Court Opinion

ID: 9471906
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:43:49.598689+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:38.143488
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I share the majority’s doubts whether the district court here made the key finding that Notorianni was “free to go.” Instead, Judge Aspen punctuated his reference to this subject with a question mark. The majority is ready to overlook this deficiency and to conclude as a matter of law, based on the officers’ version of the encounter, that Notorianni was free to leave. I think this approach is an unacceptable departure from the line of airport search and seizure cases in which we have emphasized reliance on the ultimate factual finding by the district court and in which we have reviewed this finding under the clearly erroneous standard. See, e.g., United States v. Black, 675 F.2d 129, 135 (7th Cir.1982), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 103 S.Ct. 1520, 75 L.Ed.2d 945 (1983).
It is perfectly appropriate to indulge what may be a modest fiction that a person being casually questioned by a policeman about possible criminal activity feels entirely free to say nothing and move on. Such a psychological assumption does no violence to the fourth amendment and makes it possible for police to cope with drug traffic in a place like O’Hare Airport. But I would require almost without exception, an unequivocal determination by the finder of fact of the key and crucial ultimate fact — whether a reasonable person, under all the numerous facts and circumstances of the case, would have felt free to leave. For example, what is the significance of Labik’s failure to advise the defendant that he was not required to answer questions? The requirement of unequivocal factual findings is in my view hardly excessive in light of the almost unlimited combinations of factual circumstances which surround a procedure obviously open to subtle and not so subtle abuse.1
The facts of this case may be, as the majority phrases it, within the “orbit” of *524our prior decisions. We have upheld findings that a reasonable person would feel free to leave, (against “clearly erroneous” challenge) in circumstances similar to the present case. However, nothing in any of those cases suggests that if the district court had concluded otherwise, we would not also have deferred to that finding. If the district court here had found that a reasonable person in Notorianni’s shoes would not have felt free to leave, such a finding may or may not have been clearly erroneous. The majority’s willingness to find, as a matter of law, that a reasonable person in Notorianni’s circumstances would have felt free to leave is a substantial, and unsupported, intrusion into the district court’s fact finding function.
I would therefore remand for further findings of fact by the district court.

. We have recognized from the start that the proper application of the Black test (from United States v. Black, 675 F.2d 129, 134 (7th Cir.1982), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 103 S.Ct. 1520, 75 L.Ed.2d 945 (1983)) requires “highly factual” analysis that we, as an appellate tribunal, are ill-equipped to perform. See also United States v. Berry, 670 F.2d 583, 596-98 (5th Cir.1982) (en banc) (requiring "close scrutinfy]” of coercion in airport questioning).