Court Opinion

ID: 9487295
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:12:52.881894+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:11.295198
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Eleven years ago, Judge Kennedy had the following to say about Harvey:
If the exclusionary rule becomes an end in itself and the courts do not apply it in a sensible and predictable way, then one approach is to reexamine it altogether. We do not have that authority, but we do have the commission, and the obligation, to confine the rule to the purposes for which it was announced.
In this case, the exclusionary rule seems to have acquired such independent force that it operates without reference to any improper conduct by the police. The rule is tom from its pragmatic mooring, for a premise of the decision is that the officer acted not only in good faith but also with probable cause under exigent circumstances. Blood was drawn at once because the alcohol it probably contained would have disappeared during the wait for a warrant. In this respect, the officer acted in fulfillment of his duty, not in breach of it, by taking the blood sample when he did.
The exclusionary rule, nevertheless, is invoked because an arrest was not made contemporaneously with the lawful search. No convincing argument is made that any rights or interests of the defendant were sacrificed by the delay. Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966), did recite that an arrest had been made coincidentally with taking a blood sample, but in my view this was simply a way of stating that there existed the probable cause that is always the prerequisite for the seizure of evidence in exigent circumstances. Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291, 93 S.Ct. 2000, 36 L.Ed.2d 900 (1973), seems to me to have established the proposition that an arrest is not a precondition for a search under exigent circumstances, even though the search is intrusive in character.
United States v. Harvey, 711 F.2d 144, 144-45 (9th Cir.1983) (Kennedy, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). His observations are only more apt today in light of Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753, 759, 105 S.Ct. 1611, 1616, 84 L.Ed.2d 662 (1985), where the Court remarked that Schmerber “fell within the exigent-circumstances exception to the warrant requirement.”
We should have taken Harvey en banc in 1983. It’s not too late.