Court Opinion

ID: 9428484
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:56.831296+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:13.732781
License: Public Domain

Justice Powell,
concurring in the judgment.
The Court’s judgment is justified, though not compelled, by the Court’s opinion in Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753 (1979). Accordingly, I join the judgment. As the plurality today goes well beyond Sanders or, any other prior case to establish a new “bright-line” rule, 1^ cannot join its opinion.1 It would require officers to obtain warrants in order to examine the contents of insubstantial containers in which no one had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The plurality’s approach strains the rationales of our prior cases and imposes substantial burdens on law enforcement without vindicating any significant values of privacy. I nevertheless concur in the judgment because the manner in which the package at issue was carefully wrapped and sealed evidenced petitioner’s expectation of privacy in its contents. As we have stressed *430in prior decisions, a central purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to safeguard reasonable expectations of privacy.
Having reached this decision on the facts of this case, I recognize — as the dissenting opinions find it easy to proclaim — that the law of search and seizure with respect to automobiles is intolerably confusing. The Court apparently cannot agree even on what it has held previously, let alone on how these cases should be decided. Much of this difficulty comes from the necessity of applying the general command of the Fourth Amendment to ever-varying facts; more may stem from the often unpalatable consequences of the exclusionary rule, which spur the Court to reduce its analysis to simple mechanical rules so that the constable has a fighting chance not to blunder.
This case and New York v. Belton, post, p. 454, decided today, involve three different Fourth Amendment questions that arise in automobile cases: (A) the scope of the search incident to arrest on the public highway; (B) whether officers must obtain a warrant when they have probable cause to search a particular container in which the suspect has a reasonable expectation of privacy; and (C) the scope of the “automobile exception” to the warrant requirement, which potentially includes all areas of the car and containers found therein. These issues frequently are intertwined, as the similar facts of these cases suggest: both involve the stop of an automobile upon probable cause, the arrest of the occupants, the search of the automobile, and the search of a personal container found therein. Nonetheless, the cases have been litigated and presented to us under entirely different theories. Intelligent analysis cannot proceed unless the issues are addressed separately. Viewing similar facts from entirely different perspectives need not lead to identical results.
A
I have joined the Court’s opinion in Belton because I concluded that a “bright-line” rule was necessary in the quite *431different circumstances addressed there.2 Belton, unlike this case, concerns only the exception to the warrant requirement for a search incident to arrest; contrary to Justice Stevens’ implication, post, at 444, 447-448, 451, and n. 13, the courts below never found that the officer had probable cause to search the automobile. Belton presents the volatile and fluid situation of an encounter between an arresting officer and a suspect apprehended on the public highway. While Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969), determines in principle the scope of a warrantless search incident to arrest, practical necessity requires that we allow an officer in these circumstances to secure thoroughly the automobile without requiring him in haste and under pressure to make close calculations about danger to himself or. the vulnerability of evidence.
Any “bright-line” rule does involve costs. Belton trades marginal privacy of containers within the passenger area of an automobile for protection of the officer and of destructible evidence. The balance of these interests strongly favors the Court’s rule. The occupants of an automobile enjoy only a limited expectation of privacy in the interior of the automobile itself. See Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U. S. 266, 279 (1973) (Powell, J., concurring). This limited interest is diminished further when the occupants are placed under custodial arrest. Cf. United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218, 237 (1973) (Powell, J., concurring). Immediately preceding the arrest, the passengers have complete control over the entire interior of the automobile, and can place weapons or contraband into pockets or other containers as the officer approaches. Thus, practically speaking, it is difficult to justify varying degrees of protection for the general interior of the car and for the various containers found within. These *432considerations do not apply to the trunk of the car, which is not within the control of the passengers either immediately before or during the process of arrest.
B
Although petitioner Robbins was arrested, this case was litigated only on the question whether the officers needed a warrant to open a sealed, opaquely wrapped container in the rear compartment of a station wagon. The plurality treats this situation as identical with that in United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977), and Sanders, supra, which addressed war-rantless searches of a double-locked footlocker and personal luggage respectively. Thus, the plurality’s opinion in this case concerns itself primarily with the kinds of containers requiring a warrant for their search when police have probable cause to search them, and where there has been no arrest. For reasons explained more fully below, I will share the plurality’s assumption that the police had probable cause to search the container rather than the automobile generally. Viewing this as a “container case,” I concur in the judgment.
Chadwick and Sanders require police to obtain a warrant to search the contents of a container only when the container is one that generally serves as a repository for personal effects or that has been sealed in a manner manifesting a reasonable expectation that the contents will not be open to public scrutiny. See Chadwick, supra, at 13; Sanders, 442 U. S., at 764. See, e. g., United States v. Mannino, 635 F. 2d 110, 114 (CA2 1980); United States v. Goshorn, 628 F. 2d 697, 700-701 (CA1 1980); United States v. Mackey, 626 F. 2d 684, 687-688 (CA9 1980); United States v. Ross, 210 U. S. App. D. C. 342, 356-362, 655 F. 2d 1159, 1173-1179 (1981) (en banc) (Tamm, J., dissenting). This resembles in principle the inquiry courts must undertake to determine whether a search violates the Fourth Amendment rights of a complaining party. See Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128 (1978); id., at 150-152 (Powell, J., *433concurring). In each instance, “[t]he ultimate question ... is whether one’s claim to privacy from government intrusion is reasonable in light of the surrounding circumstances.” Id., at 152; see Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967).
The plurality’s approach today departs from this basic concern with interests in privacy, and adopts a mechanical requirement for a warrant before police may search any closed container. Nothing in Chadwick or Sanders justifies this extreme extension of the warrant requirement. Indeed, the Court in Sanders explicitly foreclosed that reading:
“There will be difficulties in determining which parcels taken from an automobile require a warrant for their search and which do not. Our decision in this case means only that a warrant generally is required before personal luggage can be searched and that the extent to which the Fourth Amendment applies to containers and other parcels depends not at all upon whether they are seized from an automobile.” 442 U. S., at 765, n. 13.
While the plurality’s blanket warrant requirement does not even purport to protect any privacy interest, it would impose substantial new burdens on law enforcement. Confronted with a cigarbox or a Dixie cup in the course of. a probable-cause search of an automobile for narcotics, the conscientious policeman would be required to take the object to a magistrate, fill out the appropriate forms, await the decision, and finally obtain the warrant. Suspects or vehicles normally will be detained while the warrant is sought. This process may take hours, removing the officer from his normal police duties. Expenditure of such time and effort, drawn from the public’s limited resources for detecting or preventing crimes, is justified when it protects an individual’s reasonable privacy interests. In my view, the plurality’s requirement cannot be so justified. The aggregate burden of procuring warrants whenever an officer has probable cause to search the most trivial *434container may be heavy and will not be compensated by the advancement of important Fourth Amendment values. The sole virtue of the plurality’s rule is simplicity.3
*435c
The dissenters argue, with some justice, that the controlling question should be the scope of the automobile exception to the warrant requirement. In their view, when the police have probable cause to search an automobile, rather than only to search a particular container that fortuitously is located in it, the exigencies that allow the police to search the entire automobile without a warrant support the warrantless search of every container found therein. See post, at 451, and n. 13 (Stevens, J., dissenting). This analysis is entirely consistent with the holdings in Chadwick and Sanders, neither of which is an “automobile case,” because the police there had probable cause to search the double-locked footlocker and the suitcase respectively before either came near an automobile. See Chadwick, 433 U. S., at 11; Sanders, 442 U. S., at 761; see also id., at 766 (Burger, C. J., concurring). Adoption of the dissenters’ view would require, however, rejection of a good deal of the reasoning in the latter case.
Resolving this case by expanding the scope of the automobile exception is attractive not so much for its logical virtue, but because it may provide ground for agreement by a majority of the presently fractured Court on an approach that would give more specific guidance to police and courts in this recurring situation — one that has led to incessant litigation. I note, however, that this benefit would not be realized fully, as courts may find themselves deciding when probable cause ripened, or whether suspicion focused on the container or on the car in which it traveled.
The parties have not pressed this argument in this case and it is late in the Term for us to undertake sua sponte reconsideration of basic doctrines. Given these constraints, I adhere to statements in Sanders that the fact that the container was seized from an automobile is irrelevant to the question whether a warrant is needed to search its contents. Some future case affording an opportunity for more thorough con*436sideration of the basic principles at risk may offer some better, if more radical, solution to the confusion that infects this benighted area of the law.4

