Court Opinion

ID: 9487144
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:09:21.672423+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:07.167665
License: Public Domain

ERVIN, Chief Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I am in agreement with my colleagues on most of the issues in this case as well as with the ultimate decision to affirm the judgment of the district court.
Believing, however, that the postal inspectors’ use of electronic tracking devices to monitor the interior of Jones’ van, an area in which he retained a reasonable expectation of *1317privacy,1 was a search in violation of the Fourth Amendment, I respectfully dissent from Part IIA2 of the majority opinion.
My brethren address in detail the two decisions of the Supreme Court discussing this problem, United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 103 S.Ct. 1081, 75 L.Ed.2d 55 (1983), and United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 104 S.Ct. 3296, 82 L.Ed.2d 530 (1984), so no purpose is to be served by my duplicating their summaries of the facts in those two cases.
By way of explanation of its holding that the monitoring in Knotts did not constitute a search or a seizure because there was no invasion of a legitimate expectation of privacy, the Court said:
A person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another. When Petschen traveled over the public streets he voluntarily conveyed to anyone who wanted to look the fact that he was traveling over particular roads in a particular direction, the fact of whatever stops he made, and the fact of his final destination when he exited from public roads onto private property.
Admittedly, because of the failure of the visual surveillance, the beeper enabled the law enforcement officials in this case to ascertain the ultimate resting place of the chloroform when they would not have been able to do so had they relied solely on their naked eyes. But scientific enhancement of this sort raises no constitutional issues which visual surveillance would not also raise. A police car following Petschen at a distance throughout his journey could have observed him leaving the highway and arriving at the cabin owned by respondent, with the drum of chloroform still in the car.
460 U.S. at 281-82, 285, 103 S.Ct. at 1085, 1087.
I believe that the Court’s analysis in Knotts rests upon an assumed equivalence between “visual surveillance” and “scientific enhancement.” Visual surveillance from public places along Petsehen’s route, or adjoining Knotts’ premises, would have sufficed, the Court suggests, to reveal both his progress and the location of Knotts’ cabin to the police. Id. at 282, 103 S.Ct. at 1086. “Nothing in the Fourth Amendment,” however, “prohibited the police from augmenting the sensory faculties bestowed upon them at birth with such enhancement as science and technology afforded them in this case.” Id.
In deciding Karo, as the majority concedes, the Court held that monitoring of a beeper falls within the ambit of the Fourth Amendment when it reveals “critical information about the interior of premises” that could not have been obtained through visual surveillance.” 468 U.S. at 715, 104 S.Ct. at 3303. That the beeper was inside the house in Karo could not have been visually verified without the monitor.
I agree with the majority that neither Knotts nor Karo resolves the question presented by Jones’ Fourth Amendment challenge in this case. However, I am convinced that on balance this case is more closely akin to Karo than to Knotts, because the postal inspectors were using the beeper in the instant case to see what they could not possibly have seen without its assistance. The inspectors admitted in the affidavit accompanying their application for the search warrant that the beeper was being used not to trace the movements of Jones’ van, but instead to search the interior of the van and ascertain its contents. Jones was followed as he drove away from the post office and it was determined that the electronic device was transmitting a signal from his vehicle, (emphasis added). At the suppression hearing the district court found as a fact that the inspectors used the beeper to ascertain the van’s contents: “They picked up what they recognized was a signal of the device they had been using . v. (which) gave them reason to believe that the package may have been in his *1318car.” The inspectors employed the beeper not to enhance their visual ability to follow Jones’ van, but instead used it to determine whether a deposit envelope was inside the vehicle. Electronic tracking to augment visual surveillance would have been permissible under Knotts; Karo, on the other hand, makes clear that technology cannot be used to transmute the powers of the human eye into those of an x-ray microscope. See Karo, 468 U.S. at 714-15, 104 S.Ct. at 3303.
The Court in Karo did at one point characterize the question presented in terms of “whether the monitoring of a beeper in a private residence, a location not open to visual surveillance,” is a search. Karo, 468 U.S. at 714, 104 S.Ct. at 3303. As has been pointed out, however, the opinion opened with a broader statement of the issue: “Whether the monitoring of a beeper falls within the ambit of the Fourth Amendment when it reveals information that could not have been obtained through visual surveillance.” Id. at 707, 104 S.Ct. at 3296. As a leading commentator has opined, these two characterizations are different, and together create some uncertainty with respect to the dimensions of the Karo holding. See La-Fave, Search and Seizure, § 2.7(d), at 530. I agree "with Professor LaFave that the underlying principle of Karo is not limited to the “monitoring of a beeper in a private residence.” Karo, 468 U.S. at 714, 104 S.Ct. at 3303. As three partially concurring Justices noted, the Court also recognized generally that “when a person’s property is concealed from public view, ... then the fact of his possession is private and the subject of Fourth Amendment protection.” Karo, 468 U.S. at 731, 104 S.Ct. at 3311 (Stevens, J., joined by Brennan and Marshall, J.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part2. In my view, the touchstone principle of Karo— that an electronic tracking device may not be used to enable law enforcement agents to learn facts not exposed to public view — is not limited to structures or effects qualifying as private residences.
The majority relies on some cases from several of our sister circuits, but I will not discuss or distinguish them, in light of my colleagues’ forthright admissions that their factual situations are somewhat different (from our case) and that they all predate Karo. I would also suggest, in this connection, that their reliance on a concurring opinion in Karo (in which only one other justice joined) is of limited value, at best.
I am in accord with Justice White’s assertion that requiring a warrant will have the salutary effect of ensuring that use of beepers is not abused, by imposing upon agents the requirement that they demonstrate in advance their justification for the desired search. 468 U.S. at 717, 104 S.Ct. at 3304.
I believe that a proper reading of Knotts and Karo requires us to hold that the postal inspectors’ use of an electronic tracking device to monitor the interior of Jones’ van, an area in which he retained a reasonable expectation of privacy, constituted a search in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and I dissent from that portion of the majority opinion holding otherwise.
I reiterate, however, that I am in agreement with the remainder of the majority opinion and that as a consequence, I join in holding that the decision of the district court should be affirmed.

. It is important to remember that the government in the instant case conceded that Jones had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his van, and that the case was tried upon that assumption.

. Justice Stevens, Justice Brennan, and Justice Marshall concurred in Part III of the Karo majority’s opinion, which concluded that when beeper surveillance reveals the location of property that has been concealed from public view, a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment has occurred. Karo, 468 U.S. at 728, 104 S.Ct. at 3310 (Stevens, J., joined by Brennan and Marshall, J.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); see also id. at 713-18, 104 S.Ct. at 3302-OS (Part III of the majority opinion).