Court Opinion

ID: 9428009
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:33.950074+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:10.490613
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Powell, and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join,
dissenting.
The Court at least preserves the integrity of the rule specifically recognized long ago in Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U. S. 465 (1921). That rule is to the effect that the Fourth Amendment proscribes only governmental action, and does not apply to a search or seizure, even an unreasonable one, effected by a private individual not acting as an agent of the Government or with the participation or knowledge of any governmental official.
I disagree with Mr. Justice Stevens’ opinion’s parsing of the cases’ “bizarre facts” see ante, at 651, to reach a result that *663the Government’s screening of the films in question was an additional and unconstitutional search. The facts, indeed unusual, convince me that, by the time the FBI received the films, these petitioners had no remaining expectation of privacy in their contents.
The cartons in which the films were contained were shipped by petitioners via Greyhound, a private carrier, to a fictitious addressee, and with the shipper fictitiously identified. The private examination of the packages by employees of L’Eggs Products, Inc., whom Greyhound innocently asked to pick up the packages, revealed that they contained films and that the films were of an explicit sexual nature. This was obvious from the drawings and labels on the containers, drawings that Mr. Justice Stevens’ opinion describes as “suggestive,” and descriptions he refers to as “explicit.” Ante, at 652. The containers thus clearly revealed the nature of their contents. See 592 F. 2d 788, 793-794, and n. 5 (CA5 1979). The opinion acknowledges that “there was nothing wrongful about the Government’s acquisition of the packages or its examination of their contents to the extent that they had already been examined by third parties.” Ante, at 656. But in finding that the FBI’s “projection of the films was a significant expansion of the search that had been conducted previously by a private party,” mite, at 657, the opinion seems conveniently to have overlooked the fact that the FBI received the film cartons after they had been opened, and after the films’ labels had been exposed to the public.
I agree with the conclusion reached by the Court of Appeals’ majority:
“Under these circumstances, since the L’Eggs employees so fully ascertained the nature of the films before contacting the authorities, we find that the FBI’s subsequent viewing of the movies on a projector did not ‘change the nature of the search’ and was not an additional search *664subject to the warrant requirement.” 592 F. 2d, at 793-794.1
The Stevens opinion’s contrary conclusion apparently is based on the view that petitioners had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the contents of these films, which they had protected by sealing them securely in the proverbial “plain brown wrapper,” that was “frustrated” only “in part,” ante, at 659, by the earlier private search.2 But it seems to me that the opinion ignores the fact that the partial frustration of petitioners’ subjective expectation of privacy was directly attributable to their own actions. The District Court described it well when it ruled:
“And it seems to me, under the circumstances of this case, that shipping or causing or suffering to be shipped by a common carrier, namely, Greyhound Bus Lines, with a fictitious name given for the shipper as well as the fictitious name given for the consignee or addressee, *665amounts to a relinquishment or abandonment of any reasonable expectation of privacy.
“Or, stated another way, it seems to me that it was reasonably foreseeable in those circumstances that what actually occurred would occur. That is to say, that there was substantial likelihood that the material would be mis-delivered and fall into the hands of some third party, as actually happened in this case, where it would be opened and its privacy, if it had any, invaded.” App. 37-38, quoted in part in 592 F. 2d, at 791.
Given the facts, and the Stevens opinion’s conclusions based thereon, I cannot help but wonder at the concession that “if a gun case is delivered to a carrier, there could then be no expectation that the contents would remain private.” Ante, at 659, n. 12. The films in question were in a state no different from Mr. Justice Stevens’ hypothetical gun case when they reached the FBI. Their contents were obvious from “the condition of the package,” ante, at 658, n. 12, and those contents had been exposed as a result of a purely private search that did not implicate the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, it was petitioners’ own actions that made it likely that such a private search would occur. The opinion fails to explain, at least to my satisfaction, why petitioners’ subjective expectation of privacy at the time they shipped the films, rather than at the time the films came into possession of the FBI (with the resulting protection of constitutional safeguards from unreasonable governmental action), controls this inquiry. Any subjective expectation of privacy on the part of petitioners was undone by that time by their own actions and the private search. In any event, it was abandoned by their shunning the property, under the circumstances of these cases, for over 20 months.3
*666We tend occasionally to strain credulity and to spin the thread of argument so thin that we depart from the commonsense approach to an obvious fact situation. It seems to me to be beyond the limits of sound precedent to exclude the evidence of petitioners’ crimes in the face of the “bizarre” developments that transpired here, developments that petitioners brought upon themselves. But the cases are strange and particular ones. The margin for reversal is narrow, and I rest assured that sound constitutional precepts will survive the result the Court reaches today.
I would affirm the judgments of the Court of Appeals.

 The Court of Appeals noted, 592 F. 2d, at 794, n. 6, and placed some reliance on, the observations of Judge William H. Webster in his dissenting opinion in United States v. Haes, 551 F. 2d 767 (CA8 1977):
“Can it be seriously argued that an agent receiving a suspected book or magazine from a freight carrier employee could not reasonably open the publication and peruse its pages to determine whether its contents offended the law? . . . Would a government agent who used a magnifying glass or other mechanical aid to identify an object be vulnerable to a claim of an unreasonable search independent of the lawful private search which produced the object? I think clearly not.
“The film in this case was not a means of concealing something else. In looking at the film through a projector, the agents did no more than view the motion pictures in the manner in which they were intended to be viewed.” Id., at 772-773 (footnote omitted).
The present cases are even stronger ones for recognizing the legality of the Government’s projection of the film than the case Judge Webster posed. When the FBI screened these films, they already were aware of the nature of their contents.

 In contrast, I am at a loss to explain the conclusion stated in MR. Justice White’s opinion, ante, at 662, that even “a private screening of the films would not have destroyed petitioners’ privacy interest in them.”

 All this is reinforced by the impractiealities the Court would impose upon the FBI in these cases. The Stevens opinion and the White opinion both insist that a warrant should have been obtained before any of the *666films were viewed. One might inquire, on whom would the warrant be served? Surely, not on I/Eggs Products, Inc., which no longer had possession and wanted only to wish these films a speedy good riddance. And surely not on the shippers, who purposefully had concealed their identities.