Court Opinion

ID: 9471947
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:44:50.592769+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:39.410574
License: Public Domain

GARWOOD, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result. While I agree with most of Chief Judge Clark’s persuasive opinion, I write separately to emphasize that the case before us does not present a situation where the party seeking suppression was the owner or lessee of the airplane or had any significant proprietary interest in it.
Though the Government has not expressly challenged the district court’s determination that Butts had “standing” to seek suppression of the evidence obtained by the tracking and subsequent search of the plane, this does not require us to treat the case as if the record reflected a state of facts which it plainly does not. The evidence shows that Butts piloted the plane on a trip from Castroville to Seguin on June 18 and once again, over sixty days later, on a trip from Mexico into Castroville in the late evening of August 22 and early morning of August 23, and that when he was arrested on the latter occasion he “said he was ferrying this aircraft for someone from Seguin.” There is no evidence, nor any concession by the Government here or below, that Butts ever was, or even claimed to be, the owner or lessee of the plane or that he had any proprietary interest in it.* Since Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978), “standing” is not a discrete question, separable from the substantive issues, in this character of case. Rather:
“... definition of ... [Fourth Amendment] rights is more properly placed within the purview of substantive Fourth Amendment law than within that of standing____
*1520“Analyzed in these terms, the question is whether the challenged search or seizure violated the Fourth Amendment rights of a criminal defendant who seeks to exclude the evidence obtained during it. That inquiry in turn requires a determination of whether the disputed search and seizure has infringed an interest of the defendant which the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect.” Id. at 140, 99 S.C. at 428-29.
As the Court said in Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 106, 100 S.Ct. 2556, 2562, 65 L.Ed.2d 633 (1980), “[ajfter Rakas” the standing and substantive issues “merge into one.” And, in Rakas the Court likewise made clear that “[t]he proponent of a motion to suppress has the burden of establishing that his own Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the challenged search or seizure.” Id. 439 U.S. at 130 n. 1, 99 S.Ct. at 424 n. 1.
The only substantial ground urged in support of Butts’ motion to suppress is that the “beeper,” which allowed the plane to be tracked when Butts flew it from Mexico to Castroville, had by then remained in the plane two or three days after the date by which the warrant extension order had directed that it be removed. Thus the sole question posed is whether the tracking of the plane under these circumstances “has infringed an interest of” pilot Butts “which the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect.” Rakas at 140, 99 S.Ct. at 429. I would hold that it has not.
In Rakas the Court observed that “[legitimation of expectations of privacy by law must have a source outside of the Fourth Amendment, either by reference to concepts of real or personal property law or to understandings that are recognized or permitted by society,” Id. at 143 n. 12, 99 S.Ct. at 430 n. 12. Whatever may be the case with respect to monitoring what is present, said or done on board an aircraft, I do not believe that “understandings that are recognized or permitted by society” serve to “legitimate” the expectations of a pilot, having no proprietary interest in the aircraft, that its movements through the public airways will not be tracked by an unauthorized device affixed to the interior of the plane. The presence of such a tracking device may invade the property rights, and perhaps the legitimate expectations of privacy arising therefrom, of one having a proprietary interest in the plane, but that is not the situation before us.
In the analogous case of United States v. Parks, 684 F.2d 1078 (5th Cir.1982), we stated:
“But even if [the pilot] Holloway had been legitimately piloting the plane and in possession of its key on April 27, any illegality in the maintenance and monitoring of the beeper would not have infringed any interest of his that the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect.

"....

“The lawfulness vel non of the physical presence of the beeper affects the legitimation of Holloway’s expectation of privacy only insofar as such expectation can be said to have a source in his property rights. But Holloway has not established that he had any ownership or proprietary rights sufficient for such purpose. Holloway must accordingly base the legitimation of his expectation of privacy on ‘understandings that are recognized and permitted by society.’ Rakas v. Illinois, supra____ [T]hose understandings do not furnish a legitimate expectation of privacy in the movements of an airplane through the public airways.” Id. at 1085, 1087.
In my view, such an approach does not give undue significance to property rights. Rakas, though refusing to allow “arcane distinctions developed in property and tort law” to “control” for Fourth Amendment purposes, id. 439 U.S. at 143, 99 S.Ct. at 430, nevertheless recognizes that:
"... by focusing on legitimate expectations of privacy in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the Court has not altogether abandoned use of property concepts in determining the presence or absence of the privacy interests protected by that Amendment. No better demonstration of this proposition exists than the decision in Alderman v. United *1521States, 394 U.S. 165, 89 S.Ct. 961, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1969), where the Court held that an individual’s property interest in his own home was so great as to allow him to object to electronic surveillance of conversations emanating from his home, even though he himself was not a party to the conversations.” Id. at 143-44 n. 12, 99 S.Ct. at 431 n. 12.
And, while it is of course true, as Justice Stewart stated for the Court in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places,” nevertheless it is also true that what it protects people from is invasion of “[t]he right ... to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV (emphasis added). Moreover, Justice Stewart was likewise careful to state in Katz that the protections of the Fourth Amendment are neither limited to nor as extensive as the protection of privacy:
"... the Fourth Amendment cannot be translated into a general constitutional ‘right to privacy.’ That Amendment protects individual privacy against certain kinds of governmental intrusion, but its protections go further, and often have nothing to do with privacy at all. Other provisions of the Constitution protect personal privacy from other forms of governmental invasion.” Id. at 351, 88 S.Ct. at 511 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted).
The “wrong” or “infringement” here is the agents’ failure to comply with the requirement of the warrant extension order that the “beeper” be removed by not later than August 19. Butts never claimed, nor was shown, to have ever had any proprietary interest in the plane. Therefore, as stated by the panel dissent, “Butts was not a victim of that infringement.” United States v. Butts, 710 F.2d 1139, 1154 (5th Cir.1983). Accordingly, Butts’ Fourth Amendment rights were not violated, and his motion to suppress should not have been granted. We need decide no more.

 I note in passing that testimony by an accused at a suppression hearing cannot be used against him at trial on the merits, save possibly for impeachment purposes. See Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968); United States v. Salvucci, 448 U.S. 83, 93-94, 100 S.Ct. 2547, 2553-54, 65 L.Ed.2d 619 (1980).