Court Opinion

ID: 9468766
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:23:00.767371+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:02.666395
License: Public Domain

ADAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the decision to affirm these convictions. I write separately, however, for two related reasons. First, I think it important to make clear that one of the issues raised by the appellants — namely, the legality of warrantless “beeper” surveillance — is considerably more complicated than might be immediately apparent from Judge Sneed’s opinion. Other courts of appeals have faced factual situations nearly identical with the case at bar and, after rational analyses, have arrived at a conclusion directly contrary to that endorsed by today’s majority. The First Circuit, in United States v. Moore, 562 F.2d 106 (1st Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 926, 98 S.Ct. 1493, 55 L.Ed.2d 521 (1978), the Sixth Circuit, in United States v. Bailey, 628 F.2d 938 (6th Cir. 1980) and the Eighth Circuit, in United States v. Knotts, 662 F.2d 515 (8th Cir. 1981), have held that the warrantless use of a beeper to locate noncontraband materials inside a private residence is indistinguishable from a warrantless search of that same residence. Rather than actually opening the door to determine whether certain items were inside a building, the courts reasoned, the agents instead employed beepers to gather exactly the same information. Consequently, these courts concluded that the agents should have secured a warrant before they monitored beeper signals emanating from private areas such as a home. The Bailey court set forth its fourth amendment analysis succinctly:
In essence, the question before the court is whether the law is prepared to recognize as legitimate an individual’s expec*1324tation of privacy with respect to what he does in private with personal property he has a right to possess. The question is its own answer. Beeper surveillance of non-contraband personal property in private areas trenches upon legitimate expectations of privacy and constitutes a search or seizure within the meaning of the fourth amendment.
Bailey, supra, 628 F.2d at 944.
There is much to commend in the analysis advanced in the Moore, Bailey, and Knotts cases. I am convinced, however, that the validity of warrantless beeper usage within the Ninth Circuit is not, in light of previous decisions of this Court, an open question. In United States v. Bernard, 625 F.2d 854 (9th Cir. 1980), this Court rejected a fourth amendment challenge brought by co-defendant Bernard to the same beeper in the same canister of methylamine as involved here.
While Bernard, standing alone, does not fully resolve the weighty constitutional arguments presented by appellants in the case at bar, it is controlling when read in conjunction with United States v. Hufford, 539 F.2d 32 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1002, 97 S.Ct. 533, 50 L.Ed.2d 614 (1976), and United States v. Dubrofsky, 581 F.2d 208 (9th Cir. 1978). As Judge Sneed’s opinion in this case makes clear, the Ninth Circuit, unlike other courts of appeals, does not consider dispositive any distinctions between beepers placed in noncontraband material and those planted in contraband material, or between beepers monitored in private areas and those attached to moving vehicles. For this reason, I concur in today’s decision.
Second, I write separately because I am somewhat concerned, as a practical matter, about the apparently increasing use of modern reconnaissance devices such as the beeper deployed here, without first applying to a neutral magistrate for a warrant. In Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), Justice Harlan, in his concurring opinion, stressed that “under the Fourth Amendment, warrants are the general rule, to which the legitimate needs of law enforcement may demand specific exceptions.” Id. at 362, 88 S.Ct. at 517 (emphasis added). That observation bears repetition in this case. In both Moore and Bailey, the courts noted that the agents monitored beepers without a warrant even though it apparently was entirely feasible, under the circumstances, to obtain antecedent judicial approval of the surveillances. A similar conclusion can be drawn from the facts in this case. I find it difficult to believe, especially given the previously observed pattern of suspicious activity involving the procurement of methylamine and phenyl-2-propanone, that the agents here would have been unable to convince a neutral, detached magistrate that a warrant should have been issued to monitor signals coming from the beeper that was concealed in the canister. I am not unmindful of the many burdens and constraints that have been imposed upon law enforcement officials, particularly in drug-related investigations. Still, in light of the frequency with which the exclusionary rule has been applied in the fourth amendment context,1 I fail to understand why, in close cases such as this, a warrant is not obtained when prudence clearly would counsel otherwise. As a result of today’s decision and its precursors, policemen and agents within the Ninth Circuit are not legally obligated to acquire warrants before installing and monitoring electronic beepers, at least under circumstances similar to those involved here. I would suggest, however, that in future instances warrants nonetheless be obtained, particularly because, when the Supreme Court speaks on this issue, it conceivably may choose to follow the First, Sixth, Eighth Circuits rather than this Court. Such a course might invalidate convictions that are based on information obtained by the use of beepers.2 According*1325ly, I would hope that, until the law of the Ninth Circuit becomes the law of the land, law enforcement officials in this Circuit and elsewhere take those precautions necessary to ensure that the hard-earned convictions they secure will not be set aside.3

. See Government of Virgin Islands v. Rasool, 657 F.2d 582 (3d Cir. 1981) (Adams, J., concurring).

. But see United States v. Cassity, Cr. No. 77-80932 (E.D.Mich. Aug. 27, 1981) (discussed at 50 U.S.L.W. 2181) (declining to apply Bailey retroactively to invalidate warrantless beeper *1325surveillance that was conducted in good faith before date of Sixth Circuit decision).

. The Eighth Circuit, in a decision rendered after oral argument in this matter and after this opinion had been prepared, joined the *1326First and Sixth Circuits in holding that a warrantless beeper surveillance of a “private area” violates the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Knotts, 662 F.2d 515 (8th Cir. 1981).