Court Opinion

ID: 9427643
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:29.114751+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:08.722755
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Blackmun,
with whom Mr. Justice Rehnquist joins,
dissenting.
This case illustrates the difficulties and confusion that United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977), has spawned and will continue to spawn. For reasons stated in dissent in Chadwick, id., at 18-22 and 24, I continue to feel that that decision was wrong.
The Court today goes farther down the Chadwick road, undermines the automobile exception, and, while purporting to clarify the confusion occasioned by Chadwick, creates, in my view, only greater difficulties for law enforcement officers, for prosecutors, for those suspected of criminal activity, and, of course, for the courts themselves. Still hanging in limbo, and probably soon to be litigated, are the briefcase, the wallet, the package, the paper bag, and every other kind of container.
*769I am unpersuaded by the Court’s casual statement, ante, at 762 n. 9, that Chadwick and this case are factually similar “in several critical respects.” Even accepting Chadwick as good law, which I do not, this, for me, is a different case. In Chadwick, the defendants were arrested, and a 200-pound, double-locked footlocker was seized, as the locker was being loaded into the open trunk of a stationary automobile. The relationship between the footlocker and the vehicle was sufficiently attenuated that the Government chose not to argue in this Court that the automobile exception applied. 433 U. S., at 11. Here, in contrast, the Little Rock police stopped a taxicab on a busy highway at the height of late afternoon traffic. They had probable cause to believe the taxi contained contraband narcotics. They opened the trunk, and briefly examined the contents of a small unlocked suitcase inside. The State has vigorously contended throughout these proceedings that the warrantless search of the trunk and the unlocked suitcase was constitutionally permissible under the automobile exception.1
I fully agree. If “contraband goods concealed and illegally transported in an automobile or other vehicle may be searched for without a warrant,” Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 153 (1925), then, in my view, luggage and similar containers found in an automobile may be searched for contraband without a warrant. The luggage, like the automobile transporting it, is mobile. And the expectation of privacy in a suitcase found in the car is probably not significantly greater than the expectation of privacy in a locked glove compartment or trunk.
To be sure, as the dissent acknowledged in Chadwick, 433 U. S., at 19, impounding the luggage without searching it *770would be a less intrusive alternative than searching it on the spot. But this Court has not distinguished between the “lesser” intrusion of a seizure and the “greater” intrusion of a search, either with respect to automobiles, Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42, 51-52 (1970), or with respect to persons subject to custodial arrest. United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218, 235 (1973).2 And I see no reason to impose such a distinction here. Given the significant encroachment on privacy interests entailed by a seizure of personal property, the additional intrusion of a search may well be regarded as incidental. Moreover, the additional protection provided by a search warrant will be minimal. Since the police, by hypothesis, have probable cause to seize the property, we can assume that a warrant will be routinely forthcoming in the overwhelming majority of cases. Finally, the carving out of a special warrant requirement for one type of personal property, but not for others, will impose untoward costs on the criminal justice systems of this country in terms of added delay and uncertainty.3
*771The impractical nature of the Court’s line-drawing is brought into focus if one places himself in the position of the policeman confronting an automobile that properly has been stopped. In approaching the vehicle and its occupants, the officer must divide the world of personal property into three groups. If there is probable cause to arrest the occupants, then under Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969), he may search objects within the occupants’ immediate control, with or without probable cause. If there is probable cause to search the automobile itself, then under Carroll and Chambers the entire interior area of the automobile may be searched, with or without a warrant. But under Chadwick and the present case, if any suitcase-like object is found in the car outsidé the immediate control area of the occupants, it cannot be searched, in the absence of exigent circumstances, without a warrant.
The inherent opaqueness of these “principles,” in terms of the policies underlying the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, and the confusion to be created for all concerned, are readily illustrated. Suppose a portable luggage-container-rack is affixed to the top of the vehicle. Is the arresting officer constitutionally able to open this on the spot, on the theory that it is like the car’s trunk, or must he remove it and take it to the station for a warrant, on the theory that it is like the 200-pound footlocker in Chadwick? Or suppose there is *772probable cause to arrest persons seated in the front seat of the automobile, and a suitcase rests on the back seat. Is that suitcase within the area of immediate control, such that the Chadwick-Sanders rules do not apply? Or suppose the arresting officer opens the car’s trunk and- finds that it contains an array of containers — an orange crate, a lunch bucket, an attaché case, a duffelbag, a cardboard box, a backpack, a tote-bag, and a paper bag. Which of these may be searched immediately, and which are so “personal” that they must be impounded for future search only pursuant to a warrant? The problems of distinguishing between “luggage” and “some integral part of the automobile,” ante, at 763; between luggage that is within the “immediate control” of the arrestee and luggage that is not; and between “personal luggage” and other “containers and packages” such as those most curiously described ante, at 764-765, n. 13, will be legion. The lines that will be drawn will not make much sense in terms of the policies of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. . And the heightened possibilities for error will mean that many convictions will be overturned, highly relevant evidence again will be excluded, and guilty persons will be set free in return for little apparent gain in precise and clearly understood constitutional analysis.
In my view, it would be better to adopt a clear-cut rule to the effect that a warrant should not be required to seize and search any personal property found in an automobile that may in turn be seized and searched without a warrant pursuant to Carroll and Chambers. Cf. United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S., at 21-22, and n. 3 (dissenting opinion). Such an approach would simplify the constitutional law of criminal procedure without seriously derogating from the values protected by the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures.

 Since respondent was not formally arrested until after the suitcase was searched, the State does not argue that the suitcase was 'examined as part of a search incident to custodial arrest. Cf. United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S., at 23, and n. 5 (dissenting opinion).

 The Court stated in Chambers, 399 U. S., at 51-52:
“Arguably, because of the preference for a magistrate’s judgment, only the immobilization of the car should be permitted until a search warrant is obtained; arguably, only the ‘lesser’ intrusion is permissible until the magistrate authorizes the ‘greater.’ But which is the ‘greater’ and which the ‘lesser’ intrusion is itself a debatable question and the answer may depend on a variety of circumstances. For constitutional purposes, we see no difference between on the one hand seizing and holding a car before presenting the probable cause issue to a magistrate and on the other hand carrying out an immediate search without a warrant.”

 The opinion concurring in the judgment would distinguish between a case where there is probable cause to search the car and its contents as a whole, and a case where there is probable cause to search a particular item of luggage within the car. Ante, át 767-768. The opinion suggests, without deciding, that the automobile exception might apply in the former case, but not the latter. Surely, however, the intrusion on privacy, and consequently the need for the protection of the Warrant Clause, is, if anything, greater when the police search the entire interior area of the car, including possibly several suitcases, than when they confine their search to a single *771suitcase. Moreover, given the easy transferability of articles to and from luggage once it is placed in a vehicle, the police would be entitled to assume that if contraband was not found in the suspect suitcase, it would likely be secreted somewhere else in the car. The possibility the opinion concurring in the judgment would preserve for future decision thus contemplates the following two-step ritual: first, the police would take the targeted suitcase to the station for a search pursuant to a warrant; then, if the contraband was not discovered in the suitcase, they would return for a warrantless search of other luggage and compartments of the car. It does not require the adjudication of a future controversy to reject that result.