Court Opinion

ID: 9442487
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:49:36.671034+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:06.760023
License: Public Domain

WALLER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The owner wanted to get his car into Mexico by any means — legal or illegal. He had paid a bribe to that end, but the bribe-taker, failing to succeed, had, with unexpected, but commendable, honesty, refunded the bribe money with the statement that the situation was “too hot in Brownsville.” Moreover, when the owner of the automobile returned from Laredo to Brownsville, he still had a very ductile purpose to get the car across the border by means fair or foul.
The statute, it. seems: (a) did not authorize the forfeiture of the automobile unless “the property seized shall appear to have been about to be so unlawfully exported, shipped from, or taken out of the United States”; (b) made proof that the automobile was about to be unlawfully exported a condition precedent to forfeiture under Section 2; (c) must be strictly construed in this type of case.
At the time of the seizure it was still possible for the owner: (a) to obtain lawful permission to export his car; (b) to sell it on this side of the border; (c) to abandon all plans or purposes to take- it across illegally. We remember that the thief on Golgotha had a moral metamorphosis at the last moment. The verse that “While the lamp holds out to burn, The vilest sinner may return”, contains an assurance upon which hosts of the belatedly regenerate have pillowed their hope and gone forth into the shadows serene and unafraid. I urge the application of this precept juridically as well as theologically.
A mere intent to export illegally, plus overt acts which are not exportatively transportative,1 without more, do not meet the test of the statute that the property seized “shall appear to have been about to be unlawfully exported”. In addition to an intent to export unlawfully, there must be an overt act attempting to make use of a means of exportation that the intended exporter had reason to believe was then and there available and that likely would be effective in accomplishing his purpose.
Measured by this test, there was an intent, there were overt acts, but at the time of the seizure of the automobile it was not shown there was an available means of illegal exportation then believed by the car owner to be effective and which he was then using or attempting to use.
In the case of Reynal v. United States, 5 Cir., 153 F.2d 929, 932, wherein two members of the present panel participated, it was held that allegations in the libel which merely alleged that the customs patrol inspectors who seized the property had probable cause to believe that it was about to be exported in violation of law were “sufficient to justify the warrant of detention which was issued in this cause. It is not sufficient to justify the forfeiture.” It seems to me in the present case that the actions of the car owner were sufficient to constitute probable cause for *654a-detention of the car but not sufficient to justify a forfeiture on the ground that it was about to be exported when all that was presented to the Court were vain, futile, and prior efforts.
In order for the Government to make out its case it was necessary for jt to pyramid a number of presumptions, among which were: (1) that the car owner would not change his purpose; (2) that such owner would find a corrupt customs official whom he could bribe; (3) that such corrupt customs official would undertake to go through with the deal; (4) that the car owner would not apply for a lawful permit to take the car across; and (5) that, even if he did apply for such permission, it would not have been granted.
I do not believe that the strict construction of the statute which the law requires will permit the forfeiture of this automobile under the proof adduced in this case.

. In Empresa Siderúrgica, S. A., et al. v. County of Merced, et al., 337 U.S. 154, 69 S.Ct. 995, 93 E.Ed. 1276, the headnote (which is borne out by the text) states:
“(a) The process of exportation begins upon entrance of the articles into the export stream.
“(b) It is not enough that oil the tax date there -was a purpose and plan to export the property; * *