Court Opinion

ID: 9470222
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:59:51.783046+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:47.372532
License: Public Domain

NORRIS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur fully with the majority’s affirmance of the convictions of Michael and Theresa. I also agree that Lynette’s conviction for armed robbery must be reversed on grounds of faulty jury instructions. I disagree, however, with the majority’s conclusion that the evidence of the contents of Lynette’s purse discovered during the search at the police station was admissible at her trial.
*1053The district court admitted the evidence seized from Lynette’s purse on the basis of its finding that Lynette had abandoned her privacy interest in her purse by stating to the arresting officer that she had “just found” it. The relevant question presented by Lynette’s appeal, therefore, was whether the district court had erred in finding that this conduct constituted abandonment. I agree with the majority that there was no abandonment of the purse, and that the evidence seized from it cannot be admitted on this basis.
The majority goes on, however, to find the evidence admissible on a totally different ground. As I understand the majority’s theory, it is that the police not only seized Lynette’s purse at the time of her arrest, but conducted such an extensive search of it that her expectations of privacy as to its contents were destroyed. Because she no longer had any privacy interest in the purse, the theory continues, the Fourth Amendment presented no bar to further warrantless searches of it, and the evidence discovered in it at the police station was therefore admissible at her trial.
I dissent on this point for two reasons. First, the majority’s decision is based on a theory that was not argued or litigated by the parties before the trial court and not raised by either Lynette or the government on appeal. Responding only to the district court’s finding of abandonment, the parties here did not address the question whether Lynette could have lost her expectation of privacy in any other way. Attempts to elicit supplemental briefs in accord with Ninth Circuit General Order 4.21 produced only confused responses, as the parties failed to grasp the question they were unexpectedly asked to address. The majority’s opinion, therefore, decides sua spoil te a question that has not been litigated: whether Lynette’s purse was searched at the time of her arrest, and, if so, whether the search was extensive enough to destroy her expectations of privacy in the purse before it was searched at the police station.
The majority seems to feel that it is deciding a novel issue of constitutional law. To make this assumption, however, misperceives the nature of the question before us. Certainly, I could not quarrel with the majority if what it intends to hold is that an extensive search of Lynette’s purse at the time of her arrest can be followed by subsequent warrantless searches designed solely to uncover items possibly overlooked or to further inventory evidence already discovered. It is no more than common sense to suppose that once the police have thoroughly searched a purse, they can search it again later without a warrant to discover any evidence they may earlier have missed. What the majority misunderstands, however, is that the issue is not a constitutional, but a factual one. The question is not whether a thorough search of Lynette’s purse would have destroyed her privacy interests, but whether a thorough search was in fact undertaken. Judge Ely seems to assume that at least a “brief” or “cursory” search was done at the time of Lynette’s arrest, see supra pp. 1048-1049. No record support for that conclusion is offered. In fact, a review of the reporter’s transcript of the suppression hearing and the trial not only makes clear that the parties did not litigate the issue whether the police searched Lynette’s purse at the time of her arrest, but provides no evidentiary basis for the majority’s conclusion that such a search was conducted.
Because the record is factually incomplete, it is inappropriate even to reach the question of the impact of the initial investigation on Lynette’s expectations of privacy. Based on the record in its present state, however, it can be said only that the officers seized Lynette’s purse. There is simply no evidence to indicate that they conducted any search of it at all until they examined it at the police station some hours later. Because there was no abandonment, and *1054because the officers merely seized, but did not search, Lynette’s purse, the case is governed by United States v. Monclavo Cruz, 662 F.2d 1285 (9th Cir.1981), which holds that neither the arrest of a suspect nor the seizure of his belongings operates to deprive him of his Fourth Amendment privacy rights. Id. at 1290 (search invalidated when suspect’s purse was seized and kept exclusively within police custody, but was not searched until some time after her arrest) (“searches of possessions within an arrestee’s immediate control cannot be justified by any reduced expectations of privacy caused by the arrest [citations omitted]”); see also, United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 14, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 2485, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977) (“Though surely a substantial infringement of respondents’ use and possession, the seizure [of their footlocker after they had been arrested] did not diminish respondents’ legitimate expectation that the footlocker’s contents would remain private”); United States v. Schleiss, 582 F.2d 1166 (8th Cir.1978) (arrestee did not relinquish expectation of privacy in briefcase despite police seizure of it).
What the record demonstrates is that the arresting officers saw money protruding from Lynette’s bag, but were more concerned about the wallet she pulled from it, and searched the contents of the purse only after they arrived at the stationhouse. The following citations are illustrative.
The officer who apprehended Lynette testified not that he searched the purse, but rather that he saw money coming out of the purse and then seized it.
Q. Officer Williamson, I believe you’ve indicated that you then [when Lynette turned to withdraw identification from her purse] moved your location so that you might see the purse. Would you tell us then what you observed?
A. She was drawing something — small and black-out of the purse; I couldn’t see what. Several bills — different denominations of money — could be seen coming out of the purse, as her hand was moving out of the purse.
Q. Would you describe a little more fully the currency that you were seeing at that time.
A. Money — I don’t remember the exact denomination of the bills that I saw coming out, but there — you know— money was — the purse was obviously stuffed. And, as she was trying to take her hand out of the purse, some money was protruding out. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. I was more concerned with what was in her hand than what she was going to bring out of her purse.
Q. What did you do then, after you made these observations?
A. It happened fast — what she was taking out of the purse was a wallet. I took the purse and wallet from her. At this time another officer — Officer Strickland — had come to my side. I handed him the purse. Miss Burnette was under arrest. I handcuffed her.
