Court Opinion

ID: 9457474
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:22:53.319594+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:21.939933
License: Public Domain

J. SKELLY WRIGHT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I
“ * * * The requirement of a warrant, as now generally understood, rests primarily on the conception that it is for a judicial officer, and not the prosecutor or police, to determine whether the security of our society, which is essential to the maintenance of a rule of law, requires that the right of privacy yield to a right of entry, search and seizure, and what limitation and specification of entry may be appropriate and reasonable. ■ * * * >>
Thus spoke this court en banc in Dorman v. United States, 140 U.S.App.D.C. 313, 317, 435 F.2d 385, 389 (1970). The Dorman holding is in harmony with the holding of the Supreme Court in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), that, subject to a few carefully delineated exceptions, “searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 357, 88 S.Ct. at 514. Moreover, specifically important to the disposition of this case is the Court’s rejection in Katz of the traditional trespass test for Fourth Amendment violations and its adoption of the reasonable expectation of privacy *1365criterion as controlling. The Court, identifying the new concept, stated:
“ * * * What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. * * * But what he seeks t.o preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected. * * * ”
Id. at 351-352, 88 S.Ct. at 511. (Emphasis added.) The Court in Katz went on to hold the unwarranted seizure of a conversation by monitoring a public telephone violates the Fourth Amendment.1
I submit that the seizure without warrant of the evidence in this case from ’ appellant’s premises violates the teaching of both Dorman and Katz2 More particularly, the majority opinion approving the seizure in this case is directly contrary to the holdings in two Supreme Court cases — one handed down at the last term of Court — and one case of our own almost identical on its facts to this case.
In Vale v. Louisiana, 399 U.S. 30, 33-34, 90 S.Ct. 1969, 26 L.Ed.2d 409 (1970), the police, having witnessed the accused come out of his house into the street, make a sale of narcotics, and then begin to re-enter his house, arrested him on the sidewalk in front. Thereupon they entered the house and seized his supply. The Court held that the seizure was illegal for lack of a search warrant. The claim that the search of the house was an incident to the arrest outside was specifically rejected. The police did here precisely what the officers had done in Vale, i. e., make an arrest outside and then enter the accused’s adjoining premises to seize evidence of the crime.3
The second case, Taylor v. United States, 286 U.S. 1, 52 S.Ct. 466, 76 L.Ed. 951 (1932), written for a unanimous Court by Mr. Justice McReynolds, is even closer on its facts to this case. The opinion succinctly states the facts:
“As the agents approached the garage they got the odor of whiskey coming from within. Aided by a searchlight, they looked through a small *1366opening and saw many cardboard cases which they thought probably contained jars of liquor. Thereupon they broke the fastening upon a door, entered and found one hundred twenty-two cases of whiskey. * * *”4
Id. at 5, 52 S.Ct. at 467. The Court held that in these circumstances the failure to obtain a warrant “was inexcusable and the seizure unreasonable.” Id. at 6, 52 S.Ct. at 467.
The suggestion that the alleged exigency of the situation here made it unnecessary to obtain a warrant is also answered in Taylor:
“ * * * They had abundant opportunity [to obtain a warrant] and to proceed in an orderly way even after the odor had emphasized their suspicions; there was no probability of material change in the situation during the time necessary to secure such warrant. Moreover, a short period of watching would have prevented any such possibility.”
Id. at 6, 52 S.Ct. at 467.
The additional suggestion that, since the evidence was in “plain view,” a warrant was unnecessary is likewise rejected in Taylor. There the agents, looking through “a small opening,” saw the contraband whiskey in plain view, but that, in the Supreme Court’s judgment at least, did not make the seizure less “inexcusable” or “unreasonable.” In fact the majority here cites no case at any level, state or federal, in which the plain view doctrine is held to justify entering premises, including a garage, without a warrant to make a seizure, and I have found none.5 With other courts, apparently, Taylor seems to have settled the law on this point.
Indeed, until today this court followed Taylor. In James v. United States, 135 U.S.App.D.C. 314, 418 F.2d 1150 (1969), as here the police peeped into a garage and saw evidence of crime sufficient, this court held, to establish probable cause to obtain a search warrant. The police, however, first entered the garage without a warrant and took the license number and the owner’s manual off the car therein. Thereafter they obtained a search warrant, entered the garage and took photographs and other evidence. This court affirmed the District Court’s holding suppressing the license number and owner’s manual but allowing introduction of the evidence seized pursuant to the warrant. Thus the crucial difference between the legal and the illegal seizure, this court found, was the warrant. Yet today this court approves the seizure of evidence without warrant un*1367der precisely the circumstances so graphically disapproved in James.
