Court Opinion

ID: 9522046
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:17:17.136362+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:02:14.030544
License: Public Domain

Burgess, J.,
¶ 83. concurring and dissenting. Much of what the majority holds today is correct. Nothing in the Fourth Amendment precludes a magistrate from imposing ex ante warrant conditions to further constitutional objectives such as particularity in a warrant and the least intrusion necessary to accomplish the search. See Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U.S. 463, 482 n.11 (1976) (recognizing that, in searches for papers, innocuous documents will be examined to determine if they are subject to the warrant, and admonishing that responsible officials, “including judicial officials, must take care to assure that they are conducted in a manner that minimizes unwarranted intrusions upon privacy”); see also United States v. Payton, 573 F.3d 859, 864 (9th Cir. 2009) ("We believe that it is important to preserve the option of imposing conditions when they are deemed warranted by judicial officers authorizing the search of computers.”). Nor may a judge simply forbid, ipse dixit, the seizure of criminal evidence found in plain view during a legally authorized search.24 See United States v. Stabile, 633 F.3d 219, 240-41 (3d Cir. 2011) (holding that plain view doctrine “applies to seizures of evidence during searches of computer files,” while acknowledging that the extent of plain view “will vary from case to case”).
*94¶ 84. Thus, I generally concur in denying the State’s petition to strike conditions five through ten, which focus the search while not defeating the law,25 and concur in granting the State’s petition to strike the first condition purporting to cancel the plain view doctrine. But, having just reiterated the long-settled rule that police can seize evidence of a crime observed in plain view during a valid search, the majority errs in turning about-face to uphold conditions that the search be conducted by police agents separated from the case investigators, and who are not to look at, tell about, or must pretend not to see, any plainly visible evidence of other crimes. These limits are contained in warrant conditions (2), (3), and (4) and are expressly designed to frustrate the plain view doctrine. Because this latter holding is not rooted in any constitutional principle or privacy protection, I respectfully dissent.
¶ 85. Casting this dissent as promoting a law enforcement “right” to plain view in derogation of defendants’ rights, ante, ¶ 45, the majority correctly suggests a competition between law enforcement and privacy rights. But, the competition is settled. We have a right against unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. It is black-letter law that, under the same Amendment, police are authorized or, to use the majority’s term, have a “right” to search pursuant to a valid warrant. Since our privacy is already compromised by such a warrant, it is equally beyond cavil that in executing the valid search for specified evidence, another object lawfully viewed, the incriminating character of which is immediately apparent, may be seized without any resulting privacy invasion. Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366, 374-75 (1993); see also Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 133 (1990) (“If an article is already in plain view, neither its observation nor its seizure would involve any invasion of privacy.”). Whatever limitation the majority invents to prohibit seizure of incriminating evidence in lawful plain view, it is outside of the Fourth Amendment.
¶ 86. The majority’s closest facsimile to authority are the shunted, if not politely discredited, conditions from United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc. (CDT I), 579 F.3d 989 (9th Cir. 2009) (en banc), that the government waive plain view and *95segregate its searchers as predicates to obtaining warrants to search computers. Responding to egregious overreaching by federal agents executing a warrant for computer records of steroid use in major league baseball, CDT I directed magistrates to deny or curtail computer search warrants unless the government agreed to “forswear” the plain view doctrine and employ segregated sereener-searchers held incommunicado from the primary investigators. Id. at 998. It was CDT I that apparently inspired the issuing court here to interdict plain view.
¶ 87. Since the trial court’s reliance on CDT I, however, those conditions limiting plain view were effectively reversed by the entire Ninth Circuit specially convened to review the issue. United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc. (CDT II), 621 F.3d 1162 (9th Cir. 2010) (en banc) (per curiam). The original ex ante directives limiting plain view and imposing segregated searcherscreeners were deleted by the full court, and relegated to a mere recommendation marooned in a concurring opinion. CDT II, 621 F.3d at 1180 (Kozinski, C.J., concurring). Even that concurrence concedes that its recommendations are “guidance” only and not mandated. Id. at 1178; see United States v. Ganias, No. 3:08CR00224(AWT), 2011 WL 2532396, at *6 (D. Conn. June 24, 2011) (denying motion to suppress and pointing out that CDT II may provide guidance, “but it does not provide a rule that must be complied with”).
