Court Opinion

ID: 9733011
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:49:34.925473+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:37.414549
License: Public Domain

ARCHIBALD, Justice
(concurring).
I concur with the result reached by the majority opinion. However, I adhere to my position in State v. Dubay, 338 A.2d 797 (Me. 1975), and would not base my conclusion on the premise that, given a “warrantless search [of a person] conducted incident to a legally valid custodial arrest,” Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution of Maine imposes no scope limitation on such a search. In my judgment the facts here d® not require us to decide whether the rationale of United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467 (1973), and Gustafson v. State of Florida, 414 U.S. 260, 94 S.Ct. 488 (1973), should control our interpretation of Article 1, Section 5.
To make my position clear I feel I should summarize the facts as I glean them from the record.
Prior to any search of the appellant’s person, the officer had placed him under arrest for two motor vehicle violations, both of which were misdemeanors. Consistent with established police practice, the officer had concluded to take Paris into physical custody and thus assured his ultimate appearance in court. The officer, being alone, would necessarily have to transport Paris to the closest place of detention. Again acting pursuant to standard police practice, he sought to ascertain whether Paris had any weapon on his person and ordered him to remove the contents of his pockets and place them on the hood of the police vehicle. When this was done the officer then “patted him down,” and he detected a long, hard object in his right hand pants pocket and believed it to be a jackknife. Remembering that Paris had not voluntarily removed this object when ordered to do so and knowing that he was to return the various items which were inoffensive, the officer then took the tube from the pocket, discovering that it was a plastic gum container on which there was a cap. Believing that this plastic container might contain such things as razor blades, a small pistol, or sulphuric *591acid, the officer testified that on removing the cap, “I looked inside of it” and “saw some tablets in the glasine [sic] bag.” The tablets thus having been exposed to his view, the officer seized them in the belief that “it might be some type of illicit medicine.” The officer testified that the sole purpose in conducting this search was “to satisfy myself that Mr. Paris did not have on his person any type of an object which he could do harm to myself or himself with.”
An officer making a valid arrest has the right incident thereto to search for weapons. State v. Heald, 314 A.2d 820 (Me.1973).
But was the officer, having found the closed tube, authorized to remove the cap from the tube and expose for inspection its interior? Only by doing so could he determine whether, it did contain a usable weapon.
In State v. Stone, 294 A.2d 683 (Me. 1972), where probable cause existed to believe that a misdeméanor was being committed and a rifle was removed from an automobile, because of the exigent circumstances then existing, we held it was proper to remove a clip from the rifle to determine if it contained shells, such search and seizure not being violative of Article 1, Section 5. Earlier we had pointed out that searches incident to valid arrests which were reasonable did not violate the Maine Constitution. State v. Warner, 237 A.2d 150 (Me. 1967).
When the officer opened the tube, the contents of the glassine bag were visible and it was ^reasonable under these circumstances for him to believe that the tablets were a contraband drug and thus subject to lawful seizure — even though this was not what the officer was looking for.1
“When an article subject to lawful seizure properly comes into an officer’s possession in the course of a lawful search it would be entirely without reason to say that he must return it because it was not one of the things it was his business to look for.”
Abel v. United States, 362 U.S. 217, 238, 80 S.Ct. 683, 697, 4 L.Ed.2d 668 (1960); see Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145, 67 S.Ct. 1098, 91 L.Ed. 1399 (1947).
“If the search is proper, it is of no moment that the object found was not what the officer was looking for, Abel v. United States [supra].”
United States v. Edwards, 498 F.2d 496, 500 (2d Cir. 1974); see also State v. Elkins, 245 Or. 279, 422 P.2d 250 (1966).
In summary, I feel that since Paris was in fact lawfully arrested and was to be transported in the police vehicle, it was not only "a proper but a necessary police function to make a complete search for weapons, as the officer here did. Under these entirely reasonable circumstances, Article 1, Section 5 does not prevent the introduction into evidence of the contents of the plastic tube. In my judgment we should reserve our opinion on whether we should apply the Robinson and Gustafson rationale to our interpretation of Article 1, Section 5, until appropriate facts compel it.

. The officer, who had ten years of police experience, gave three reasons for this belief:
(1) The pills were in a glassine bag which is quite frequently used in drug traffic.
(2) The pills were not the type “one would carry in a gum container.”
(3)Certain of the pills “resembled some LSD that I had obtained not too long before that. They appeared to be of a homemade nature from a homemade pill press.”