With due deference, how the majority can uphold the seizure in this case in the face of Vale, Taylor and James is beyond me.6
II
Peeping such as we have in this case into private buildings to see that which the occupant has chosen not to expose to public view is a search, and its lawfulness must be measured against the protective standards of the Fourth Amendment. Katz v. United States, supra; McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 69 S.Ct. 191, 93 L.Ed. 153 (1948); State of Texas v. Gonzales, 5 Cir., 388 F.2d 145, 147 (1968); People of State of California v. Hurst, 9 Cir., 325 F.2d 891, 898 (1963), reversed on other grounds, 381 U.S. 760, 85 S.Ct. 1796, 14 L.Ed.2d 713 (1965); Brock v. United States, 5 Cir., 223 F.2d 681, 685 (1955); see Whitley v. United States, 99 U.S.App.D.C. 159, 237 F.2d 787 (1956). Evidence of what was seen in this search is as much subject to suppression as the things would be if they had been physically seized. Katz v. United States, supra; McDonald v. United States, supra; Williams v. United States, 105 U.S.App.D.C. 41, 263 F.2d 487 (1959); Cohen v. Superior Court, 5 Cal.App.3d 429, 85 Cal.Rptr. 354 (1970); State v. Bryant, 287 Minn. 205, 177 N.W.2d 800 (1970); Ashby v. State, Fla.App., 228 So.2d 400 (1969). Ash-by is remarkably similar to the instant case, in that the police gained knowledge *1368of the appellant’s possession of stolen property “by looking through a crack in the garage door.” 228 So.2d at 402. The court, relying substantially on McDonald v. United States, supra, and Taylor v. United States, supra, held that the property thus seen and subsequently seized should have been suppressed:
“The eye peering over a transom or peeking through a crack in the garage door does not come within the open-view doctrine and evidence seized through such a search without a warrant is not admissible without a showing by those who seek exemption from the constitutional mandate that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative.”
Id. at 407.
Without the information obtained by peeping, the location of the garage in relation to the abandoned car and the presence in front of the garage of sweepings suggestive of ear stripping and rags similar to those found in the abandoned car here may well have persuaded a magistrate to issue a search warrant. But there was no grave emergency which would elevate unchecked police suspicion to legal justification for a search without prior judicial determination. Katz v. United States, supra, 389 U.S. at 357, 88 S.Ct. 507. Seeking such a warrant was one appropriate and lawful course the police might have taken. If additional evidence for a warrant were required, interviewing neighbors as to events in the alley, interviewing the owner of the garage, and placing the garage under surveillance may have produced it. But the fact that the police would probably have been able to discover sufficient evidence by constitutional means cannot be used to save an unconstitutional course of action.
What bewilders me as much as the majority’s apparent disregard for the importance to society that an individual’s reasonable expectations of privacy be protected is the way in which it finds direct and unambiguous support for its novel holding in previous cases from our circuit which are by no means clearly apposite. For example, the majority seeks to justify the legality of Officer Huffstutler’s first look into the garage as “a closer look at a challenging situation.” But its support for this theory is Dorsey v. United States, 125 U.S.App.D.C. 355, 372 F.2d 928 (1967), which dealt with the search of a car and which specifically held that “[a] car parked at 14th and U Streets at 11 o’clock at night, occupied by known narcotics offenders, bears little resemblance to a home or dwelling.” 125 U.S.App.D.C. at 358, 372 F.2d at 931. What the majority effortlessly glosses over is the traditional Fourth Amendment law distinction between cars and buildings specifically mentioned in Dorsey and developed by the Supreme Court beginning with Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925).
Nor is the majority’s justification of the first look into the garage on “plain view” theory on more stable ground. In James v. United States, supra, on which the majority heavily relies, where the garage door was left raised four feet from the floor, this court indicated that police are free to observe circumstances in evidence that are in “plain view” to the public. “That the policeman may have to crane his neck, or bend over, or squat, does not render the doctrine inapplicable, so long as what he saw would have been visible to any curious passerby.” 135 U.S.App.D.C. at 315 n. 1, 418 F.2d at 1151 n. 1. But isn’t it at least troubling that here, as in Taylor, the garage door was locked 7 and the police, again as in Taylor, had to use special equipment such as a flashlight to see inside? Certainly a flashlight is not standard equipment for “any curious passerby,” particularly in the daytime. Isn’t there also a serious danger that the “plain view” holding of the majority in this case is inconsistent with the Supreme Court decision in Katz, which held that what a person “seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the *1369public, may be constitutionally protected”? 389 U.S. at 351-352, 88 S.Ct. at 511. Is it not important to our American way of life that when a citizen does as much as ordinary care requires to shield his sanctuary from strangers his constitutional right to maintain his privacy should not be made to depend upon the resources of skillful peepers and eavesdroppers who can always find ways to intrude?
