Court Opinion

ID: 9480320
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:44:44.846673+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:36.840000
License: Public Domain

BOWNES, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The majority believes that it “need go no further” on its “journey into fourth amendment jurisprudence” than Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 107 S.Ct. 3164, 97 L.Ed.2d 709 (1987). But, “[i]t is also true of journeys in the law that the place you reach depends upon the direction you are taking. And so, where one comes out on a case depends on where one goes in.” United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69, 70 S.Ct. 430, 436, 94 L.Ed. 653 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). By beginning and ending its journey with Griffin, the majority distorts both the substance and method of fourth amendment jurisprudence. In addition, by straining to extend the Griffin “special needs” exception from searches by parole administrators to seizures by police officers, a situation clearly not covered, and arguably forbidden, by the language of Griffin, the majority ignores directly conflicting Supreme Court precedent. Because my brothers ignore basic fourth amendment principles and Supreme Court precedent, both of which we are bound to follow rather than to avoid, I must dissent.
There are at least five reasons for not following the court’s incomplete fourth amendment analysis:
first, the fourth amendment has consistently been held to require probable cause for arrests;
second, Supreme Court precedent requires that police officers making an arrest at a residence must have a probable cause arrest warrant;
third, the Griffin “special needs” exception applies only to searches by parole officers and not arrests by police officers;
*70fourth, it was not impractical for the police officers to obtain an arrest warrant; and
fifth, police officers cannot be insulated from the requirements of the Constitution by a misconceived and misapplied notion of agency.
I will consider each of these reasons in turn.
1. The Fourth Amendment: Arrests always require probable cause
I begin my analysis where the majority's journey should have begun — with the fourth amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.
The majority concedes that in most circumstances, a “reasonable” search or seizure requires a warrant and thus probable cause.1 In certain limited situations, exceptions to the warrant and probable cause standard have been recognized for searches. But there has never been an exception to the probable cause to arrest requirement. Furthermore, unlike my brothers, I do not find any qualifications in the language of the fourth amendment based on “practicality” or “logic.” Nor do I view the fourth amendment as an obstacle to be circumvented or something that can be balanced away. In my view, the fourth amendment is an unassailable constitutional command that protects the individual citizen from arbitrary police action; it cannot be adjusted on a case-by-case basis according to judges’ shifting views of practicality.
The court, while acknowledging that this case involves an arrest, the quintessential seizure, uses analysis and precedent from “search” cases rather than “seizure” cases in order to rationalize the result it wants. My brothers allude to the fact that this case does not involve a search but they do not analyze the case differently because of that fact. The case law and rationale of seizure cases differs significantly from search cases and in almost all cases requires probable cause. To ignore this distinction is to commit a grave constitutional error. When analyzed as an arrest case, neither the majority’s reasoning nor result can withstand even mild scrutiny.
An arrest, the most intrusive of seizures, always requires probable cause. See, e.g., Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980) (arrest at home requires probable cause arrest warrant); United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411, 96 S.Ct. 820, 46 L.Ed.2d 598 (1976) (allowing warrantless arrest based upon probable cause); Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). This requirement is a long-standing one. See, e.g., Ex Parte Burford, 7 U.S. 269, 272 (3 Cranch 448, 453, 2 L.Ed. 495) (1806) (Marshall, C.J.) (arrest warrant illegal for lack of probable cause).
The majority’s opinion establishes a new constitutional standard for arrests based on mere “reasonableness.” It has cited no support for its novel view of the Constitution (because there is none) and has instead been forced to rely upon tenuous extensions of exceptions to the search provisions *71of the fourth amendment. These exceptions are inapposite for seizure cases.
The majority adopts the methodology of search cases (case-by-case reasonableness balancing test) which also is inapplicable to arrest cases. Whatever the merits or demerits of reasonableness balancing,2 such a method of analysis has never been applied in arrest cases. “For all but ... narrowly defined intrusions, the requisite ‘balancing’ has been performed in centuries of precedent and is embodied in the principle that seizures are ‘reasonable’ only if supported by probable cause.” Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 214, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 2257, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979).
2. Payton: Police arrests at a home require warrant
Reversal is also required on a much narrower ground: binding Supreme Court precedent on the exact issue of police officers making arrests at a suspect’s home. In Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980), the Court held that the arrest of an individual by police officers at his home required an arrest warrant. See also Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948); United States v. Adams, 621 F.2d 41 (1st Cir.1980); United States v. Reed, 572 F.2d 412 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 913, 99 S.Ct. 283, 58 L.Ed.2d 259 (1978). That is exactly the situation presented by this case. The majority completely ignores Payton, the settled law that has been consistently followed and re-affirmed. Skinner v. Railway Labor Executive Ass’n, — U.S. -, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 1414, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989); Griffin, 483 U.S. at 873, 107 S.Ct. at 3169. The Court has recently strongly reaffirmed the core of Payton stating that because of Payton “the police know that a warrantless entry will lead to the suppression of any evidence found inside the home.” New York v. Harris, — U.S. -, -, 110 S.Ct. 1640, 1642, 109 L.Ed.2d 13 (1990).
