Court Opinion

ID: 9461926
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:28:01.929704+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:19.659060
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I dissent.
The majority opinion omits the following salient fact: the attache case, the contents of which are in issue, was in the locked trunk of the rented automobile. It omits also, in quoting the text of N.Y. Vehicle and Traffic Law § 424(3) (McKinney 1970), which it relies on to support the subsequent search without a warrant or probable cause as to its contents, to quote the clause italicized below:
Any policeman, state trooper or other peace officer shall have power to seize any motor vehicle . . . when there is good reason to believe that such motor vehicle . . . has been *416stolen, but, in every case of seizure, the officer making the seizure shall forthwith proceed to the most accessible magistrate or judge who shall examine into the facts and shall direct either that the motor vehicle or motorcycle be forthwith released or that it be retained to await the action of the commissioner of motor vehicles
(Emphasis supplied.)
What then results is a holding, as I read it, that whenever a car in New York is seized with probable cause to believe that it has been stolen, any war-rantless search of it is valid regardless of a showing of exigent circumstances. With that result I disagree.
This is not a case, I emphasize, where the police had any reason to think that the car was in some way involved in some crime (other than its being stolen) such as robbery, narcotics traffic or the like. In such a case entirely different rules are applicable and such cases as United States v. LaVecchia, 513 F.2d 1210, 1215, 1217 (1975); United States v. Tramunti, 513 F.2d 1087, 1104 (2d Cir. 1975); United States v. Capra, 501 F.2d 267, 280 (2d Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 990, 95 S.Ct. 1424, 43 L.Ed.2d 670 (1975); and United States v. Francolino, 367 F.2d 1013 (2d Cir. 1966), cert. denied, 386 U.S. 960, 87 S.Ct. 1020, 18 L.Ed.2d 110 (1967), are in point. The rationale of the forfeiture cases is not, as the majority says, that where the car is properly seized the police have a greater possessory interest in the car than has the owner. The rationale rather is that the underlying crime gives probable cause to believe that contraband may be found in the car. As the Court pointed out in Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58, 61, 87 S.Ct. 788, 791 (1967), the search “was closely related to the reason petitioner was arrested, the reason his car had been impounded, and the reason it was being retained.”
Nor is this a case in which the evidence sought to be suppressed was uncovered in an “inventory” search. Cf. Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 447—48, 93 S.Ct. 2523, 37 L.Ed.2d 706 (1973).1 Such a search was subsequently made, but the search here involved was not of this type.2 While it might be argued that if evidence would subsequently be uncovered in a properly conducted inventory search, it could be taken in any prior search, this would not only fly in the face of the Fourth Amendment and any concept of it as a rule of law regulating governmental conduct, note 1 supra, but also the Supreme Court’s admonition or axiom that “it is true . that ‘lawful custody of an automobile does not of itself dispense with constitutional requirements of searches thereafter made of it’ .” Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. at 61, 87 S.Ct. at 791. See also Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 50-51, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970).
Nor, finally,3 is this a case where exigent circumstances stemming from the vehicle’s mobility, Chambers v. Maroney, supra; Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 153, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925); United States v. Tramunti, su*417pra, made it necessary to make an on-the-spot search for, say, self-protective purposes, or where in the course of a relatively minor intrusion objects in the vehicle “in plain view” are observed. Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. at 442, 93 S.Ct. 2523; Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234, 236, 88 S.Ct. 992, 19 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1968); United States ex rel. LaBelle v. LaVallee, 517 F.2d 750, 755 (2d Cir. 1975).
This case is, as I view it, sui generis. An argument can be made — if one takes an atomistic approach to the Fourth Amendment — that that Amendment is simply a collection of protections of an individual’s sphere of interest and that an automobile reasonably thought to be stolen can have nothing whatsoever in it that is constitutionally protected. This is really what the majority is saying, of course.
But I prefer to view the Amendment differently, and I do so with the aid and assistance of the decisions in eases like Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971), and Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 93 S.Ct. 2535, 37 L.Ed.2d 596 (1973), as well as the rhetoric of many other Fourth Amendment decisions, e. g., Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. at 61, 87 S.Ct. 788. Under that view the Amendment is, as Professor Amsterdam has put it, “quintessentially a regulation of the police.” Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment, 58 U.Minn.L.Rev. 349, 371 (1974). Here the very statute which was used to justify seizure of the automobile as probably stolen required that a judicial officer should oversee the seizure, N.Y.Vehicle and Traffic Law § 424(3), by requiring the police officer after the seizure “forthwith” to “proceed to the most accessible magistrate or judge who shall examine into the facts” underlying the probable cause for seizure. While the majority opinion refers to “properly seized” automobiles, its thrust, it seems to me, would allow into evidence anything uncovered in a search even where there turned out to be no underlying probable cause for the vehicle’s seizure. But even if I am wrong and the majority opinion is conditioned wholly on probable cause for the vehicular seizure, the search here cannot be so justified since the very same magistrate or judge who was to oversee the seizure could readily have been approached for a search warrant; needless to say, absent a finding of probable cause for the seizure of the vehicle he would not issue such a warrant.
Under the approach of the majority the door is open to vehicular searches practically unlimited by law, since anyone who cannot establish in a routine traffic check that he is or is driving with the registered owner may be suspected of stealing a vehicle. See generally Warrantless Searches and Seizures of Vehicles, 87 Harv.L.Rev. 835, 848 — 53 (1974). The view of the majority may on this basis be termed the “open door” approach. I cannot adopt it and make the Fourth Amendment mean anything consistent, whether in logic or as a balance between governmental intrusion and personal security and liberty. I do not read into the Amendment, even with the Supreme Court’s vehicular gloss on it, a total exception relating to searches of vehicles; 4 indeed, I do not think that the place of applicability is what the Amendment is about.
This dissent follows from the above.