Ill
The opinion of the majority of the panel in this case — while it may well go unnoticed in the hustle and bustle of a society troubled with overcrowded criminal dockets- — flies in the face of clearly established legal principles and is representative of a dangerous propensity to emasculate the Fourth Amendment. The majority opinion rests on a definition of “reasonableness” which “considers and defines” the reasonableness8 of police conduct solely in terms of the public interest in detection and prevention of crime, rather than in terms of a balance between the public interest in effective law enforcement and the equally crucial public interest in protecting the privacy of individual citizens. “[T]he forefathers, after consulting the lessons of history, designed our Constitution to place obstacles in the way of a too permeating police surveillance, which they seemed to think was a greater danger to a free people than the escape of some criminals from punishment.” United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 595, 68 S.Ct. 222, 229, 92 L.Ed. 210 (1948).
There are, of course, still homes whose privacy is protected by high fences and broad lawns. But in many homes now a “plain view” of the bedroom, as well as the garage, is available to resourceful peepers, particularly those with special equipment, from the sidewalk or street. After today in the nation’s capital, the occupants of those homes, respected citizens as well as law violators, will have more to worry about than the traditional type Peeping Tom.
I respectfully dissent.
On Appellant’s Suggestion for Rehearing en Banc.
Before BAZELON, Chief Judge, WRIGHT, McGOWAN, TAMM, LEVEN-THAL, ROBINSON, MacKINNON, ROBB and WILKEY, Circuit Judges, en banc.
ORDER
PER CURIAM.
On consideration of appellant’s suggestion for rehearing en banc, of appellant’s supplement thereto and of appel-lee’s opposition, it is
Ordered by the Court en banc that appellant’s aforesaid suggestion for rehearing en Vane is denied.
Statement of Circuit Judge WRIGHT, in which Chief Judge BAZELON joins, as to Why He Voted to Grant Rehearing En Banc
As shown in my dissent to the panel opinion, the majority opinion in this case is in direct conflict with two Supreme Court cases and one of our own. Vale v. Louisiana, 399 U.S. 30, 90 S.Ct. 1969, 26 L.Ed.2d 409 (1970); Taylor v. United States, 286 U.S. 1, 52 S.Ct. 466, 76 L.Ed. 951 (1932); James v. United States, 135 U.S.App.D.C. 314, 418 F.2d 1150 (1969). Moreover, since the majority undertook to decide the case on an issue not raised in the briefs, it did not have before it two recent opinions from other circuits which are also squarely in conflict with its opinion. Pendleton v. Nelson, 9 Cir., *1370404 F.2d 1074 (1968); Niro v. United States, 1 Cir., 388 F.2d 535 (1968).
The question decided by the majority opinion (at 1359-1362), but not raised by the parties, is whether under the plain view doctrine, absent exigent circumstances, police may make a warrantless entry on premises and seize what they believe to be evidence of crime. The majority answered this question in the affirmative. Until this case no court has ever so held. For a Supreme Court case holding precisely the opposite on facts remarkably close to the facts here, see Taylor v. United States, supra.
With respect to the issue decided by the majority but not raised by the parties, appellant’s petition for rehearing and suggestion for rehearing en bane asserts, inter alia, that the majority opinion herein is “squarely contrary to decisions of the Courts of Appeals of the First and Ninth Circuits” (emphasis in original), citing Pendleton v. Nelson, supra, and Niro v. United States, supra. A reading of these two cases confirms appellant’s charge. Yet the Government in its response carefully answers the charge by ignoring it and the two cases supporting it. Neither in its original brief nor in its response to the petition for rehearing and the suggestion for rehearing en banc does the Government even cite these two cases. The reason why the Government ignores appellant’s charge and these two cases, of course, is obvious, as a reading of the cases will indicate.
Since the panel opinion came down, the Supreme Court has decided Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971). In that case the Court, in an opinion by Mr. Justice Stewart relying squarely on Taylor v. United States, supra, held (1) that the plain view doctrine, absent exigent circumstances may not provide the basis for a warrantless intrusion, and (2) that, after lawful entry but without a search warrant, to be legally seized “the discovery of evidence in plain view must be inadvertent.” 403 U.S. at 469, 91 S.Ct. at 2040. The panel opinion here is in the teeth of these two plain view doctrine limitations. Here, admittedly, the intrusion was warrantless and, admittedly, the police knew the property seized was on the premises before they entered.
For the reasons stated in my dissent to the panel opinion, together with the reasons given by the Supreme Court in Coolidge and by the Ninth and First Circuits in the Pendleton and Niro opinions, I am unable to understand why the panel majority persists in its opinion. Since it does, in my judgment the integrity of the judicial process requires a rehearing en banc.