Payton was based on the clear commands of the fourth amendment. See, e.g., United States v. Johnson, 457 U.S. 537, 552, 102 S.Ct. 2579, 2588, 73 L.Ed.2d 202 (1982) (applying Payton retroactively). The “Court’s own analysis in Payton makes it clear that its ruling rested on both long recognized principles of Fourth Amendment law and the weight of historical authority as it had appeared to the framers of the Fourth Amendment.” Johnson, 457 U.S. at 552, 102 S.Ct. at 2589. Payton was also firmly buttressed by the policies underlying the fourth amendment. As the Payton Court stated, the “physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the fourth amendment was directed.” Payton, 445 U.S. at 585, 100 S.Ct. at 1379 (citation omitted); see also Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511, 81 S.Ct. 679, 682, 5 L.Ed.2d 734 (1961) (“At the very core [of the fourth amendment] stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusions”); United States v. Curzi, 867 F.2d 36, 41 (1st Cir.1989) (noting the special fourth amendment status of the home).
The only exception to the Payton rule is exigent circumstances. Payton, 445 U.S. at 586, 100 S.Ct. at 1380 (“seizure carried out on a suspect’s premises without a warrant is per se unreasonable, unless the police can show that it falls within one of a carefully defined set of exceptions based on the presence of ‘exigent circumstances.’ ”) (quoting Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 474-75, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2042-43, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971)). It is conceded that there were no exigent circumstances in this case.
3. Griffin: Administrative searches as special needs exception
The majority, ignoring Payton, expands the “special needs” exception applicable to administrative searches to include police *72arrests. In doing so the majority stretches “special needs” analysis beyond the breaking point; the core of fourth amendment activity, an arrest by a police officer, is now an exception to the fourth amendment probable cause requirement. The exception truly has swallowed the rule.
In creating this exception, the majority misconstrues Griffin. In certain administrative situations there are “ ‘special needs’ beyond normal law enforcement that may justify departures from the usual warrant and probable-cause requirements” in searches by administrators. Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 873-74, 107 S.Ct. 3164, 3167-68, 97 L.Ed.2d 709 (1987) {search by probation officer); see also O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 107 S.Ct. 1492, 94 L.Ed.2d 714 (1987) (search by government employer); New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 105 S.Ct. 733, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985) {search by school administrator). All of the cases cited by the majority, and all of the cases justifying special needs, involve searches by administrators in situations requiring expediency.
The arrest of Cardona is not “governed” by Griffin or the other special needs cases because it was not a search and was not conducted by an administrator. The Constitution and Supreme Court precedent requires probable cause for arrests, a significantly more rigorous standard than is applied to administrative searches. This standard is found throughout the history of the fourth amendment, which was written against a background of arrests based on less than probable cause. See, e.g., Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 314-25, 79 S.Ct. 329, 333-39, 3 L.Ed.2d 327 (1959) (Douglas, J., dissenting) (reviewing history of seizure portion of fourth amendment). In addition, an arrest, even for someone on parole, is much more intrusive of fourth amendment interests than the limited administrative searches contemplated by the “special needs” cases.
Contrary to the broad language in' the majority’s opinion, the “special needs” cases place great emphasis on who conducts these searches. Each of the “special needs” cases involved searches conducted by administrators because of special administrative needs.3 Each is premised on the fact that the administrator is operating within a system that has special needs for an immediate search. None involved a search by an unaccompanied police officer; in Griffin the police officers were assisting the parole officers. In fact, most of the eases were premised upon the impracticability of getting the help of a police officer quickly enough. The majority has made no showing, as it must, that the special needs of the parole system required a police officer to make the arrest while at the same time requiring that officer to ignore the Constitution and Payton.
The importance of who is conducting the search is found in the explicit language of Griffin where the Court stated that it was creating an exception “beyond normal law enforcement activities.” Griffin, 483 U.S. at 873-74, 107 S.Ct. at 3167-68. The arrest of a suspect is the epitome of law enforcement activities. Griffin provides no support for the proposition that police officers may ignore the constitutional requirement of a probable cause arrest warrant by using the cover of the parole department’s “special needs.”
The Griffin opinion was premised on the unique relationship between parties in the probation or parole systems which is significantly different from the adversary relationship between a citizen and a police officer. Id. at 876, 107 S.Ct. at 3169 (“Although a probation officer is not an impartial magistrate, neither is he a police officer who normally conducts searches against ordinary citizens. He ... is also supposed to have in mind the welfare of the probationer.”). In emphasizing that special relationship, the Griffin Court was consistent *73with the reasoning of other exceptions to the probable cause standard in administrative searches. But police officers are not part of the administrative scheme of the parole system. There is a significant and constitutional difference between the actions of a parole officer administering the parole system and a police officer making an arrest.4
Recognizing the difficulty of forcing this case within the “doctrinal orbit” of Griffin5, the majority claims that all arrests are not alike. In particular they claim that Cardona is not presumptively innocent like most citizens. This is a shocking deviation from a hallowed principle of our criminal law.
4. Cardona: It was not impracticable to comply with the Constitution
