Court Opinion

ID: 9458147
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:43:59.721316+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:39.165299
License: Public Domain

MaeKINNON. Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
The conclusion reached by the court in this case is premised on a holding that a provision of the District of Columbia Narcotic Vagrancy Act, D.C.Code § 33-416a(b) (1) (C) (1967), does not square with the court’s construction of the Fourth Amendment. I find the path taken by the majority to arrive at this holding, and to reverse Hall’s conviction, a curious one to say the least, and a mistaken one in several significant respects. My differences lead me to respectfully dissent from today’s decision.
I
I would first disagree with the court’s willingness to reach out and decide a novel and complex constitutional issue raised for the first time on this appeal. Before the District Court, appellant’s only argument in support of his motion to suppress evidence was that the arresting officers had insufficient factual information to furnish probable cause to suspect that appellant was in violation of the Narcotics Vagrancy Act, the alleged violation for which he was originally arrested.1 In the absence of probable cause, the arrest and accompanying search were argued to be illegal, and the narcotics revealed by the search therefore inadmissible in evidence.
In reversing appellant’s conviction, the court relies on the same basic reasoning process, but substitutes a peculiar legal premise — the existence of which was first suggested on appeal — for the factual predicate asserted before the District Court as a basis for concluding that appellant’s arrest was made without probable cause. The substituted legal premise is supplied by the court’s holding that subsection (b) (1) (C) of the Narcotics Vagrancy Act violates the Fourth Amendment. The theory behind this holding is that the vagueness of the statutory definition of the substantive *843crime of narcotic vagrancy is such as to necessarily lead to arrests, even entirely good faith arrests, based on “suspicion” alone. This amounts to a holding that what constitutes probable cause to support an arrest must be measured not only by the terms of the applicable statute, but also by independent limitations which purportedly inhere in the Fourth Amendment. In short, the court holds that subsection (b) (1) (C) establishes a measure of probable cause which is less than permissible under the Fourth Amendment, and that even though the arresting officers may have had probable cause to arrest as measured by the statute, they did not have probable cause as measured by the court’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment.
Traditionally, appellate courts have, under circumstances comparable to those of the present case, declined to consider arguments not presented to the court whose judgment is being reviewed. See, e. g., Hutcheson v. United States, 369 U.S. 599, 82 S.Ct. 1005, 8 L.Ed.2d 137 (1962) (Harlan, J., joined by Justices Clark and Stewart); Worthy v. United States, 133 U.S.App.D.C. 188, 409 F.2d 1105 (1968); Sims v. United States, 132 U.S.App.D.C. 111, 405 F.2d 1381 (1968); Coor v. United States, 119 U.S.App.D.C. 259, 340 F.2d 784 (1964), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 1013, 86 S.Ct. 621, 15 L.Ed.2d 527 (1966); Lampe v. United States, 110 U.S.App.D.C. 69, 288 F.2d 881 (en banc, 1961), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 958, 82 S.Ct. 400, 7 L.Ed.2d 389 (1962). That rule, which restricts the assertion of new grounds on appeal, draws its support from important considerations derived from the nature of judicial review of lower court action. See Miller v. Avirom, 127 U.S.App.D.C. 367, 384 F.2d 319 (1967); Dart Drug Corp. v. Parke, Davis & Co., 120 U.S.App.D.C. 79, 344 F.2d 173 (1965). Although the rule may give way where there are “exceptional circumstances,” United States v. Atkinson, 297 U.S. 157, 160, 56 S.Ct. 391, 80 L.Ed. 555 (1936); see also Hormel v. Helvering, 312 U.S. 552, 61 S.Ct. 719, 85 L.Ed. 1037 (1941), there is little of an exceptional nature in the present case to call for avoiding the rule. To the contrary, there is much which strongly counsels in favor of applying the principle. I would have an end to the matter on that basis, and would affirm the judgment of the District Court.
II
The first factor which suggests to me that the Fourth Amendment issue ought not even be reached in this case is the very fact that the issue is a constitutional one, and a novel and complex one at that. Federal courts do not sit “to decide abstract, hypothetical or contingent questions ... or to decide any constitutional question in advance of the necessity for its decision. . . . ” Alabama State Federation of Labor, Local Union No. 103, United Broth, of Carpenters and Joiners of America v. McAdory, 325 U.S. 450, 461, 65 S.Ct. 1384, 1389, 89 L.Ed. 1725 (1945); see generally Rescue Army v. Municipal Court of Los Angeles, 331 U.S. 549, 568-575, 67 S.Ct. 1409, 91 L.Ed. 1666 (1947). The wisdom of a reluctance to decide constitutional questions is perfectly demonstrated by this very case. As I will attempt to demonstrate, the court’s holding opens up more troublesome questions than it purports to settle.
III
As to the merits of the Fourth Amendment claim itself, while I would not even reach that question, I also wish to point out that the majority may well be wrong in its holding. The holding that subsection (b) (1) (C) violates the Fourth Amendment is practically indistinguishable, except in a purely doctrinal sense, from the holding in Ricks II that the very same subsection was so vague as to be invalid under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Ricks v. United States, 134 U.S.App. D.C. 215, 414 F.2d 1111 (1968). Today’s opinion for the court itself points up this very conclusion. Much of the court’s *844discussion leading up to the Fourth Amendment holding is devoted to criticisms of the Narcotics Vagrancy Act which duplicate the criticisms leveled against the Act in the Ricks II opinion. True it may be that the interests protected by the due process clause and by the Fourth Amendment may overlap somewhat, but to the extent that the Narcotics Vagrancy Act is constitutionally suspect the reason certainly lies much more comfortably within the due process clause than within the Fourth Amendment. This suggests to me that the Fourth Amendment may well not have the application contended for by the majority.
IV
