Court Opinion

ID: 9471310
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:28:57.018107+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:20.879993
License: Public Domain

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
In this case, the majority remands to the trial court for consideration of the possible applicability of the “automobile” or “good faith” exceptions. I dissent because I believe that result takes us beyond the scope of the Supreme Court’s remand. That remand instructed us only to consider this case further “in light of United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798 [102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572] (1982).”
The majority interprets the Supreme Court’s remand in light of Ross to indicate our focus should be upon the “constitutional question rather than upon the arresting state officers’ powers.” By suggesting our earlier focus on authority to arrest was misplaced, the majority reaches a conclusion I simply cannot accept — that the constitutions and statutes of our beloved country allow ordinary citizens (in this case a game warden without general law enforcement authority) to search, seize and arrest, and allow the evidence thereby obtained to be used in court. Like the majority, I seek to be obedient to the instructions of the Supreme Court. But, unlike the majority, I perceive no intimations nor emanations from the remand to push us beyond its narrow, explicit instruction.
Limiting myself, therefore, to a careful examination of Ross, I find not a syllable within its four corners to indict this panel’s focus or its reasoning in the original Garcia opinion, United States v. Garcia, 676 F.2d 1086 (5th Cir.1982), vacated - U.S. -, 103 S.Ct. 3105, 77 L.Ed.2d 1360 (1983). In that opinion, this court concluded that the stop and arrest of the defendants was illegal under Texas law, and therefore, that the evidentiary fruits of those stops and arrests should not have been introduced at defendants’ trial. Thus, we never reached the question of whether the search was legal under the “automobile exception.” Ross, as the majority states, dealt with the permissible scope of a search under the “automobile exception.” The search in Ross was conducted by local police officers; *110whether those officials lacked state statutory authority to make a stop and execute a search was not at issue as it was in Garcia. Because Ross in no way suggests that we should ignore illegality of stops and arrests under state law, I do not take the Supreme Court’s remand to say that we should look past this illegality and analyze this case under the “automobile exception.”
Moreover, it is incredible to me that the Supreme Court would have referred us to Ross, a case concerned with the “automobile exception,” if it wanted us to further consider the applicability of a “good faith” exception. The entire judicial system and a considerable part of the bar are waiting with bated breath for the Supreme Court’s words of wisdom on the good faith exception, potentially so weakening of the exclusionary rule. Surely, if the Court had wanted us to consider this issue, it would have made its signals clear, its words pellucid, and its thrust unmistakable.
Judge Gee, writing for the majority with his usual sensitive perceptivity, conceives that Ross produces little incandescence. Nevertheless, the majority’s eyesight must be more acute than my own, for I cannot see that United States v. Ross sheds even a candle’s worth of light on the instant case. Being a strict constructionist as far as mandates from our superiors, it is difficult for me to understand why we should wander into the “automobile” and “good faith” exceptions to the exclusionary rule. I would adhere to the panel’s original disposition of this case, reversing the defendants’ convictions.