¶ 88. Despite claiming that courts are “drawn to” such tools to mitigate invasiveness of computer searches, ante, ¶ 57, the majority cannot find a court that adopts Chief Justice Kozinski’s concurring “guidance” in CDT II. Courts do, however, consistently reject it. See Stabile, 633 F.3d at 240-41, 241 n.16 (upholding plain view seizure during search of computer files, reserving review on case-by-case basis and expressly “declin[ing] to follow the Ninth Circuit’s suggestion to ‘forswear reliance on the plain view doctrine’ ” as proposed in the CDT II concurrence (quoting CDT II, 621 F.3d at 1178 (Kozinski, C.J., concurring))); United States v. Mann, 592 F.3d 779, 785 (7th Cir. 2010) (upholding plain view seizure during computer search, and refusing to “jettison[]” plain view or apply the original CDT I search conditions, observing that “there is nothing in the Supreme Court’s case law (or in the Ninth Circuit’s for that matter) counseling the complete abandonment of the plain view doctrine in digital evidence cases”); Ganias, 2011 WL 2532396, at *6; United States v. Farlow, No. CR-09-38*96B-W, 2009 WL 4728690, at *6 & n.3 (D. Me. Dec. 3, 2009) (denying motion to suppress, characterizing C.J. Kozinski’s preclusion of plain view as “unwise,” and observing that “no other [court] has gone so far as the Ninth [Circuit] to require such significant preconditions on the issuance of search warrants for computers”). Unable to arrive at any Fourth Amendment basis or need for the conditions in this case, this Court should likewise reject such extra-constitutional recommendations and adhere to the plain view doctrine approved under the Fourth Amendment.
¶ 89. It bears noting that the majority holding is not, like the suppression of illegally obtained evidence, fashioned to vindicate a constitutional right. The underlying search warrant is entirely lawful without the majority’s gag condition and segregated searchers, and presents no violation of any privacy right guaranteed against unreasonable search and seizure. No one complains that the warrant is insufficiently particular. The majority agrees there is no constitutional limitation on observing evidence of other crimes in plain view during a valid search. The majority can point to no infraction of the Fourth Amendment, actual or threatened, to justify its ex ante limits on plain view. Given that the warrant application is otherwise valid, the majority’s holding provides little instruction to the trial bench on when and how to apply such segregated searches in the future since no constitutional right requires application of this extraordinary measure.
¶ 90. Further, whatever computer privacy the majority supposes to protect will be already and completely compromised by the warrant and the search, even when executed by the majority’s gagged search team. Whether viewed by the case investigator or segregated police, or some other police agent, the court-ordered privacy invasion is the same.26 These conditions mean that just as much private information will be exposed to the view of government strangers. As acknowledged and argued by amicus ACLU, “the harm to privacy interests is complete when the protected material is viewed.” In real life, requiring that a search be executed by one police agent versus another results in no actual limit on the search and, so, no actual protection of privacy.
¶ 91. The majority’s segregated screening conditions result in no less of a search, no less intrusion into the computer’s files, and no *97less potential for observing other incriminating evidence in plain view of the searchers. Thus, requiring a search by different, segregated and muted investigators serves no Fourth Amendment privacy interest whatsoever. Protecting no actual privacy, the majority simply conjures up immunity for computer owners whose data include proof of other crimes in plain view during a valid search. At the same time, such immunity does not exist for property holders whose homes, bedrooms, closets, file cabinets, files, and purses are lawfully searched — because the constitution does not require it.
¶ 92. Nor does the constitution require such immunity for computer content. If the issuing court was concerned about lack of probable cause or particularity as the majority asserts, ante, ¶ 43, then the court was free to deny the warrant application or limit the search accordingly. Neither probable cause nor the application’s particularity is challenged here. The majority’s endorsement of the silenced-and-segregated-search-team condition succeeds in defeating actual plain view, but utterly fails to increase particularity or narrow the scope of the search. As noted above, the search — the actual invasion of privacy applied for by the State and authorized by the warrant — is exactly the same, whether conducted by investigators assigned to the case, or by the judicially gagged investigators preferred by the majority.
¶ 93. Patently incorrect is the majority’s assertion that investigators will never view incriminating evidence unrelated to identity theft offenses. The majority imagines that ordering the search be conducted by police investigators not assigned to this investigation somehow “obviate[s],” or prevents, plain view from occurring. Ante, ¶ 37. If this were true, there would be no need for the gag order. But since it is clear that plain view of other incriminating evidence by the other police search team can still occur, the supposed prevention can only result from the gag order that prevents its disclosure. Thus, declares the majority, gagging the search team is “not an abrogation of the plain view doctrine,” but a safeguard “against the police plainly viewing.” Ante, ¶ 44. All winking aside, the search is still authorized by the warrant, privacy is still invaded by government search agents, and any other evidence in plain view is still seen. The old saying about being “just a little bit pregnant” comes to mind. That adage, of course — like pretending a search is not a search, and that evidence in plain view is not seen or even does not exist — is a fallacy.
