Court Opinion

ID: 9461613
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:19:22.536879+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:10.099848
License: Public Domain

DUNIWAY, Circuit Judge
(concur-ring):
■ I concur in the judgment, but for somewhat different reasons from those stated in Judge Lane’s opinion.
First: I think it at least arguable .that the agents had information, before the vehicle started for the border, sufficient to give them probable cause to believe that the defendants intended to export the munitions. If so, they could have obtained a warrant. It does not -follow, however, that they were required to do so. It was proper for them to wait until they had more evidence before "’seeking to search.
*932The applicable principle is well stated by Justice Blackmun in Cardwell v. Lewis, 1974, 417 U.S. 583 at 595-6, 94 S.Ct. 2464, 2472, 41 L.Ed.2d 325:
Assuming that probable cause previously existed, we know of no case or principle that suggests that the right to search on probable cause and the reasonableness of seizing a car under exigent circumstances are foreclosed if a warrant was not obtained at the first practicable moment. Exigent circumstances with regard to vehicles are not limited to situations where probable cause is unforeseeable and arises only at the time of arrest. Cf. Chambers [v. Maroney], id., [399 U.S. 42] at 50-51 [90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419], The exigency may arise at any time and the fact that the police might have obtained a warrant earlier does not negate the possibility of a current situation’s necessitating prompt police action.
To the same effect is United States v. Church, 9 Cir., 1973, 490 F.2d 353, 356 (opinion of Aldrich, J.) 357 (opinion of Duniway, J.). What we have in the case at bar is excellent police work, not a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Second: I agree that when the camper was stopped just before it reached the border, the agents had more than probable cause to seize and search it. At that time, they knew that it contained munitions, they knew that no export license had been issued, and they knew that the defendant was then engaged in exporting the munitions.
I do not think, however, that our decision should be based upon Chimel v. California, 1969, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685. The defendant was in the driver’s seat of the camper. I do not see how the munitions hidden inside the camper can be said to have been “within his immediate control” as that phrase is used in Chimel. To get at them, he would have had to get out of the driver’s seat, open the door of the camper, enter it, and extract a weapon from its hiding place. To describe these munitions as being in an “area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon” (395 U.S. at 762, 89 S.Ct. at 2040) is, I submit, to stretch the Chimel holding beyond the breaking point.
Rather, I think that the case falls squarely within the “automobile exception” to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, first announced in Carroll v. United States, 1925, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543, and followed by all of the federal courts ever since. On that ground, I conclude that the search was entirely proper.