. If Katz is still the law, and everyone concedes it is, it is difficult to understand how the “plain view” doctrine, on which the majority relies here, can be taken seriously, particularly as justification for invading premises in non-exigent circumstances without a warrant. Certainly no one bent on crime is knowingly going to expose to the public the evidence to convict. Here the evidence was locked in a garage, so any suggestion that appellant knowingly exposed it to the public (or the police) would be absurd.
It should be kept in mind in the discussion which follows that the garage here actually had two doors: a front door, consisting of sliding panels, which locked from the inside, and a side door which swung on hinges and which locked with a combination lock from outside. At the time of the first search, when Officer Huffstutler knelt, looked through a crack in the front door with his flashlight, and spied the transmission, both the front door and the side door were locked. Later, at the time of the arrest, the front door was still locked. Appellant was arrested just outside the side door through which lie and two others had just emerged. The officer then entered the garage through the then unlocked side door and located and seized the transmission.

. The majority’s attempt to distinguish Katz is based on its characterization of the small opening through which the police looked into the garage as “a nine-inch gap between the doors.” It suggests that because of this nine-inch gap appellant knowingly exposed the stolen transmission to the public and hence the police. The record shows that the “nine-inch gap” was actually an eight-inch slit one half inc-h wide (compare Transcript page 528 with Transcript page 9), and the police may have pulled on the doors so they could see inside. See Tr. 350-351, 386, 397-400, 440, 452-454, 497.

. The District Court, ruling before Vale came down, upheld the seizure as an incident to the arrest. The majority here, appreciating the effect of Vale on the District Court’s ruling, has sought to support that ruling on “plain view” grounds, and in so doing runs directly into Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), and Taylor v. United States, 286 U.S. 1, 52 S.Ct. 466, 76 L.Ed. 951 (1932).