 The plurality’s “bright-line” rule would extend the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment to every “closed, opaque container,” without regard to size, shape, or whether common experience would suggest that the owner was asserting a privacy interest in the contents. The plurality would exempt from the broad reach of its rule only those “closed, opaque containers” where, because of shape or some other characteristic, the “contents may be said to be in plain view.” In accordance with the plurality’s usage I use the term “container” to include any and all packages, bags, boxes, tins, bottles, and the like.

 The one significant factual difference is that Belton involved only the passenger compartment (the “interior”) of an automobile, whereas this case involves search of the trunk.

 The plurality overestimates the difficulties involved in determining whether a party has a reasonable expectation of privacy in a particular container. Many containers, such as personal luggage, are “inevitably associated with the expectation of privacy.” Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753, 762 (1979). Many others, varying from a plastic cup to the ubiquitous brown paper grocery sack, consistently lack such an association. In the middle are containers, such as cardboard boxes and laundry bags, that may be used, although imperfectly, as repositories of personal effects, but often are not. As to such containers, I would adopt the view of Chief Judge Coffin:
“[W]e disagree that the mere possibility of such use leads to the conclusion that such containers are ‘inevitably’ associated with an expectation of privacy. The many -and varied uses of these containers that entail no expectation of privacy militate against applying a presumption that a warrantless search of such a container violates the Fourth Amendment.” United States v. Goshorn, 628 F. 2d 697, 700 (CA1 1980).
When confronted with the claim that police should have obtained a warrant before searching an ambiguous container, a court should conduct a hearing to determine whether the defendant had manifested a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of the container. See id., at 701. Relevant to such an inquiry should be the size, shape, material, and condition of the exterior, the context within which it is discovered, and whether the possessor had taken some significant precaution, such as locking, securely sealing or binding the container, that indicates a desire to prevent the contents from being displayed upon simple mischance. A prudent officer will err on the side of respecting ambigous assertions of privacy, see Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128, 152, n. 1 (1978) (Powell, J., concurring), and a realistic court seldom should second-guess the good-faith judgment of the officer in the field when the public consequently must suffer from the suppression of probative evidence, cf. Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590, 611-612 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring).
In this case, petitioner, by securely wrapping and sealing his package, had manifested a desire that the public not casually observe the contents. See ante, at 422, n. 1. Our society’s traditional respect for the privacy of locked or sealed containers confirms the reasonableness of this expectation. See Ex parte Jackson, 96 U. S. 727, 733 (1878) (warrant required for postal inspectors to open sealed packages sent through mail). See also United States v. Van Leeuwen, 397 U. S. 249 (1970).

 We have an institutional responsibility not only to respect stare decisis but also to make every reasonable effort to harmonize our views on constitutional questions of broad practical application.