I am as much against crime and criminals as the next judge. But this generalization has no place in determining whether the government has failed to prove its case because evidence upon which it relied is inadmissible as having been obtained in an unconstitutional manner. I would reverse the conviction.

. The Supreme Court took pains to point out in Cardwell that it was “not confronted with any issue as to the propriety of a search of a car’s interior,” and emphasized that neither Carroll nor Coolidge was therefore apposite.