Court Opinion

ID: 9768039
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:39:21.598826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:35.746739
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Senior Judge,
concurring.
This case was first heard in Division I of this court, where the judgment was affirmed but the case was transferred to the court en banc by reason of a dissent. Judge Nugent of the court of appeals, western district, sat in Division One as a special judge and filed a concurring opinion in which he concurred in the conclusion of the court that the seizure of defendant’s satchel and its search by the officer were proper and that that the motion to suppress as evidence the firearm and ammunition was correctly denied, but saw no need, however, to rely on New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), to support said ruling. I agree with Judge Nugent and am therefore filing this concurring opinion, which adopts much of what he said in his concurring opinion, as follows:
As the opinion of this court indicates, the eighteen-inch satchel was made of soft vinyl which permitted the seizing officer to feel the bolt of the shortened rifle. He already knew that the suspect had used such a weapon. The instant he picked up the satchel, its weight and the contours of its rigid contents convinced him that a sawed-off bolt-action rifle was inside.
At that point the officer had done nothing which the law prohibits. He had a right to make a visual examination of the front seat of the stolen car, State v. Harre, 280 S.W.2d 41, 43 (Mo.1955); State v. Campbell, 262 S.W.2d 5, 9 (Mo.1953), and to lift the satchel from the seat. State v. Rankin, 477 S.W.2d 72, 75 (Mo.1972); State v. Quinn, 565 S.W.2d 665, 672 (Mo.App. 1978); State v. Holman, 556 S.W.2d 499, 505 (Mo.App.1977). Both of those proper actions of the officer resulted in giving him probable cause to believe the firearm was inside the satchel. The opening of the satchel after seizure and the seizure of the firearm itself were also authorized by the plain view doctrine. Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234, 236, 88 S.Ct. 992, 993, 19 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1968); United States v. Wilson, 524 F.2d 595, 599 (8th Cir.1975), cert. denied, 424 U.S. 945, 96 S.Ct. 1415, 47 L.Ed.2d 351 (1976); State v. Quinn, supra. The firearm itself was contraband, almost certainly manufactured and possessed in violation of federal and state law.1 As soon as he realized he had such a firearm in his hands — even before he opened the satchel— the officer was duty-bound to seize it.
Thus, the invocation of New York v. Bel-ton, supra, to decide this case is unnecessary.
*91In case after case, United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973), Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969), Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) and Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968), to name a few, the reasonability of the search and the scope of the search have been directly related to the necessity to protect the policeman and to prevent destruction of perishable evidence. All of those cases stand for the proposition that if under the circumstances the scope of search was reasonable, the search was constitutionally reasonable. But Belton departs from the test of necessity, justifying the departure only in terms of what really amounts to a rule of thumb for the convenience of the police. It does so in the face of two obvious facts of street life: First, certain containers and their contents in the passenger compartments of automobiles will under no circumstances constitute a threat either to the arresting officer or to destructible evidence. Examples are plentiful and include closed suitcases and sealed packages and boxes. Second, the policeman is a trained and professional judge of the hazards to himself and the evidence in the circumstances and, therefore, of the necessity of an immediate examination of the passenger compartment and its contents. Permitting the policeman to open containers simply because they are there even when he knows that they cannot possibly constitute a threat may not be justified on the principles which traditionally have sustained incidental searches. A trained professional should have no more difficulty in deciding when he and evidence are endangered than he does in making the decisions he must make every day regarding probable cause to arrest, existence of exigent circumstances, and use of his firearm.
Protection of constitutional liberties ought not to be governed by rules of thumb. The courts should be as tightfisted as possible with the rights if the people, not giving them away, diluting them or sliding over them as though they did not exist. Long before Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), this court en banc held that upon proper motion by defendant, under the Constitution of Missouri, evidence discovered by an unlawful war-rantless search must be suppressed. State v. Owens, 302 Mo. 348, 259 S.W. 100 (1924). This defendant filed such a motion. Missourians are not bound to surrender any of the constitutional liberties preserved by the Missouri Constitution simply because the United States Supreme Court sees fit to limit or dilute some of the rights guaranteed in the federal Bill of Rights.
A policeman ought to be free to search the passenger compartments of automobiles when necessity dictates but, at least in Missouri, he may not without a search warrant open closed or sealed packages, briefcases, suitcases, and the like which constitute no possible threat to him or to the evidence within.
In other respects, I concur.

. 26 U.S.C. § 5861(c) and § 571.115 RSMo 1978, now § 571.030 RSMo 1981. (In 1981 Missouri adopted a new statute, § 571.020 RSMo [HB 296], which makes possession of a “shortbarrelled” rifle unlawful. The legal minimum overall length for a rifle or shotgun is twenty-six inches under both the new Missouri statute and the federal law).