This close similarity between the rationale of the majority’s Fourth Amendment finding and the Ricks II Fifth Amendment invalidation of subsection (b) (1) (C) suggests that the majority has, in effect, decided to retroactively apply the Ricks II finding here. Retroactive application of Ricks II would result in a determination that Hall’s arrest under an unconstitutional statute was illegal, and that the evidence used to convict him here, obtained as a result of a search incident to that illegal arrest, should have been suppressed under the “fruit of the poisonous tree” branch of the exclusionary rule. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963); cf. Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338, 60 S.Ct. 266, 84 L.Ed. 307 (1939); Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 40 S.Ct. 182, 64 L.Ed. 319 (1920).
In its comprehensive review of retroactivity in Desist v. United States, 394 U.S. 244, 89 S.Ct. 1030, 22 L.Ed.2d 248 (1969), the Supreme Court has made it clear that retroactive application of Ricks II would be highly suspect:
Ever since Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 629 [85 S.Ct. 1731, 1737, 14 L.Ed.2d 601] [1965], established that “the Constitution neither prohibits nor requires retrospective effect” for decisions expounding new constitutional rules affecting criminal trials, the Court has viewed retroactivity or nonretroactivity of such decisions as a function of three considerations. As we most recently summarized them in Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 297 [87 S.Ct. 1967, 1970, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199] [1967],
“The criteria guiding resolution of the question implicate (a) the purpose to be served by the new standards, (b) the extent of the reliance by law enforcement authorities on the old standards, and (c) the effect on the administration of justice of a retroactive application of the new standards.”
Foremost among these factors is the purpose to be served by the new constitutional rule. This criterion strongly supports prospectivity for a decision amplifying the evidentiary exclusionary rule. . . .
394 U.S. at 248-249, 89 S.Ct. at 1033. (footnotes omitted). The purposes to be served by excluding evidence improperly obtained have been repeatedly described as to deter lawless police conduct and to protect judicial integrity by ensuring that the courts “will not be made party to lawless invasions of the constitutional rights of citizens by permitting unhindered governmental use of the fruits of such invasions.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 12-13, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1875, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1868); see Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 629-635, 85 S.Ct. 1731, 14 L.Ed.2d 601 (1965); Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655, 81 S. Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961); Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 222, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669 (1960); Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 391-393, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914). Retroactive application of the Ricks II decision would not assist the accomplishment of either of these purposes. At the time of Hall’s arrest under the District of Columbia Nar-*845cotie Vagrancy Act, on June 5, 1965, that statute had successfully resisted constitutional challenges in the local courts. Brooke v. United States, 208 A.2d 726 (D.C.Ct.App.1965); Jenkins v. United States, 146 A.2d 444 (D.C. Ct.App.1958). It cannot be said that arresting an individual for violation of a statute that' has been judicially upheld constitutes “lawless” conduct, and it is difficult to imagine that the retroactive application of the Ricks II decision as a basis for excluding evidence obtained during a search incident to such an arrest would deter similar arrests or searches in any respect. As Chief Justice Warren pointed out in Terry v. Ohio, supra: “[R]igid and unthinking application of the exclusionary rule, in futile protest against practices which it can never be used effectively to control, may exact a high toll in human injury and frustration of efforts to prevent crime.” 392 U.S. at 15, 88 S.Ct. at 1876.
The second and third factors considered to govern the retroactivity of a decision — the reliance of law enforcement officials on the old standards, and the effect on the administration of justice of a retroactive application — also weigh heavily against applying Ricks II retroactively. The importance to effective law enforcement of the ability to rely on judicial determinations of the constitutionality of statutes being enforced seems beyond question. Any suggestion as to the effect on the administration of justice would be wholly speculative, but our inability to speak confidently on this question is vitiated by Mr. Justice Stewart’s observation in Desist “that we have relied heavily on the factors of the extent of reliance and consequent burden on the administration of justice only when the purpose of the rule in question did not clearly favor either retroactivity or prospectivity.” 394 U.S. at 251, 89 S.Ct. at 1035 (emphasis added). Here, as in Desist, the deterrent purpose of excluding this evidence would not be served by retroactive application of Ricks II beyond its December 23, 1968 decision date.
Faced with this insurmountable obstacle to retroactive application of Ricks II to invalidate the search that produced the evidence upon which Hall’s conviction was based, the majority has embarked on its strained and novel Fourth Amendment invalidation of this previously invalid statute in order to provide relief to this appellant under the doctrine of Stovall v. Denno, supra, (see majority opinion at 840-841). The result is that the court’s decision today overturns no statute not already declared to be invalid, reverses no conviction as a necessary consequence of the actual principle announced, and does not necessarily contain the seeds for ever overturning any statute or reversing any conviction in the future. I would suggest that today’s decision truly stands as a mere dictum and in practical effect is nothing more than a retroactive application of Ricks II contrary to all the rules and reasons for retroactivity.
I respectfully dissent from the court’s decision and Judges TAMM and ROBB join herein. I also concur in the reasoning outlined in Judge ROBB’s separate dissent.

. Note 9 of the majority opinion refers to the claim in the written motion that the Fourth Amendment had been violated. However, the Fourth Amendment argument (Tr. 8, 124-131) was limited to a claim that the arresting officers did not have sufficient facts to support a finding of probable cause for the arrest. At trial it was not contended that the Fourth Amendment was violated in any other manner.