Court Opinion

ID: 9768669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 13:43:01.1026+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:42.980015
License: Public Domain

O’BRIEN, Judge
(concurring).
I concur with considerable reluctance in the lead opinion by my colleague, Judge Walker, in this case.
This defendant was apprehended by a Chattanooga police officer at approximately 5 o’clock in the morning because of the manner in which he was operating his vehicle, a blue and white van type truck. After being stopped, according to an officer’s testimony, defendant was not cooperative when asked to place his hands where they could be seen and did not do so until the officer, quite prudently as it was subsequently developed, drew his service revolver from its holster. Defendant did not make any effort to dismount from the van when requested to do so and was pulled from the vehicle by the officer. At this time the officer noticed an odor that he took to be marijuana. At this point two other police officers arrived. Defendant was handcuffed and taken a half a block into the *875police station. His female companion was taken from the van and placed in the back of a squad car until she could be searched by a female officer.
I have no quarrel with the conduct of the officer, although there was not any testimony introduced to show why defendant had been arrested. A subsequent search disclosed two loaded weapons in the vehicle. The validity of an arrest is not necessarily determinative of the right to search a car if there is probable cause to make the search. My hesitancy to concur is due to concern with the court decisions which place a search made by a police officer without a warrant within the category of a reasonable search in a case such as we have here.
Assuming, without agreeing, that the odor of the smell of marijuana emanating from defendant’s car furnished probable cause for the officer to make the search, I fail to find from the evidence in this case the “exigent circumstances” existing which would authorize the search without a warrant. However, in Chambers v. Maroney, supra, cited in the lead opinion as authority, our United States Supreme Court had this to say:
“Arguably, because of the preference for a magistrate’s judgment, only the immobilization of the car should be permitted until a search warrant is obtained; arguably, only the ‘lesser’ intrusion is permissible until the magistrate authorizes the ‘greater.’ But which is the ‘greater’ and which the ‘lesser’ intrusion is itself a debatable question and the answer may depend on a variety of circumstances. For constitutional purposes, we see no difference between on the one hand seizing and holding a car before presenting the probable cause issue to a magistrate and on the other hand carrying out an immediate search without a warrant. Given probable cause to search, either course is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. On the facts before us, the blue station wagon could have been searched on the spot when it was stopped since there was probable cause to search and it was a fleeting target for a search. The probable-cause factor still obtained at the station house and so did the mobility of the car unless the Fourth Amendment permits a warrantless seizure of the car and the denial of its use to anyone until a warrant is secured. In that event there is little to choose in terms of practical consequences between an immediate search without a warrant and the car’s immobilization until a warrant is obtained.”
Under the circumstances existing here where the police officers had the vehicle immobilized, and its occupants in custody, the safer, surer, more reasonable and practical course would have been to obtain a warrant after a magisterial decision on probable cause to make the search. There is little reason in placing the onus on a police officer, who, though he may be schooled in the enforcement of the law, usually knows nought about its judicial niceties, to make a probable cause decision in a ease of this nature and then to subject such a decision to judicial scrutiny to determine if he acted circumspectly in the action taken by him. However, this appears to be the law as it is presently construed and so I concur with the conclusion reached in the case.