The majority justifies its result by claiming that a warrant requirement would be “impracticable.” It finds support for this argument in Griffin’s emphasis on practicality. Of course, there is no “practicality” standard in the Constitution but even if there were, it would not be applicable here. On the facts of this case, there was not a problem of practicality. There was plenty of time for the Rhode Island parole department to comply with the Constitution.
The parole officer in Rhode Island first notified New York authorities of a parole violation on January 12, 1987. After more parole violations and further investigation, a PVW was finally issued on April 21,1987. But the police did not receive confirmation until 6:34 a.m. on May 4, 1987. This delay implies that the arrest of Cardona must not have been a very high priority for the Rhode Island parole authorities. It also shows that the parole officer had plenty of time to obtain a probable cause arrest warrant. Even after receiving the PVW, the police did not act quickly: it took two full days for the police to get around to arresting Cardona. Two days was plenty of time for the police to obtain a probable cause arrest warrant.
Moreover, “impracticality,” as used by the majority, has the exact opposite meaning of its use in Griffin and the other special needs cases. In those cases, it was impractical to call the police because it would take too much time and the object of the search might be gone. Here the argument is that it was impractical not to call the police but impractical to obtain a probable cause arrest warrant. That deflates *74the practicality argument because if there is time to have the police do the parole department’s job, there must be time to get a probable cause arrest warrant.
5. Police officers as agents?
In elaborating on its unique view of the Constitution, the majority justifies its position by claiming that “logic dictates ... that the fourth amendment must concern itself more with who authorizes searches and seizures ... than who implements the decisions reached.” Maj. op. at 62. This sentence is puzzling. It seems initially to support my view that arrests require probable cause. The only cases that the majority can cite to bolster this proposition are those where a warrant issued by a neutral magistrate after a probable cause determination was executed by a law enforcement officer other than specified in the warrant. As those citations indicate, the Constitution requires that an independent decisionmaker (a magistrate) make a decision based upon a specified standard (probable cause). The majority, by relying on cases where a magistrate has issued a warrant, ignores the constitutional standard — probable cause— upon which the magistrate’s decisions and the law enforcement officer’s actions were based.
In context, this sentence indicates that the majority is not concerned with who executes a decision. I can only conclude that it is the majority’s view, against the weight and history of Constitutional law, that the Constitution is concerned with ends and not means. Cf. Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 485, 48 S.Ct. 564, 575, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
Although the majority claims that it does not care who implements a decision, it implicitly recognizes that it must somehow relax the constitutional requirements for police officers in order to get the result it desires. The only way it can do this, avoid the full impact of the prohibitions of the fourth amendment and at the same time force the case within the Griffin exception is by creating an agency theory. The notion apparently is that by making the police officers agents of the parole administrators, the constitutional restrictions normally applicable to police officers do not apply. No cases are cited for this unique proposition.
If the fourth amendment does not apply to police officers, then to whom does it apply? How can police officers act as agents free of the usual constitutional restraints when they are executing the quintessential act of their job — arresting someone? The majority asserts that police officers function as “robotic” agents, not as law enforcers, but that does not change the fact that Cardona was arrested and charged with a crime rather than merely held by the police until the parole authorities took custody of him. Cardona is before us contesting the gun charge. There is no dispute that his parole should be revoked. The police “robots” clearly exceeded the scope of their agency.
Based on the majority’s agency theory, I can readily envision the new exceptions that will erode the guarantees of the fourth amendment: A police officer functioning as an agent of a school principal searching students’ lockers, or acting as an agent of an employer and searching desks, or even a police officer functioning as an agent of a building inspector searching everyone’s basement. Such activities, easy extensions of the majority’s reasoning, illustrate the danger of the agency approach.
Finally, the phrasing of the agency theory requires two brief comments. First, the language exhibits clearly the difference between our views of what is required by the Constitution. I view the Constitution as the supreme law of the land to be faithfully obeyed. The majority thinks that the commands of the Constitution “must” be contained by logic and practicality. Second, the majority’s reliance on pseudoscientific language here and elsewhere in the opinion (“logic dictates,” maj. op. at 64, 66; “doctrinal orbit,” maj. op. at 65; “postulate,” maj. op. at 66; “the logic ... from such postulates dictates,” maj. op. at 69) brings to mind Justice Holmes’ phrase that “the life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” Requiring probable cause for *75arrest may, at times, be neither logical nor reasonable, but it is based on the command of the Constitution as interpreted by the heavy weight of precedent. The premise of the Constitution and our criminal justice system is that the basic values embodied in the Bill of Rights are more important than simply determining factual guilt.
The court has misconstrued the Constitution and ignored Supreme Court precedent. I would follow what is the law of the land: a police officer may not make an arrest at the residence of a suspect without an arrest warrant based upon probable cause, unless there are exigent circumstances. Payton, 445 U.S. 573,100 S.Ct. 1371; United States v. Adams, 621 F.2d 41 (1st Cir.1980). I would reverse the district court’s denial of the suppression motion. It would follow that Cardona’s conviction would be reversed but, of course, that would not affect his status as a parole violator.