*98¶ 94. There is not cited a single Fourth Amendment case to support the majority’s sabotage of the plain view doctrine. This is because the Fourth Amendment expressly proscribes unreasonable searches, and it is undisputed that a search authorized by a warrant supported by probable cause and approved by a magistrate is not unreasonable. It is equally settled that where a magistrate authorizes a valid search under the Fourth Amendment, there is no constitutionally protected privacy against such an intrusion. Certainly most people prefer that police not enter their homes or computers to search, but if a warrant issues then the proprietor is without right to resist. See Gasho v. United States, 39 F.3d 1420, 1432 n.12 (9th Cir. 1994) (recognizing that “a citizen has no right to resist a search or seizure pursuant to a warrant”).
¶ 95. The majority’s notion, to limit judicial warrants according to what boils down to an aversion to police viewing or disclosing evidence of what could be our criminal misconduct — in other words, to have criminals set the standard — is patently unworkable and is not the law. Once a warrant validly issues, it is irrelevant whether the target likes the police, wants to disclose information to the police, or would choose someone else to conduct the search. It has never been held otherwise.
¶ 96. Finding no support in the law of search and seizure, the majority seeks a rationale from rulings in civil litigation over unauthorized exposures of private information. The majority’s distinctions between different disclosures and degrees of embarrassment make for an interesting exploration of the multi-faceted nature of privacy and our varied reactions to having secrets revealed to some people as opposed to others, ante, ¶¶ 50-53, but the Fourth Amendment is all about searches and not about disclosure. Truisms about the need to protect citizens from state intrusion are exactly why the constitution limits the government’s authority to search us and our belongings.
¶ 97. The Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure does not turn on some sliding scale of privacy or potential embarrassment. All of our private spaces, regardless of perceived or relative importance, are protected to the same degree: the government may not obtain a search warrant except upon probable cause and with particularity. See New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 335-39 (1985) (explaining that the Fourth Amendment does not compare privacies, but protects against *99“arbitrary invasions by government officials,” be they police or civilian authorities, whether searching children, adults or any of their closed containers). Which police agent conducts the search is generally irrelevant to whether the search is reasonable. Id. at 335 (applying the constitutional strictures not only to police searches, but to inspections by any “sovereign authority”).27 The constitutional point is not who gets to share evidence discovered in a legal search, but whether the government can search at all.
¶ 98. In this case, the constitutional question was answered when the magistrate issued the warrant on what the parties do not dispute was probable cause. Appropriate restrictions on the search itself were imposed by the issuing court to ensure particularity and to avoid an unfettered search as commanded by the Fourth Amendment. Ex ante conditions (5) and (6) limited police to methods likely to find only the evidence specifically sought, and prohibited escalation of the search with more sophisticated tools without prior judicial approval. In contrast, the conditions imposing a segregated, silenced or blinkered search team and no sharing of evidence in plain view adds no particularity, limits no search, serves no privacy and the majority cannot show us where it is called for by the constitution.28
*100¶ 99. Assuming that searching a computer can challenge traditional notions of privacy,29 the challenge is missing in this case. What the State seeks to look for, and where, seems hardly different from a search for files in a cabinet, papers in a desk, drafts in a checking account or letters in a box. To the extent that depth or volume of data is the issue, if the necessary probable cause is made out, a warrant can issue to find a needle in a haystack or a needle in a house or office.
¶ 100. Moreover, given no dispute that the State may seize incriminating evidence noticed in plain view during an otherwise valid search, those restrictions are a bald interference by the judiciary in the legal execution of a warrant by the executive branch. The majority can refer to no case or rule authorizing the court to command blindness or feigned ignorance to a constitutionally authorized plain view of criminal evidence. Eliminating plain view ad hoc in a particular search through the ex ante artifice of a separate and gagged search team achieves exactly what the majority acknowledges is improper, ante, ¶ 38: leaving the magistrate “to disregard the considered limitations of the law” (like the court’s lack of authority to proscribe plain view), and conferring “on a judicial officer the authority to pick and choose what legal doctrines would apply to a particular police search” (as in commanding police to ignore evidence in plain view in a computer search, while allowing plain view discovery in a house or office search).
¶ 101. The separation and screening condoned by the majority does not protect actual privilege or privacy, does not further a Fourth Amendment privacy interest, and does not lend further particularity to the search. The sole purpose of the segregation and gag order is to discard the plain view doctrine — something the majority already agrees is beyond the issuing court’s authority. I must dissent, and am authorized to state that Chief Justice Reiber joins this concurrence and dissent.

