Court Opinion

ID: 9629271
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:39:41.561287+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:42.539054
License: Public Domain

ROSE, Justice,
specially concurring.
Search Next Day Justified by Carroll-Chambers1
The author of the court’s opinion, adverts to but does not resolve the issue of whether the search of the car the following morning was within the Carroll-Chambers doctrine. The opinion avoids this issue by holding that even if the search the following morning was unjustified, introduction of the fruits of the morning search was harmless error because the evidence was merely cumulative. I will consider this contention, but before doing so will discuss the issue of whether the morning search was within the Carroll-Chambers doctrine.
The relevant United States Supreme Court cases are:
(1) Chambers, supra footnote 1 — police stopped auto, arrested occupants and took auto to police station where it was searched without a warrant “some time after the arrest.”2 399 U.S. at 47, 90 S.Ct. at 1979. Search upheld.
(2) Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971), reh. den. 92 S.Ct. 26, 404 U.S. 874, 30 L.Ed.2d 120 — police first questioned defendant on January 28, 1964, about a murder; on February 19, defendant was arrested and defendant’s car towed from his driveway to the police station without a valid warrant (403 U.S. at 453, 91 S.Ct. at 2032); and “on February 21, two days after it was seized, again a year later, in January 1965, and a third time in April 1965,” it was searched. 403 U.S. at 448, 91 S.Ct. at 2028. Search held invalid. In Coolidge, there was no majority opinion with respect to the validity of the warrantless auto search. Four Justices distinguished Chambers from the Coolidge case because (a) in Chambers “ ‘exigent circumstances’ ” justify the war-rantless search of “ ‘an automobile stopped on the highway.’ ” (Court’s emphasis) 403 U.S. at 460, 91 S.Ct. at 2035. (b) The Coolidge defendant had been cooperating with the police for some time and thus the opportunity to search his car was not “fleeting.” 403 U.S. 460, 91 S.Ct. at 2035. (c) Coolidge *1337was arrested in his house and his wife also went with the police, leaving no other adult occupants of the house who could tamper with the car. (d) And the police, in Coolidge, were already guarding the house; therefore, there would have been no extra inconvenience to the police in guarding the vehicle while awaiting a warrant. The four-man opinion contains this language:
“Since Carroll would not have justified a warrantless search of the Pontiac at the time Coolidge was arrested, the later search at the station house was plainly illegal, at least so far as the automobile exception is concerned. Chambers, supra, is of no help to the State, since that case held only that, where the police may stop and search an automobile under Carroll, they may also seize it and search it later at the police station. . . . ” 403 U.S. at 463, 91 S.Ct. at 2036 “. . . The rationale of Chambers is that given a justified initial intrusion, there is little difference between a search on the open highway and a later search at the station. Here, we deal with the prior question of whether the initial intrusion is justified. . . . ” (Court’s emphasis) 403 U.S. at 463, 91 S.Ct. at 2036, fn. 20.
(3) Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 94 S.Ct. 2464, 41 L.Ed.2d 325 (1974) — Several weeks after defendant had first become a suspect, he accepted an invitation to appear at the police station, where he was arrested with an arrest warrant. Upon the arrest, Lewis’ car keys and the parking lot claim check were released to the police. A tow truck was dispatched to remove the car from the parking lot to the police impoundment lot, where a warrantless search was conducted the next day. Search upheld. The search consisted of removing foreign paint from the car and taking tire impressions. The four-man Cardwell court opinion upheld the search because of (a) the Carroll-Chambers line of decisions based on exigent circumstances, (b) the lesser intrusion of searching an auto rather than a house, and (c) the lesser expectation of privacy of paint scrapings and tire impressions.
The Cardwell Court distinguished Coolidge :
“. . . Since the Coolidge car was parked on the defendant’s driveway, the seizure of that automobile required an entry upon private property. Here, as in Chambers [citation omitted], the automobile was seized from a public place where access was not meaningfully restricted. This is, in fact, the ground upon which the Coolidge plurality opinion distinguished Chambers [citation omitted] . . . .” 417 U.S. at 593, 94 S.Ct. at 2471.
The Cardwell Court also said:
“Respondent contends that here, unlike Chambers, probable cause to search the car existed for some time prior to arrest and that, therefore, there were no exigent circumstances. Assuming that probable cause previously existed, we know of no case or principle that suggests that the right to search on probable cause and the reasonableness of seizing a car under exigent circumstances are foreclosed if a warrant was not obtained at the first practicable moment. Exigent circumstances with regard to vehicles are not limited to situations where probable cause is unforeseeable and arises only at the time of arrest. . . . ” 417 U.S. at 595, 94 S.Ct. at 2472.
(4) Texas v. White, 423 U.S. 67, 96 S.Ct. 304, 46 L.Ed.2d 209 (1975), reh. den. 423 U.S. 1081, 96 S.Ct. 869, 47 L.Ed.2d 91— Upheld search (per curiam) of car at police station within an hour after it was seized in broad daylight, despite claim that the car could have been safely searched on the spot.
The author of this court’s opinion in the instant case, in footnote 3, distinguishes the Chambers search from the search the next day in our case. In light of the above four cases, I do not consider the distinctions controlling. See, also, my footnote 2, supra. I think the search the next day falls on the Chambers rather than the Coolidge side of the line, and would have disposed of the morning-search question by holding it valid under Chambers, rather than the cumula*1338tive-evidence, harmless-error rule — as does the court’s opinion.

The Harmless-Error Argument

As mentioned previously, the court’s opinion assumes, arguendo, that the search the next day was improper but that the introduction at the trial of the fruits of that search was harmless error, citing Campbell v. State, Wyo., 589 P.2d 358 (1979). As United States Supreme Court authority for the harmless-error rule, Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), is cited — a case in which the error was not found to be harmless.
The rule that a defendant has a right to be tried by a jury under a guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard occupies a paramount place in my hierarchy of values. I feel that supreme court justices are on firmer ground interpreting caselaw than trying to ascertain whether the jury would have convicted the defendant under different evidence. To say that it is harmless error to introduce incriminating evidence not properly before the jury is a dangerous threat to the right to jury trial and to the guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard.
The harmless-error rule should be invoked sparingly and under carefully defined circumstances. It should not be used to avoid analyzing the relevant caselaw.
In this case, I am of the opinion that the next-day search of the auto falls pretty clearly within the Carroll-Chambers doctrine and I contend that the issue should have been resolved on that ground. I do not consider it too riskyto extend the Carroll-Chambers doctrine to searches which occur more than a few hours after the seizure of the automobile because this danger is sufficiently protected by the “exigent-circumstances” test at the time of the vehicle stop-r-not at the time of the search.

. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925); and Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970), reh. den. 400 U.S. 856, 91 S.Ct. 23, 27 L.Ed.2d 94.

. I am unable to find support in the Chambers opinion for the majority’s statement in footnote 3 that the search in Chambers was made “immediately after the automobile was secured.”