Court Opinion

ID: 9579982
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:00:36.020837+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:35:56.539432
License: Public Domain

*94Poff, J.,
dissenting.
I dissent. Controlling precedents required suppression.
If the warrantless seizure of the Thunderbird automobile was constitutionally infirm, the fruits of that seizure were inadmissible as evidence.1 While portions of the decision of the Supreme Court in Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443 (1971) were subscribed by only a plurality, Mr. Justice Harlan concurred with four Justices in “Parts I, II-D, and III of the Court’s opinion and in the judgment of the Court.” Id. at 491. With respect to those parts, the opinion has the same precedential effect as any other majority opinion. Excerpts from Part II-D are especially relevant here:
“[A] search or seizure carried out on a suspect’s premises without a warrant is per se unreasonable, unless the police can show that it falls within one of a carefully defined set of exceptions based on the presence of ‘exigent circumstances.’ ” Id. at 474-75.
“Since the police knew of the presence of the automobile and planned all along to seize it, there was no ‘exigent circumstance’ to justify their failure to obtain a warrant. The application of the basic rule of Fourth Amendment law therefore requires that the fruits of the warrantless seizure be suppressed.” Id. at 478.
On brief, the Commonwealth concedes that the Thunderbird was found “in a protected zone of privacy (located in a driveway of private property)”. The police had been told in advance that it would be found there. One of the detectives in the Criminal Investigation Division had “advised the vehicle should be *95impounded”. The officer seized the car and conducted an “inventory search” before it was towed to the police property yard. Clearly, in the language of Coolidge, “the police knew of the presence of the automobile and planned all along to seize it”, and since this was so, “there was no ‘exigent circumstance’ to justify their failure to obtain a warrant.” From the time the police first obtained probable cause to believe that the automobile was a seizable item (the fruit of a crime) and that it was located in a constitutionally protected zone,2 more than six hours elapsed before the seizure was made. The officer testified that, during that period, he made two trips to the Arlington police department. He had both time and opportunity to prepare and execute a constitutionally sufficient affidavit and to obtain a formal warrant.3
Nevertheless, the majority have found that the warrantless seizure was justified by exigent circumstances. There is “no general ‘automobile exception’ to the warrant requirement.” South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 382 (1976) (Powell, J., concurring). The “inherent mobility” doctrine is viable only when mobility poses a realistic danger that the vehicle may be removed before a warrant can be procured. The Thunderbird had no license tags or inspection sticker. The officer was in possession of the only known set of ignition keys. The defendant and the girls who had implicated him in the crimes were in police custody. Time and distance made it impossible for the *96defendant to apply for bail, post bond, acquire transportation, and win a race with the officer to the Thunderbird. The former owner could not have moved the car without committing grand larceny. There was no evidence whatever that the defendant’s mother or any other member of his family knew that the car had been purchased with a forged check or that the police had any reason to seize it, search it, or seize its contents. Thus, the danger that the car might be moved or its contents removed from the locked trunk was hardly realistic and certainly not an exigent circumstance.
In hindsight, the majority have discovered “exigencies” which the officer who made the seizure did not see.4 At the first of two hearings on the motion to suppress, the officer justified the warrantless seizure on the ground “that the vehicle could possibly be stolen and contained stolen merchandise”. At the second hearing, he made no reference to the possibility that the car might have been stolen. Rather, he felt that a warrant was not required because the car was “purchased with stolen, forged checks” and, since the car was “fruits of the crime itself’, it should be “taken into custody as evidence.” In neither hearing did the officer express any concern that the car might be moved or its contents spirited away by the defendant, the former owner, the defendant’s mother, or some faceless friend. In making the warrantless seizure, he was motivated, not by circumstances he considered exigent, but by probable cause to believe that the car and what he expected to find in its trunk were seizable items. But if probable cause as determined by the officer were sufficient, then the warrant clause of the Fourth Amendment which requires “that the deliberate, impartial judgment of a judicial officer ... be interposed between the citizen and the police”, Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 481-82 (1963) would be meaningless. “A related purpose of the warrant requirement is to prevent hindsight from affecting the evaluation of the reasonableness of a search.” South Dakota v. Opperman, supra, 428 U.S. at 383 (Powell, J., concurring).
An “inventory search” of an automobile conducted in accord with prescribed police regulations is constitutionally permissible *97when the automobile is “in lawful police custody where the process is aimed at securing or protecting the car and its contents.” Id. at 373. The Thunderbird was not in lawful police custody, and the real purpose of the officer’s entry into the locked trunk was, not to protect the car and its contents, but to discover and seize the stolen radio which he had probable cause to believe would be found there.
The seizure of the car, the search of the car, and the seizure of the radio, all without benefit of warrant and wholly unjustified by any exigent circumstance, violated the very essence of the Fourth Amendment guarantee. So long as the exclusionary rule remains applicable to the states, Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), Hawley v. Commonwealth, 206 Va. 479, 481, 144 S.E.2d 314, 316 (1965), cert. denied, 383 U.S. 910 (1966), we should apply it.

G. M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U.S. 338 (1977), cited by the majority, where the defendant had no proprietary interest in the land on which the automobile was seized, does not validate the warrantless seizure of an automobile parked in a constitutionally protected zone. Nor does Cook v. Commonwealth, 216 Va. 71, 216 S.E.2d 48 (1975). The sole holding in Cook was that an officer who looked into an automobile parked on a public street and observed a seizable item (a face mask) in open view had not conducted a search “in the constitutional sense”. Id. at 73. Cook did not hold that an officer who had observed a seizable item located in a constitutionally protected zone of privacy could enter that zone and seize that item without benefit of a warrant. The validity of the seizure of the face' mask was not in issue. It was unnecessary, therefore, to consider the decision in Taylor v. United States, 286 U.S. 1 (1932), where the Supreme Court held that officers, who had smelled and seen what they believed was contraband liquor stored in a garage located within the curtilage of a dwelling, violated the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment when they entered the garage and seized the contraband.

 I disagree with the conclusion reached by the majority that the officer did not have probable cause to seize the car until he sighted it in the driveway. Probable cause need not await visual verification at the scene of the seizure. Two informants had furnished detailed information concerning the burglary, criminal agency, and the location of the fruits of the crime. While one informant had weakened her personal credibility by giving a. false name, the information she furnished was corroborated by that furnished by the other informant and reinforced by the physical evidence inspected by the officer (the victim’s checks, the receipt for the Thunderbird, and the ignition keys). See Huff v. Commonwealth, 213 Va. 710, 714-15, 194 S.E.2d 690, 694 (1973). The fact that the informants were “admittedly infatuated with Thims” hardly weakens the reliability of the information they gave against him. And the fact that the statements made by the sister of the victim of the burglary were declarations against her penal interest tends to strengthen the reliability of the information she volunteered. United States v. Harris, 403 U.S. 573 (1971); Manley v. Commonwealth, 211 Va. 146, 150-51, 176 S.E.2d 309, 313 (1970), cert. denied, 403 U.S. 936 (1971).

The argument that the controlling test required by the Fourth Amendment is whether the search or seizure is reasonable and not whether it is reasonable to procure a warrant has been specifically rejected. Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752 (1969); accord, United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972).

Moreover, what the majority have lately discovered, the trial judge expressly decided did not exist. “Nor do you have here any exigent circumstances,” he said, “nor would it appear to the Court that the mobility doctrine that is applied to the search of automobiles would apply. ...”