Court Opinion

ID: 9467886
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:58:50.382444+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:34.590936
License: Public Domain

KENNEDY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting, with whom HUG and TANG, Circuit Judges, concur:
I agree completely with Judge Goodwin’s dissenting opinion. These brief additional comments seem appropriate in view of all the implications of the case.
The rigidities of the exclusionary rule, and the occasional frustration caused by its enforcement, should not obscure the fact that determinations of fourth amendment reasonableness must be made independently of the question whether exclusion of the evidence is undesirable for other reasons. It distorts the idea of reasonableness to hold, as the court does today, that the police conduct does not require exclusion of the evidence, even on the plausible assumption that in this instance the police acted in good faith.
The requirement that the defendant must show injury to his or her own rights in order to object to evidence is altogether met here. The question is whether the police can use the search of a residence as the occasion for a severe intrusion upon the relation between a mother and a child who has not reached the age of reason. Her relationship to the child belongs intimately to the mother. See Morrison v. Jones, 607 F.2d 1269, 1275-76 (9th Cir. 1979) (per curiam), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 962, 100 S.Ct. 1648, 64 S.Ct. 237 (1980). To say that she has no standing to complain of the stark intrusion upon it in this case is to assume a negative to the very question in issue, namely, to what extent the law can protect the relationship from disruption in the home.
The existence of the parent-child union and the fundamental place it has in our culture require no citation, but it is perhaps appropriate to note that courts have protected it where the threat of disruption is in some respects more attenuated than in the circumstances of the case before us. See Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 97 S.Ct. 1932, 52 L.Ed.2d 531 (1977); Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 92 S.Ct. 1526, 32 L.Ed.2d 15 (1972); Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070 (1925). As to the degree of intrusion upon the relationship, my contention that the police erred in using this infant child as the volitionless instrument for sending his mother to prison after entering their home is not answered by the apologetics of the majority. The suggestion that a determination of Clara Penn’s constitutional rights in her relation with Reginald should be influenced by our consideration of her alleged criminal exploitation of him or his siblings is inapt: there is inadequate support for the assertion. The record discloses only statements attributed to anonymous informants by an officer that some *889unspecified children were involved. Reginald’s particular involvement in crime is nowhere suggested and would be supported only by rank hearsay in any event. Knowledge of an object’s location does not logically imply involvement in its placement.
If we can, and do, protect the relation between a dentist and his clients from a disruptive search, see VonderAhe v. Howland, 508 F.2d 364, 370 (9th Cir. 1974), certainly we have the authority, and the duty, to protect the relation between a mother and child from such manipulation. There are cases in which the source of evidence has a special constitutional status, see, e. g., Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. 476, 85 S.Ct. 506, 13 L.Ed.2d 431 (1965). In such instances we impose a stricter definition for reasonableness of the search and for particularity of the warrant, both to protect the source from unnecessary intrusion and to prevent a general search. See also United States v. Sherwin, 572 F.2d 196 (9th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 437 U.S. 909, 98 S.Ct. 3101, 57 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1978); United States v. Drebin, 557 F.2d 1316 (9th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 436 U.S. 904, 98 S.Ct. 2232, 56 L.Ed.2d 401 (1978). If circumstances disclose some compelling urgency for the police to invade areas entitled to special protection of the law, we have held that specific justification for the severe intrusion must be made to the magistrate upon application for a warrant. United States v. Cameron, 538 F.2d 254 (9th Cir. 1976). These authorities establish protection for the parental relation in this case, and dictate further a finding that there was no justification for conducting the search in this manner and with such disruptive force on the mother and her child.
I know for a certainty that none of my brothers sitting in this case would neglect for an instant their duty to protect essential liberties; I regret only that we the dissenters have been unable to convince them that the case before us presents a question of this gravity. The assault on the parent and child bond is relentless and deliberate in many countries of the world, see Amnesty International, Children (1979), and to some observers the manipulation of the child and the injury to the relationship that occurred in this case may seem innocuous by comparison. I view the police practice here as both pernicious in itself and dangerous as precedent. Indifference to personal liberty is but the precursor of the state’s hostility to it. That is why the judgment is entered over my emphatic dissent.
Before WRIGHT, CHOY, GOODWIN, WALLACE, SNEED, KENNEDY, ANDERSON, HUG, and TANG, Circuit Judges.
ORDER
A member of this court has requested rehearing of this case by the full court. A majority of the active judges of the court have voted to deny such a rehearing.
Accordingly, the request for rehearing by the full court is denied.
The mandate shall issue forthwith.