Court Opinion

ID: 9730777
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:23:20.602159+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:09.234075
License: Public Domain

Kavanagh, J.
This case involves the constitutionality of a warrantless search of personal luggage. Minimum constitutional guarantees provide that a search of personal effects must be attended *601by probable cause1 and either a warrant or exigent circumstances.2 The absence of a warrant in this case reduces the focus of our constitutional assessment to the existence vel non of probable cause and exigent circumstances. Conceding, arguendo, the exigent circumstances authorizing the warrantless seizure of the luggage, there were no exigent circumstances authorizing its warrantless search.
The evidence thus obtained should have been suppressed.
On July 26, 1973, narcotics officers of the Tucson, Arizona, Police Department were conducting general surveillance at the Tucson International Airport. Their surveillance consisted of observing people and luggage for possible narcotics activity. At 10:45 p.m. two officers observed defendant as he entered the terminal. The officers testified that defendant appeared nervous and that his general demeanor fit a "profile” which the officers had come to associate with people who traffic in drugs. Other police officers in a private TWA baggage room smelling all the luggage which passed by on a conveyor were told to pay special attention to defendant’s luggage. Two police officers placed their noses along the seams of defendant’s two suitcases as they passed by along the TWA baggage conveyor. Concluding that they smelled marijuana and talcum powder, the officers removed both suitcases from the conveyor.
With the use of tools the officers broke the lock on one suitcase and searched its contents, discovering 14 bricks of marijuana. Two bricks were removed and marked, one being kept by the police *602officers in Arizona and never offered in evidence and the other replaced in the suitcase. The other suitcase was pried open at a corner revealing its contents of marijuana. The officers did not retain custody of the suitcases but closed, sealed and placed them back on the TWA conveyor for loading into the departing plane. One officer returned to the main concourse to confirm defendant’s destination as Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The Tucson narcotics officers chose not to arrest defendant but rather to relay all of their information to the Kalamazoo Police Department. Defendant was observed at the Kalamazoo airport as he disembarked from a plane approximately six hours later. Kalamazoo police officers observed defendant as he collected his luggage and made his way out of the terminal and into a taxicab. The officers testified that they did not arrest defendant as he approached the taxi because a bus full of children was arriving. The officers waited until the cab left the airport and stopped it as it drove on a nearby road. The defendant was arrested, and his luggage taken out of the taxi and searched immediately to reveal marijuana.
Neither the Tucson police officers nor the Kalamazoo police officers had obtained or even attempted to obtain a search warrant.
On appeal defendant-appellant contends that the trial court erred in not suppressing the marijuana as a product of an invalid search and seizure. Neither search was carried out pursuant to a warrant and defendant argues that once the police seized his luggage, whether in Arizona or in Michigan, they should have retained custody thereof until a warrant was obtained.
The prosecution contends that the trial court was correct in refusing to suppress the marijuana. *603Appellee argues that there was only one search involved. What occurred in Kalamazoo was not a separate search and seizure, it argues, but only a reassertion of control which had been obtained in Arizona. The initial intrusion in Arizona is argued as justified by probable cause and exigent circumstances. The similarity between the defendant’s demeanor and the drug profile along with the odor of unburned marijuana and the presence of talcum powder are argued as providing probable cause to believe defendant’s luggage contained contraband. The impending departure of defendant’s flight to Kalamazoo is argued as an exigent circumstance. The prosecutor further contends that because the Tucson police relayed their information to the Kalamazoo police the authorities never relinquished custody of defendant’s luggage and thus what occurred in Kalamazoo was not a separate search but merely a continuation of the valid search which began in Arizona.
This argument misses the point.
Whether there was but one seizure or not and whether it was in Arizona or Michigan, the question before us is the propriety of the search of the luggage after its seizure.
The Arizona police could not have searched the luggage once they had it in their custody and control by removing it from the conveyor, because the claimed exigency of mobility had passed upon their seizure of the luggage. United States v Chadwick, 433 US 1; 97 S Ct 2476; 53 L Ed 2d 538 (1977). If it is conceded, arguendo, that their custody continued and invested the Michigan police with authority to maintain that custody, when the Michigan police removed the suitcases from the taxi there was no exigency of mobility or otherwise authorizing a warrantless search in Michigan.
*604In Arkansas v Sanders, 442 US 753, 763; 99 S Ct 2586; 61 L Ed 2d 235 (1979), the Court observed:
"But as we noted in Chadwick, the exigency of mobility must be assessed at the point immediately before the search — after the police have seized the object to be searched and have it securely within their control. See 433 US, at 13. Once police have seized a suitcase, as they did here, the extent of its mobility is in no way affected by the place from which it was taken.” (Footnote omitted; emphasis added.)
The philosophy behind this holding is set forth in Chadwick where the Court explained its prior holding in Chambers v Maroney, 399 US 42; 90 S Ct 1975; 26 L Ed 2d 419 (1970):
"Respondent’s principal privacy interest in the footlocker was, of course, not in the container itself, which was exposed to public view, but in its contents. A search of the interior was therefore a far greater intrusion into Fourth Amendment values than the impoundment of the footlocker. Though surely a substantial infringement of respondents’ use and possession, the seizure did not diminish respondents’ legitimate expectation that the footlocker’s contents would remain private.
"It was the greatly reduced expectation of privacy in the automobile, coupled with the transportation function of the vehicle, which made the Court in Chambers unwilling to decide whether an immediate search of an automobile, or its seizure and indefinite immobilization, constituted a greater interference with the rights of the owner. This is clearly not the case with locked luggage.” 433 US 1, 13-14, fn 8.
When the police have custody and control over personal luggage a warrantless search cannot be justified on the basis of the exigent circumstance of mobility.
*605The evidence here should have been suppressed.
Our holding on this point obviates the need for discussion of the other issues regarding asserted failure to produce a res gestae witness.
Reversed.
Levin, Fitzgerald, Ryan, and Blair Moody, Jr., JJ., concurred with Kavanagh, J.
Williams, J. I concur because the Kalamazoo police had sufficient notice to get a warrant.

 US Const, Ams IV, XIV; Const 1963, art 1, § 11.

 United States v Chadwick, 433 US 1; 97 S Ct 2476; 53 L Ed 2d 538 (1977); People v Crawl, 401 Mich 1; 257 NW2d 86 (1977) (opinion by Levin, J.).