Court Opinion

ID: 9461761
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:24:15.818879+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:15.264987
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting as to Part I:
I agree with Judge Dyer except in his conclusion that Garay,1 Lonabaugh2 and Anderson3 have been overruled.
*479I confess my confusion at the majority’s rationale which seems to say on the one hand that since there were exigent circumstances Hale was empowered to seize, and having justifiably seized he could search (the “greater-lesser intrusion” theory), while on the other hand it distinguishes Garay, Lonabaugh and Anderson on the ground that in those cases the police already had “secure control” of the item involved (i. e., the “greater intrusion” already had been consummated), therefore there was no right to search. Despite this nonexplanation we are bound to accept and to apply the majority’s conclusion that Garay, Lonabaugh and Anderson retain a field of operation and are viable in situations where they are applicable.4

. United States v. Garay, 477 F.2d 1306 (CA5, 1973).

. United States v. Lonabaugh, 494 F.2d 1257 (CA5, 1973).

. United States v. Anderson, 500 F.2d 1311 (CA5, 1974).

. The majority’s unqualified citation of United States v. Soriano, 497 F.2d 147 (CA5, 1974) (en banc) arguably implies that the decision in that case supports the greater-lesser intrusion concept. If such an implication is intended, it is not supportable. That decision explicitly rested upon the concept of automobile search and the nexus to an automobile search provided by the facts that the suitcases had just been removed from the taxicab and placed on the sidewalk and one of them searched contemporaneously with the removal. 497 F.2d at 149-150 and footnote 6. This court eschewed a generalized ruling on the applicability of the greater-lesser intrusion language of Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970), to personal effects having no nexus to an automobile subject to search.