Court Opinion

ID: 9637877
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:24:41.116335+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:09.424306
License: Public Domain

HOUGH, Circuit Judge
(concurring). The outstanding facts in this ease are that the affidavit for search warrant did, in the language of the Fourth Amendment, particularly describe the things to be seized, viz. “ten or twelve barrels of intoxicating liquor”; that the warrant issued thereon directed search for and seizure of “the said liquor”; and that nine days after observation there was seized under the warrant, at the place designated and in wholly different containers, upwards of ten times as much of *739“various kinds of intoxicating liquor” as could possibly have been, contained in “ten or twelve barrels.” From these uncontradieted facts I believe the only reasonable inference to be that what was seized was not what was smelled by the observing agent, and it is admitted that at least nine-tenths of the seizure was not “particularly described,” nor even referred to, in either affidavit or warrant.
Not only the opinion in Steele v. United States, 267 U. S. 498, 45 S. Ct. 414, 69 L. Ed. 757, but an examination of the record therein, convinces me that no substantial difference can be pointed out between that case and this; therefore I must concur in the result reached by this court. But the results flowing from the decision should be recognized and stated. If this liquor was obtained by reasonable search, it is evidence in any prosecution directed against the person from whose keeping it was taken. So much was plainly held in the second Steele Case, 267 U. S. 505, 45 S. Ct. 417, 69 L. Ed. 761.
If the seizure had been made without any warrant, it would have been a violation of the Fourth Amendment, and the evidence so obtained, if admitted, would have vitiated any subsequent trial. Ames v. United States, 255 U. S. 313, 41 S. Ct. 266, 65 L. Ed. 654. If the seizure had been of things capable of copying or photographing, the use of such copies or representations would have been equally objectionable. Silverthorne v. United States, 251 U. S. 385, 40 S. Ct. 182, 64 L. Ed. 319, a decision which would plainly apply to any analysis or evidence concerning the nature of the subject-matter of the unconstitutional seizure.
The constitutionally poisonous nature of. evidence obtained by any one in the service of the United States (even a private soldier— Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298, 41 S. Ct. 261, 65 L. Ed. 647), by an unreasonable search, and the narrow interpretation of the word “reasonable” as modifying “search” are doctrines painstakingly built up by a line of decisions, recently reviewed and appraised by Cardozo, J., in People v. Defore (N. Y. Ct. of Appeals, Jan. 12, 1926) 242 N. Y. 13, 150 N. E. 585, who unfortunately wrote before the Steele Case had to be harmonized with what the Supreme Court has been saying since Adams v. New York, 192 U. S. 585, 24 S. Ct. 372, 48 L. Ed. 575, fell into disgrace. I think the Steele decisions declare that, so far as intoxicating liquor is concerned, if an officer with a confident nose for alcoholic beverages will swear to the existence of a quantity, however minute, of that substance in a described place, the magic of a search warrant will legalize the seizure of any quantity of fluids ejusdem generis in that place.
But it is clear that, judged by any hitherto used standard of clarity, the Steele warrant did not describe particularly what was seized; therefore either intoxicating liquor (being, , as Judge Hand puts it, caput lupi) need not be described with any particularity at all, and the only function of the warrant is to excuse entry, or the view entertained for some centuries that search warrants (in Lord Camden’s phrase) crept into the common law by imperceptible steps, and are to be strictly construed in favor of personal liberty, needs extensive rectification.
The most interesting implication, however, of the Steele decisions is their effect on methods of obtaining evidence. So far as liquor eases are concerned, the way seems made so easy that doubts arise; it is too easy for a man with a good nose.
But why should the marked utility of search warrants in procuring evidence be restricted to liquor cases? There can be no reason; and hopes will arise that a way has been authoritatively suggested for mitigating the difficulties of proving crime erected by the well-known decisions reviewed by Judge Cardozo.
The possibilities of the Steele Case are so great that they should be studied, but that it specifically covers this particular litigation is all that can now be decided.