 “The plain view doctrine is grounded on the proposition that once police are lawfully in a position to observe an item first-hand, its owner’s privacy interest in that item is lost; the owner may retain the incidents of title and possession but not privacy.” Illinois v. Andreas, 463 U.S. 765, 771 (1983). Therefore, an object lawfully viewed, the incriminating character of which is immediately apparent, may be seized without any resulting privacy invasion. With no constitutionally protected privacy interest threatened, there is no Fourth Amendment authority to prevent law enforcement from seizing items of a criminal nature in plain view.

 Condition (7), however, which directs that only evidence related to the targeted activities may be copied, should be modified to allow copying and retention of any other contraband or incriminating evidence constitutionally observed in plain view.

 Even if the State secured a private entity to execute the warrant, as contemplated by the issuing court, it would be no less a governmental search. See United States v. Richardson, 607 F.3d 357, 364 (4th Cir. 2010).

 To be sure, as noted by the majority, police may, in special circumstances not posed here, propose or accede to assistance of specialists to execute a search warrant. See United States v. Schwimmer, 692 F. Supp. 119, 126-27 (E.D.N.Y. 1988) (denying motion to suppress when a private computer expert assisted in search and such assistance was permitted by warrant). Searching a law office may require a special search team to separate documents and preserve attorney-client privilege. See In re Impounded Case (Law Firm), 840 F.2d 196, 199 (3d Cir. 1988); United States v. Hunter, 13 F. Supp. 2d 574, 583 (D. Vt. 1998) (affirming use of screening procedure to separate privilege-protected documents and endorsing use of special master). There is no analogous circumstance in the instant case to justify extra-screening measures. No privilege is implicated. No special discriminatory skill not possessed by law enforcement is required to search for what the warrant here authorizes.

 In any event, Fourth Amendment safeguards on plain view are already in place. To avoid suppression, police must demonstrate that any item seized, but not covered by the warrant, was (1) discovered from a lawful vantage point, Kentucky v. King, _ U.S. _, _, 131 S. Ct. 1849, 1858 (2011), and (2) the criminal nature of the item was immediately apparent — that is, there must be contemporaneous probable cause to believe the object plainly seen is contraband, stolen property or evidence of a crime. Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 326-27 (1987). In the context of voluminous documents, not dissimilar to computer files here, plain view is not open to any on-the-scene quest for supporting probable cause, since the text of *100documents may be viewed only to the extent necessary to initially determine if the documents may be seized under the warrant. Andresen, 427 U.S. at 482 n.11; see United States v. Rude, 88 F.3d 1538, 1552 (9th Cir. 1996) (delineating that officers conducting a search are permitted to peruse documents to determine if they fall within scope of warrant, but may not minutely scrutinize then- contents).

 It has been opined, however, that “a search of a computer and co-located disks is not inherently more intrusive than the physical search of an entire house for a weapon or drugs.” United States v. Upham, 168 F.3d 532, 535 (1st Cir. 1999).