. In Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234, 88 S.Ct. 992, 19 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1968), relied on by the Court in Cady, the automobile “had been identified leaving the site of the robbery” and “was impounded as evidence.” 413 U.S. at 445, 93 S.Ct. at 2530. There was, moreover, a police regulation requiring such a search, a factor that is vital under any regulatory approach to the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Barbera, 514 F.2d 294 (2d Cir. 1975), slip op. 2481; A. Amsterdam, Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment, 58 U.Minn.L.Rev. 349 (1974) passim. As to the validity of warrant-less inventory searches, see generally United States v. Lawson, 487 F.2d 468 (8th Cir. 1973); Mozetti v. Superior Court, 4 Cal.3d 699, 94 Cal.Rptr. 412, 484 P.2d 84 (1971); State v. Bradshaw, 41 Ohio App.2d 48, 322 N.E.2d 311 (1974).

. While the majority says it need not “pass on” the inventory search question, note 1, it is plain enough Judge Metzner was correct on this point; the officer who subsequently made the inventory search had for this search given the keys to the automobile to two other police to get Baddia’s clothing as the majority opinion points out.

. The Government does not argue that this was a search incident to an arrest.

. The automobile is clearly an “effect” protected by the Fourth Amendment. Cady v. Dom-browski, 413 U.S. 433, 439, 93 S.Ct. 2523, 37 L.Ed.2d 706 (1973). See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351-52, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967); The Automobile Inventory Search and Cady v. Dombrowski, 20 Villanova L.Rev. 147, 154 (1974). But see People v. Sullivan, 29 N.Y.2d 69, 72, 323 N.Y.S.2d 945, 947, 272 N.E.2d 464, 465 (1971).
I disagree that the issue is, as the majority states, whether the police had “a possessory interest in the car superior to that of Zaicek.” The issue is whether the search without a warrant of a brief case in the locked trunk prior to the auto seizure’s being validated by a finding of the magistrate under New York law was a reasonable one.