. This quoted language from Taylor, I submit, does not reasonably sustain the majority’s speculation that “[f]or all the agents saw, the cases could have contained cans of tomato soup.” The majority’s other attempts to distinguish Taylor on its facts are likewise unavailing. As here, the garage doors in Taylor were locked and, as in Taylor, the opening through which the officers here peeked was small. The majority refers to the opening here as “a nine-inch gap between the doors.” As indicated in Note 2, supra, the record shows that the opening here appears in fact to be a crack one half inch wide and eight inches long. In addition, the majority’s characterization of the agents’ action in Taylor as “an exploratory search” as contrasted with the “seizure” of the transmission here is difficult to understand. In Taylor the officers smelled and saw the cardboard cases containing the bottled liquor at the time they entered the garage. Consequently, nil they had to do was seize them. Here at the time the officers entered the garage they were unaware of the location of the transmission since it had been moved from its previous position. Officer Huffstutlor described the transmission as the one “that I was looking for when I went into the garage.” Tr. 129. Under the circumstances, not only were the police uncertain the transmission was still there, but a “search” of the garage was apparently required to find it.

. In this connection it is interesting that the majority relies on automobile cases in applying its “plain view” thesis to a garage, in spite of the fact that Government counsel conceded at argument that he had found no case which, for Fourth Amendment purposes, equates a car with a garage or distinguishes between a house and a garage.

. Abstractly speaking, the transmission, which was the evidence seized without warrant from the garage here, was not necessary to convict appellant in this ease. A steering wheel, clutch plate and pressure plate — all 1967 equipment and each corresponding to items stripped from the stolen car — really were in plain view inside an open trunk of a car parked in the alley beside the garage at the time of appellant’s arrest. Normally, these pieces of evidence would have been more than sufficient as a basis for appellant’s conviction, and the admission of the transmission as additional evidence despite the motion to suppress might well have been harmless error. The Government, however, indicted appellant only for grand larceny of the transmission alone. And now, because of this apparent inadvertence on the part of the Government in obtaining an indictment against appellant, the majority obviously feels obliged to find some theor’y by which to save the conviction of an apparent criminal. The danger of such a procedure, of course, is that it involves distorting present case law and setting a precedent which may in the future have serious dangers for innocent citizens who believe that the Fourth Amendment protects their reasonable expectations of privacy.
I can sympathize with the majority’s feeling that it was more efficient in terms of time and manpower for the police to search appellant’s garage without a warrant after his arrest outside the garage. But maximization of police efficiency is not the only value with which our Bill of Bights, and more particularly the Fourth Amendment, concerns itself. The equally crucial public interest in protecting the privacy of individual citizens must also be considered. As the Supreme Court told us in McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 455-456, 69 S.Ct. 191, 193, 93 L.Ed. 153 (1948), where the police looked from a common hallway in a rooming house through a transom into a room where an illegal lottery was in operation :
“We are not dealing with formalities. The presence of a search warrant serves a high function. Absent some grave emergency, the Fourth Amendment has interposed a magistrate between the citizen and the police. This was done not to shield criminals nor to make the home a safe haven for illegal activities. It was done so that an objective mind might weigh the need to invade that privacy in order to enforce the law. The right of privacy was deemed too precious to entrust to the discretion of those whose job is the detection of crime and the arrest of criminals. Power is a heady thing; and history shows that the police acting on their own cannot be trusted. And so the Constitution requires a magistrate to pass on the desires of the police before they violate the privacy of the home. We cannot be true to that constitutional requirement and excuse the absence of a search warrant without a showing by those who seek exemption from the constitutional mandate that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative.’’

. See Tr. 346-348, 385.

. The majority closes with the statement, “We consider and define the police conduct here as reasonable, and therefore the conviction is [a]ffirmed.” The concept of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is, of course, difficult to define. But the many cases on the subject have laid out the constitutional guidelines so that protection of privacy will not depend on ad hoc judgments by police. I submit that the majority’s action here fails to follow the constitutional guidelines which the Supreme Court and other courts have sought to stake out in protecting citizens from unlawful official intrusion.