Court Opinion

ID: 9472992
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:16:44.808687+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:16.144785
License: Public Domain

SNEED, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. Quinn hoped, and no doubt to some extent expected, that the contraband would remain undetected. That is not enough to entitle him to invoke the protection of the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Brown, 731 F.2d 1491 (11th Cir.1984). Rather, the test is whether the expectation that did exist corresponds to that which would have been entertained by a reasonable, but innocent and law-abiding, person having the same relationship as did the appellant to the area and objects searched. Only then is the expectation legitimate. The Fourth Amendment protects the guilty because only by doing so can the innocent be protected. The innocent are not mere incidental beneficiaries of an amendment designed to protect the guilty. The innocent are its primary beneficiaries; the reasonableness of any expectation of privacy should be ascertained from their standpoint.
Approached in this manner, I think the district court was right. Mere ownership of the boat and a joint venture to transport *982non-contraband (lumber, for example) would not lead a reasonable co-owner, who was neither a member of the crew nor a passenger, to expect that any papers or valuables he placed in the hold of the boat would remain private. Our decision in United States v. Johns, 707 F.2d 1093 (9th Cir.1983), is distinguishable in that there both joint venturers exercised continuing control of the place searched. That is not the case here. This case falls easily within the reach of United States v. One 1977 Mercedes Benz, 708 F.2d 444 (9th Cir.1983), cert. denied sub nom. Webb v. United States, — U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 981, 79 L.Ed.2d 217 (1984).
I would affirm.