R.T. at 144-45. Officer Williamson said nothing else about the purse on direct examination at the suppression hearing. Indeed, his responses to questions on cross and redirect examinations reveal his lack of knowledge about the contents of the purse. On cross, defense counsel focused on Lynette’s opportunity to have withdrawn identification from the purse, but did not ask Officer Williamson whether he knew what was in it:
Q. What did she try to pull out of her purse?
A. I have no idea, at that time, sir.
Q. Did you see what she was trying to pull out of her purse?
A. No, sir.
Q. Okay. Did you take the purse away from her before you could see what it was she tried to pull out of her purse?
A. Something was coming out of her purse; I thought it wise to take the purse away from her.
Q. Okay. You didn’t want to see what was coming out of the purse; you just took it away from her. Am I correct?
A. Yes, sir.
R.T. at 157-58. Other testimony by Officer Williamson confirms that he did not himself *1055conduct a more thorough examination of the purse.
Q. Officer, you asked her to produce some identification, and she said she had it in her purse, didn’t she?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. And when she went to open the purse, you took it away from her, didn’t you?
A. No, sir.
Q. Wait a minute; let me back up. Did you just tell me that when she went to open the purse and extract something out of it, you took the purse away from her?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. In response to the prosecutor’s questions, I think you testified that — we . .. strike that.
Have-you — do you have a copy of your report with you?
A. No, sir, I don’t.
Q. Okay. Do you recall putting this in your report — and I’m referring to— would you like to see it, see a copy of it?
A. Yes.
Q. Would you read [the second to the last paragraph] to the Court, please, sir.
A. As she was doing this, Officer Strickland arrived on the scene and assisted me with the subject. He removed the purse from her as I was taking the wallet identification from her. Officer Strickland ... continued to open the purse, and it was found to contain a large sum of money.
MR. FREY: Okay. I have no further questions.
R.T. at 158, 160. The record thus makes clear that Officer Strickland was the sole policeman who investigated the contents of the purse at the time of the arrest. Although Officer Strickland’s direct testimony at the suppression hearing confirmed that Officer Williamson had done no more than pass Lynette’s purse to him, it did nothing to suggest the extent of the search he himself conducted at that time.
Q. [Who had the purse?]
A. It was — the purse was either sitting on the ground or he had it in his hands. I do not recall specifically where it was. But I was given the purse by Officer Williams [sic] shortly after my arrival there.
Q. All right. Did Officer Williamson hand you any identification?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. Was the identification already removed from the purse when he handed it to you?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Were you present when Officer Williamson got that identification from wherever it was that he got it?
A. When I got there, it was in his hand. I do not know where he got it from.
Q. Was the purse open or closed when you got there?
A. It was closed.
Q. What did you do when he gave you the purse?
A. He handed me the purse and explained to me how he had come by it; and I asked him if anyone had looked in the purse, and he stated “No.” At that time, I unzipped the purse and opened it.
Q. Have you got a copy of your report available to you, sir?
A. Right now, no.
R.T. at 167-68.
The government’s attorney asked no further questions about the evidence Officer Strickland had uncovered during that preliminary investigation. The suppression hearing was thus concluded without providing support for an assumption that anything more than a seizure of the purse had occurred. Testimony at the trial itself did not suggest otherwise. Officer Williamson again disclaimed any action save the seizure of the purse, both on direct and redirect examinations.
*1056DIRECT
Q. Officer Williamson, you have indicated, I think, that this identification came from a purse. Did you then seize the purse from this person?
A. I took the purse from her after she had begun to open the purse and then closed it. She then stood up and turned her back to me and began to open the purse again. She was withdrawing something from the purse, and at that point I took the purse from her.
REDIRECT
Q. Officer Williamson, the purse that you took from Lynette Burnette on that date, what, if anything, did you do with it at that time? To whom did you give it, if to anyone?
A. When I took the purse from her, I handed it to Officer Strickland.
Q. Thank you. I have nothing further. R.R. at 305, 316. At the trial, Officer Strickland merely identified the purse and described the search done at the station-house: he did not further elaborate on his actions at the time of the arrest. Thus, when asked whether he recognized an exhibit that had just been introduced, he replied:
A. Yes. That is the purse I was given custody of by Officer Williamson.
Q. Is there any way that you can recognize it as the same purse?
A. When I placed this purse in departmental property, I put it inside the bag and stapled the bag shut. I also stapled onto it the property tag that is made out in my handwriting.
R.T. at 319. His only other relevant testimony revealed the following:
Q. Officer Strickland, did you later that day take the purse that you had seized to the police department?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you at that time do anything with it?
A. After we had been there for a short period of time, I removed a large amount of money from the purse and began to break it into different piles by denomination. And these piles were later counted.
Q. Did you make a count of all of the currency found therein?
A. Yes, sir, I did.
Q. Do you know what the total amount of the currency was?
A. It was right around $5,700. I don’t remember the exact amount.
Q. Was anyone there with you at the time that you were inventorying the currency?
A. Officer Aleshire was sitting at a desk.
Q. What was he doing?
A. He was going through the stack of twenty-dollar bills looking for specifically serial-numbered twenty-dollar bills.
Q. Do you know whether or not he found any?
A. He found some of them, yes, sir.
Q. No additional questions.
R.T. at 325-27.
These interchanges represent the sum total of record evidence on what occurred when the purse was seized immediately subsequent to Lynette’s arrest. This meager record and the parties’ inability to understand the issue even when explicitly asked to address it demonstrate the risks inherent in deciding this question sua sponte. In my view, the record in its present state simply does not support the majority’s treatment of the issue of the admissibility of the evidence of the contents of Lynette’s purse discovered during the search at the police station.

. Ninth Circuit General Order 4.2 provides that: If a panel determines to decide a case upon the basis of a significant point not raised by the parties in their briefs, it should give serious consideration to requesting additional briefing and oral argument before issuing a disposition predicated upon the particular point.