Court Opinion

ID: 9486275
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:42:45.92342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:36.862593
License: Public Domain

WALD, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the majority’s holding in this ease,, i.e., that the officer did not “break open” the door when after knocking on it the door fortuitously swung open and that the purposes of § 3109 were satisfied when the officer then announced his presence and purpose in full view of an occupant therein. To require the officer in such a situation to stare at the occupants for over ten seconds before moving inside would truly demand a “useless gesture.”. Miller v. United States, 357 U.S. 301, 310, 78 S.Ct. 1190, 1196, 2 L.Ed.2d 1332 (1958). See also Hair v. United States, 289 F.2d 894, 897 (D.C.Cir.1961), United States v. Wylie, 462 F.2d 1178, 1186-87 (D.C.Cir.1972).
I wish briefly, however, to clarify my understanding of the history and status of Keiningham v. United States, 287 F.2d 126 (1960), in which it was stated that “the word ‘break,’ as used in 18 U.S.C. § 3109, means ‘enter without permission.’ ” Id. at 130. As the majority notes, in Hair we did more than merely cite Keiningham with approval; we said that there was an impermissible breaking “even if we were to assume that the door was left open.” 289 F.2d at 897. I do not find anything in later cases cited by the majority to “repudiate” that proposition. Our subsequent opinion in White v. United States, 346 F.2d 800 (D.C.Cir.1965), cert. de*1144nied, 382 U.S. 1014, 86 S.Ct. 625, 15 L.Ed.2d 529 (1966), involved a ease in which
[t]he officer was not inside the apartment. The door was open. He saw [an occupant], showed her his badge and told her he had a search warrant for the premises. At that moment ... the officer stood, he did not enter the apartment except for placing his foot on the threshold.
346 F.2d at 804 (footnote omitted). The court declined “to hold as a matter of law that an officer, merely standing as described — by that very act — while announcing his identity and purpose, had unlawfully broken into [the] apartment.” Id. at 802. In other words, I read the White court as ruling that, without a passing through as occurred in Keiningham, there was no “breaking.” Indeed, five years later the court in United States v. Harris, 435 F.2d 74 (D.C.Cir.1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 986, 91 S.Ct. 1675, 29 L.Ed.2d 152 (1971), again relying on Kein-ingham, held that a peaceful entry into an apartment “was nonetheless without consent arid therefore constituted a ‘breaking’ under the statute,” 435 F.2d at 82 n. 13, although the court ultimately found that the officers’ safety concerns permitted application of the “exigent circumstances exception to § 3109,” id. at 83 (citations omitted).
Since, as the majority recognizes, we are not faced with the situation where the occupant is not aware of the policeman at the-threshold of an open door, we need not speak to the general proposition of whether entry through an open door without permission can ever constitute a “breaking.” But should such a case arise, I wish my reading of the relevant precedent on this point to be on record.