Court Opinion

ID: 9459312
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:16:49.808375+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:06.898256
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I agree that this suppression order cannot be sustained on the record before us. I do not agree, however, that this record supports a holding that the evidence was admissible. I would instead hold that the search of Mrs. Johnson’s purse was not authorized by the search warrant, and would remand for a determination whether the police had probable cause to arrest Mrs. Johnson when they initiated the search of her purse.
The majority says that “The specific question for resolution is whether the scope of the search warrant embraced an object in the apparent possession of a person not an occupant of the premises searched.” Answering that question in the affirmative, the court rules the contents of the purse admissible and reverses the trial court.
In my view, the principle the majority applies would be applicable only if Mrs. Johnson had not been in apparent possession of her purse. But she was. Moreover, the police arrested her for possession of the contraband immediately after discovering it and without verifying ownership of the purse. I think that these facts sufficiently establish that the police knew that they were invading Mrs. Johnson’s “reasonable expectations of privacy.” 1 The search of the purse was thus not directed at the owner and occupant of the apartment, but at Mrs. Johnson.
The warrant, however, authorized the search of an apartment that was, in the words of the supporting affidavit, “occupied by John Doe alias Pete described as a Negro male, 49-50 yrs. 165 lbs., 5'6", Medium Complexion.” I do not doubt that this authorized the search of “Pete” as well as his apartment.2 But the warrant did not authorize a search of an individual the police knew to be a mere visitor in the apartment.
Nor, in my view, did the affidavit contain sufficient information to justify the issuance of such a warrant. The Supreme Court has told us that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.”3 One does not give up that protection by simply entering the private residence of another.4 Giving effect to this personal guarantee may *981make the drawing of lines difficult, but we must make the attempt.
I would hold that a warrant to search individuals who are not occupants of an apartment may issue only if the police establish probable cause to believe either that any individual found in the apartment possessed seizable material, or that certain identified individuals possessed seizable materials. The former might be established, to give one example, by a showing that the apartment was a “shooting gallery,” that is, a place used exclusively for the injection of narcotics.
But this warrant did not contain information from which one might reasonably infer that any non-occupant discovered in the apartment was subject to search. The incorporated affidavit recited only (1) that a reliable informant had reported that “Pete” “was selling illicit narcotic drugs within” the apartment, (2) that the informant “had purchased” such drugs in the past, and (3) that the officers had taken the informant to the premises, sent him in, and the informant had returned with narcotics. Probable cause to believe than any non-occupant found in the apartment possesses seizable objects is not established merely by showing that someone has purchased narcotics in the apartment two or more times. The reviewing magistrate could not have determined from the affidavit whether offenders made up ninety percent of the visitors to the apartment or one percent.5
The majority seems to view this as a single search because, despite the fact that it included two people, it covered a single place. In so doing, it constructs what is to me a new exception to the warrant requirement, applicable to any individual who happens to be in that place. The court first states that the police may search wherever the objects of the warrant might reasonably be, including places in which they might have been hidden during the moments between the announcement of the search and the actual entry. It then recognizes the fourth amendment rights of those who are known to be merely present in the premises by applying a balancing test. Under that test, we would weigh the degree of the “invasion” of the bystanders’ rights against the Government’s justifications for believing that the objects of the warrant might have been transferred to them.
But the Fourth Amendment already requires that all searches be “reasonable.” The majority has, in effect, deleted the requirement of a warrant issued upon probable cause to believe that the bystander has seizable objects. Exceptions to the warrant requirement are not new, but this one has a second troublesome aspect. It appears that the court has not prefaced this one with a requirement that the police have probable cause to believe, for example, that the bystander has seizable objects that, because of the threat of destruction must be immediately seized. Instead, it proceeds immediately to a consideration of whether the degree of the invasion of the bystander’s rights was “reasonable.” I know of no authority for searching an individual, or that space in which he has a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” without probable cause to believe either that he possesses seizable objects or that he has committed a criminal offense.6
*982Perhaps the temper of the times requires that such a change be made. Perhaps, also, the concept of personal privacy articulated by the Supreme Court must yield to some degree as a result. But the majority ought to expressly reveal that it is cutting back on the protection of privacy as we have heretofore known it and explained why that is necessary. It does not serve the law nor the public well to hide this important change.
I would decide this case by looking to the existing justifications for a search. Under that analysis, the police had two distinct ways of establishing authority to search Mrs. Johnson’s purse while it was in her control. First, armed with sufficient foreknowledge, they could have obtained a warrant that covered her or all individuals the police found in the apartment.
Second, in the absence of foreknowledge, they could have relied upon one of the existing exceptions to the warrant requirement that may be invoked if the police have probable cause. And, of course, they could use the information they had acquired in their efforts to obtain a warrant to search “Pete’s” apartment as part of their showing that they had that probable cause to search Mrs. Johnson.
But in this case the police have not yet shown that they had either. Although the warrant and affidavit recited that narcotics transactions had taken place in the apartment, nothing was said about the probability that an unidentified individual discovered on the premises would be a participant in such a transaction. That, of course, cannot be cured at this late date.
And, limited to the record before us, I cannot say that the Government has presented facts that would justify the search under some exception to the warrant requirement. This was no mere weapons frisk.7 There is no showing that the police had probable cause to arrest Mrs. Johnson.8 And, while the “emergency” doctrine that is applied in some cases in which the destruction of evidence is threatened might apply here, it would add nothing to the requirements imposed by the arrest exception.9 Mere possession of the narcotics is a criminal offense, and probable cause to search would have constituted probable cause to arrest.10
The police did have probable cause to believe that there were narcotics in the apartment. But the only evidence adduced at the hearing to indicate that Mrs. Johnson possessed narcotics were the sounds the police heard after they announced themselves and before they gained entry. These sounds were described as “suspicious noises” and the sound of a breaking window. The latter, if even probative, made it less likely that Mrs. Johnson had narcotics. The former, “suspicious noises,” is simply meaningless. Although it is conceivable that further elaboration of the character of these noises would point more directly to Mrs. Johnson as a probable offender, this record is bare of such information.
On this appeal, the Government has suggested an alternative offense for which the police might have had probable cause to arrest Mrs. Johnson: pres*983ence in an illegal establishment, 22 D.C. Code § 1515(a) (1967). The record will not support that assertion either, for the few facts that were developed at the hearing tended to negate any inference that she had knowledge of the nature of the establishment she was in, see Jones v. United States, 271 A.2d 559, 560 (D.C.App.1970), or that she was chargeable with such knowledge by reason of the obviousness of the situation. See Cook v. United States, 272 A.2d 444, 446 (D.C.App.1971).
The record is deficient in these respects because the trial judge focused exclusively on whether the search preceded a formal arrest.11 As the majority notes, the issue should have been whether probable cause to arrest preceded the search.12 For this reason, I would reverse and remand with directions to hold a new suppression hearing.

. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967).

. This result is the same whether the inquiry is based on “reasonable expectations of privacy” or one’s physical control over the premises. See White, Effective Consent to Search & Seizure, 113 U.Pa.U.Rev. 360, 373 (1964).

. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). See Note, From Private Places to Personal Privacy: A Post-Katz Study of Fourth Amendment Protection, 43 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 968 (1968).

. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 352, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). In United States v. DiRe, 332 U.S. 581, 587, 68 S.Ct. 222, 225, 92 L.Ed. 210 (1948), the Supreme Court said, in suppressing the fruits of a search of a passenger in an automobile:
The Government says it would not contend that, armed with a search warrant for a residence only, it could search all persons found in it. . How then could we say that the right to *981search a car without a warrant confers greater lattitude to search occupants than a search by warrant would permit.
See also State v. Bradbury, 109 N.H. 105, 243 A.2d 302 (1968).

. The likelihood that any individual present is engaged in conduct described in the warrant is inextricably related to the other uses to which the premises are put, the amount of traffic through the area, and the fluctuations of time. Five or even fifty narcotics transactions would have a far different result depending on whether the place to be searched was a home, a vacant store or a restaurant with hundreds of patrons.

. A protective frish for weapons is another matter. See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 1 (1968).
And in Walker v. United States, 117 U.S.App.D.C. 151, 327 F.2d 597 (D.C.Cir. 1963), discussed by the majority at page *982979, supra, the detective executing the warrant saw the objects passed from one occupant of the residence to another occupant. Further, the affidavit supporting the warrant had recited that both individuals were selling narcotics from the residence. Id. at 598.

. See United States v. Robinson, 153 U.S.App.D.C. 114, 471 F.2d 1082 (1972) (en banc).

. See United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 70 S.Ct. 430, 94 L.Ed. 653 (1950). Rabinowitz, the commonly cited authority for this proposition, was “overruled” by Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969). In fact, only that part of Rabinowitz that would have allowed a search beyond the immediate control of the arrestee was disapproved.

. See Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925).

. See Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970).

. The court ruled:
With reference to the Defendant Gwendolyn E. Johnson, the Court finds that probable cause possibly did exist for her arrest, but the search preceded her arrest and the search was improper. Hearing Transcript at 30.

. See Bailey v. United States, 128 U.S.App.D.C. 354, 389 F.2d 305, 308 (1967); majority opinion at note 2.