. It is undisputed that the PVW in this case, an administrative warrant issued on a finding of reasonable cause by the parole board, did not fulfill the probable cause requirement of the Constitution. If the police officers in this case had obtained an arrest warrant issued by a magistrate upon a showing of probable cause, this case could be resolved by a mere citation to dictum in Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980). An arrest warrant issued upon a showing of probable cause is sufficient to justify entry into the residence of the individual named in the warrant if the police officers have a reasonable belief that the individual is present. Payton, 445 U.S. at 603, 100 S.Ct. at 1388. Once police officers are legally within a residence pursuant to a valid arrest warrant, they may seize any object within plain view that is immediately incriminating. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971); United States v. Rutkowski, 877 F.2d 139, 140-41 (1st Cir. 1989). In addition, officers may seize, incident to a lawful arrest, anything within the arrestee’s immediate control in order to protect themselves or preserve evidence. See, e.g., United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973).

. I have significant problems with the application of such a procedure to the fourth amendment but this case is not the place to explore those problems because reasonableness is clearly not applicable here. See generally, Skinner v. Railway Labor Executive Ass’n, — U.S. -, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 1423-26, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989) (opinion of Brennan, J.); New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 357-58, 105 S.Ct. 733, 751-52, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985) (opinion of Brennan, J.).

. In slightly different situations, the Court has authorized administrative searches on less than traditional probable cause pursuant to a reasonable regulatory scheme. Donovan v. Dewey, 452 U.S. 594, 101 S.Ct. 2534, 69 L.Ed.2d 262 (1981); United States v. Biswell, 406 U.S. 311, 92 S.Ct. 1593, 32 L.Ed.2d 87 (1972); Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967). In each of these circumstances, the searches were conducted by administrative agents rather than police officers.

. I am not persuaded by the single case that the majority cites for its interpretation of Griffin, United States v. Richardson, 849 F.2d 439, 442 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, -U.S.-, 109 S.Ct. 171, 102 L.Ed.2d 141 (1988). Even if Richardson were better reasoned, it would not support the majority’s view because it involved a search.
In Richardson, police officers suspected that an individual had committed a burglary. After determining that the suspect was on probation, the officers obtained an arrest warrant and received permission from the probation officer to search the suspect’s house. The officers then went to the house and arrested the suspect who was sitting in his car in his driveway. Then they conducted a complete house search on the authority of the "permission" of the parole officer. The district court denied the motion to suppress the results of the search. A panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed based on its reading of Griffin: “On balance, we believe the Court [in Griffin ] approved the concept that the decision to authorize the search was more important than who was present when the search was made.” Richardson, 849 F.2d at 442.
Richardson is strikingly at odds with cases both in the Ninth Circuit and elsewhere. Every other case I have examined that interprets Griffin involves the actions of parole or probation officers. I have found no other case that uses Griffin to support broader police activities. See, e.g., United States v. Robinson, 857 F.2d 1006, 1008 (5th Cir.1988). In addition to disregarding constitutional precedent, the court also failed to follow Ninth Circuit precedent. See, e.g., United States v. Consuelo-Gonzalez, 521 F.2d 259 (9th Cir.1975) (en banc) (prohibiting search by police pursuant to a general search condition of probation).
Richardson did not address squarely the constitutional issue (it treats the search and seizure issue as a question of clear error). It did not consider Payton or any of the Supreme Court precedents on the subject, or cases that discuss the constitutional limits of the scope of a search incident to arrest. Moreover, Richardson is distinguishable on the facts. No matter what other excesses the police committed, they had obtained a probable cause arrest warrant based on a parole violation warrant.

. I also gratefully acknowledge that the majority recognizes the diamondlike ("adamantine” maj. op. at 67) hardness and clarity of my criticisms.