Court Opinion

ID: 9455748
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:32:06.950531+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:43.159363
License: Public Domain

McCREE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent. Initially, I disagree with the majority’s characterization of the facts surrounding the police officer’s seizure of petitioner’s suit. The majority states that “With the service manager’s assistance the police located appellant’s suit and took it, * * * ” However, the District Judge found that “The suit was located and freely surrendered by the manager of the laundry.”1 This difference is significant.
Warrantless searches or seizures are the exception, not the rule.
“Over and again this Court has emphasized that the mandate of the [Fourth] Amendment requires adherence to judicial processes,” United States v. Jeffers, 342 U.S. 48, 51, 72 S.Ct. 93, 96 L.Ed. 59, and that searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 514, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967).
One established exception is that a warrantless seizure is permissible if it is consented to by a proper party. Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731, 740, 89 S.Ct. 1420, 22 L.Ed.2d 684 (1969); Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. 483, 84 S.Ct. 889, 11 L.Ed.2d 856 (1964). The majority holds that this exception is applicable here because the manager had authority to consent to a search of his premises by the police. However, according to the District Judge, there was no search of the premises conducted by the police. The manager located the suit and surrendered it to the police officers pursuant to their request. Accordingly, the issue is not whether the manager could consent to a search of his premises, but whether he had the authority to locate petitioner’s suit and to surrender it to the police. I would hold that he did not.
At the outset, “It is important to bear in mind that it was the petitioner’s constitutional right which was at stake here, * * * It was a right, therefore, which only the petitioner could waive by word or deed, either directly or through an agent.” Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. 483, 489, 84 S.Ct. 889, 893 (1964). The District Judge concluded that petitioner, in effect, waived his Fourth Amendment rights and authorized the manager to consent to the seizure of the suit when he voluntarily presented the suit to the cleaner knowing that it could be examined by many people during the cleaning process. The District Judge considered this conduct by petitioner a voluntary abandonment of petitioner’s right of privacy with regard to the suit.
The difficulty with this approach is that it fails to recognize that a person, by his conduct, may relinquish a quantum of his “constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy,” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 360, 88 S.Ct. 507, 516 (Harlan, J., concurring), without relinquishing all of it. Thus, a person who engages a hotel room relinquishes a quantum of privacy and impliedly authorizes such persons as maids and repairmen to enter his room in order to perform their duties. He does not, however, relinquish his privacy to the extent of impliedly authorizing a *1327night clerk to permit the police to enter the room so that they may search it. Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. 483, 84 S.Ct. 889 (1964). See also, Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 81 S.Ct. 776, 5 L.Ed.2d 828 (1961). Similarly, one who entrusts a package to an airline for the purpose of transporting it to another destination may expressly authorize the airline to inspect the package, but this authorization would not give the airline the right to consent to a search of the package by government agents. Corngold v. United States, 367 F.2d 1 (9th Cir. 1966). Also, an employee enjoying an exclusive right to use a desk assigned to her impliedly authorizes her superiors to explore the desk for the purpose of obtaining office property needed for office use, but does not authorize them to consent to a police search for the fruits of a crime. United States v. Blok, 88 U.S.App.D.C. 326, 188 F.2d 1019 (1951).
I would hold that one who gives a suit to a cleaner for the purpose of cleaning it impliedly authorizes examination of the suit by those persons connected with the cleaning process, but does not relinquish his privacy to the extent of authorizing the manager of the cleaning establishment to locate the suit and to surrender if to the police pursuant to their request. This activity went beyond petitioner’s “constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy” with regard to the suit. Katz v. United States, supra.2
Furthermore, I do not think any of the other “specifically established and well-delineated exceptions” to the requirement that a warrant be obtained prior to a search or seizure are applicable here. The warrantless seizure was not made incident to a lawful arrest, Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969), nor was it required by the “exigencies of the situation.” McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 456, 69 S.Ct. 191, 93 L.Ed. 153 (1948). See Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948). Indeed, the parties stipulated that a magistrate was available at the time the officers departed in order to accomplish the seizure.
Since no exception to the requirement that a warrant be obtained is applicable, I would find the seizure illegal under the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, in light of the trial court’s statement that the seizure produced “some very damaging evidence against defendant,” Clarke v. State, 218 Tenn. 259, 402 S.W.2d 863, 870 (1966), I would not consider the admission of the suit harmless error under the rule of Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). See also, Harrington v. California, 395 U.S. 250, 89 S.Ct. 1726, 23 L.Ed.2d 284 (1969). I would therefore vacate the judgment and order the petitioner to be discharged unless retried within a reasonable time.

. That the phrase “by the manager” refers both to the act of locating the suit and to the act of surrendering it is made clear from the factual conclusions expressed by the District Judge in his first opinion prior to this court’s remand. In the earlier opinion, the District Judge stated: “The service manager was able to locate the suit of clothing * * * and turned it over to the police receiving a receipt therefor.”

. To the extent that property considerations may still be relevant in this context, Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 350 n. 4, 88 S.Ct. 507 (1967), as a bailee, the cleaner had no authority, express or implied, to deliver petitioner’s property to a third party; and this is irrespective of the absence of the imposition of any “specific restrictions” by petitioner. A bailor does not have to expressly prohibit misdelivery of his goods. Indeed, under Tennessee law, a bailee subjects himself to absolute liability when without authority he delivers the bailor’s goods to a third party. See Dispeker v. New Southern Hotel Co., 213 Tenn. 378, 373 S.W.2d 904 (1963).