Court Opinion

ID: 9494770
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:46:11.422157+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:36.434460
License: Public Domain

GOULD, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Our opinion applies the “reasonable and articulable, suspicion of criminal activity” test in evaluating the postal authorities’ detention of mail in this case. The government in briefing and in oral argument expressly accepted that the reasonable suspicion standard applied to the postal authorities’ investigatory actions. Reasonable suspicion was shown, as the opinion explains. Nonetheless, the standard to be applied may have significance in other cases. I suggest that the reasonable suspicion standard is not required for postal authorities to detain mail where the detention is unintrusive and does not significantly delay delivery.
When people send mail, they reasonably expect that it will not be searched and that it will reach its intended destination in about the same time that it takes other mail. If a letter or parcel is singled out and inspected, but is still delivered when other mail would have been, then no “seizure” has taken place within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The same is true if *932there is a minimal delay. And where, as here, a parcel is placed temporarily in a separate room, as opposed to being left with other mail, the privacy intrusion is de minimis, and is not a “seizure.” Such a modest intrusion can only become a “seizure” if the mail is significantly delayed. When expedited investigatory procedures cause a limited suspension of processing of mail, the reasons underlying the Fourth Amendment’s protections against seizures do not apply. These reasons do not arise unless or until the procedures cause a substantial delay in delivery, invoking protection against unreasonable seizures, or until the procedures become intrusive, invoking protection against unreasonable searches.1
The Supreme Court has held that only a significant intrusion will trigger Fourth Amendment protection. Short detentions of packages raise no genuine privacy concerns. Detention of a package causes “no possible invasion of the right ‘to be secure’ in the ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects’ protected by the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures.” United States v. Van Leeuwen, 397 U.S. 249, 252, 90 S.Ct. 1029, 25 L.Ed.2d 282 (1970). The Court in Van Leeuwen also made clear that “[t]he significant Fourth Amendment interest was in the privacy of this first-class mail; and that privacy was not disturbed or invaded until the approval of the magistrate was obtained.” Id. at 253, 90 S.Ct. 1029.
Our precedents have never read Van Leeuwen to require reasonable suspicion for short, unintrusive detentions of mail. In United States v. Hillison, 733 F.2d 692, 695-96 (9th Cir.1984), we stated only that Van Leeuwen did not require probable cause for such detentions. We did not say that reasonable suspicion is required as the applicable standard for nonintrusive detentions of mail for investigation. The Supreme Court itself has said that a Terry protective search for weapons, which requires reasonable suspicion, is more intrusive than this type of mail detention. See Van Leeuwen, 397 U.S. at 253, 90 S.Ct. 1029. In United States v. Aldaz, 921 F.2d 227, 229 (9th Cir.1990), we said that postal authorities may “seize and detain packages if they have a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity.” However, Aldaz’s reasonable suspicion standard would have been applied only to a detention that would delay the date of delivery.2 In United States v. England, 971 F.2d 419, 421 (9th Cir.1992), we explicitly rejected the contention that any detention of mail counts as a Fourth Amendment “seizure,” and we held that a brief detention is not a “seizure” when the package is flown to the destination on the same plane that would have carried it absent detention.
Investigators may inspect mail as they wish without any Fourth Amendment curtailment, so long as the inspection does not amount to a “search,” and so long as it is *933conducted quickly enough so that it does not become a seizure by significantly delaying the date of delivery3. Inspectors without more may choose a particular package to detain in order to examine the addressee or return address and investigate further, as Officer Jaworowski did here. See United States v. Choate, 576 F.2d 165 (9th Cir.1978) (holding that looking at information contained on the outside of mail does not implicate the Fourth Amendment). Postal authorities may also use scientific methods, such as x-rays, irradiation, or other processes, to detect or eradicate materials in the mail that may pose a grave risk to society.4 Authorities could, for example, irradiate all the mail in a particular facility, because this will not delay delivery beyond any other piece of mail sent from that location, and because irradiation may be the only means by which to achieve certain objectives. See Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 537, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967) (upholding building inspections because “it is doubtful that any other canvassing technique would achieve acceptable results”).
Only if the delivery date becomes delayed should reasonable suspicion be required to continue the detainment or inspection. Here, Officer Jaworowski had reasonable suspicion initially to detain the package. But he did not at all need it for the minimal intrusion that occurred. He kept the package in his office and investigated the addresses, phone numbers, and names on the outside of the package. He mailed the package that same day to Inspector Erdahl in Seattle, the package’s destination area. The post office was able to deliver the package the next day. Only if the package was likely to miss its anticipated Friday delivery date by a significant degree would Jaworowski and Erdahl need to show “a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity.”5
Postal authorities have discretion without constitutional restraint to take reason*934able investigative or curative steps that do not intrude on privacy and that do not significantly delay mail. Although this case presented grounds for reasonable suspicion to detain the PCP-filled package, and the government presented those grounds, our law did not require that showing for limited investigatory detention. I write to point out this view, which may be pertinent when a different case of postal service investigation and detention is presented.

. The Supreme Court has recently reminded us that when the reasons for a rule are no longer present, the rule may not apply. See Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 121 S.Ct. 2491, 2503, 150 L.Ed.2d 653 (2001) (quoting Lord Coke, "Cessante ratione legis cessat ipse lex " — "The rationale of the a legal rule no longer being applicable, that rule itself no longer applies”).

. Aldaz concerned packages sent from an Alaskan bush town that received mail service only by air. After the packages were flown to the transferring station, they were sent to an inspector in Anchorage instead of to the intended destination. Although the packages were cordoned off in a separate pouch, we noted that they would not have reached their destination any sooner than when the inspector received them. Aldaz, 921 F.2d at 231. Because Aldaz only assessed the reasonableness of the delay in the mail, it is consistent with the rule required by Van Leeuwen, 397 U.S. at 252, 90 S.Ct. 1029.

. If a search or a seizure has occurred, it may still be allowed, but only when it is "reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment. When one considers reasonableness, it requires consideration of the degree of cause for the search or seizure. And the level of required cause, such as probable cause for a search or reasonable suspicion for a "Terry ” stop varies with the degree of intrusion by the government on the person’s privacy and other interests protected by the Fourth Amendment. But none of these interests are implicated when postal inspectors, postal police, or other authorities examine the outside of an envelope or assess its characteristics without intruding on private communications. There is, for example, no reasonable expectation of privacy in the designated return address on a letter, and it may be freely investigated so long as the duration of investigation is sufficiently brief that no seizure occurs.

. Despite (or some might say because of) advances of science, arts, law, and the cooperative efforts of many cultures, all is not safe in the world. Some persons may seek to use innocent mechanisms like the mails to harm others. Indeed, our society must consider the possibility that chemical or biological agents, including anthrax, sarin, or other toxins, and perhaps other weapons of mass destruction, may be transmitted by mail. No doubt there are limits, but as a general rule the Constitution does not bind the hands of postal authorities in a way that would prohibit them from taking reasonable and nonintrusive investigatory or curative steps to protect the public.

.After receiving the package on Friday, Postal Inspector Erdahl delayed delivery further, and the package was not received by the designated addressee until the following Wednesday. However, by the time Erdahl had delayed the package’s delivery past Friday, postal inspectors not only had reasonable suspicion to investigate further, but likely had probable cause to seize the package or to search its contents. They had learned, in addition to the other factors previously known, that the recipient's address had been vacant for several months, and it is not uncommon that drug mailings are sent to vacant addresses.