Court Opinion

ID: 9486108
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:38:08.372517+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:31.942176
License: Public Domain

NATHANIEL R. JONES, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Acting without a warrant, officials at the Cincinnati airport seized Michael Respress’ luggage en route and held it overnight until they could obtain a warrant and search it. The officers testified that they instead could have called the Akron airport, Respress’ destination, and arranged for narcotic detection dogs to sniff the luggage there. In upholding this seizure, the majority has discarded established constitutional law and reformulated it in a new and undesirable way. Believing that the officers’ actions violate the protection that the Fourth Amendment provides against unreasonable seizures, I dissent.1
I
Though, as I will describe later, I do not agree that the officers had probable cause to search the luggage in this particular case, I feel obligated at the outset to articulate my strong opposition to the new constitutional law the majority creates here, namely the “probable cause exception” the majority reads into the Constitution’s warrant requirement.
The Fourth Amendment requires officials to obtain a warrant before seizing property. “In the ordinary case, the Court has viewed a *489seizure of property as per se unreasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment unless it is accompanied by a search warrant.” United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 701, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 2641, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983).2 This requirement occupies a prominent place in constitutional law, operating as a matter of course as a check upon law enforcement officers. By requiring that conclusions concerning the reasonableness of a seizure be drawn by a neutral magistrate instead of an officer who is charged with a duty to ferret out crime, the warrant requirement protects against unreasonable assertions of executive authority. Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 758-59, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 2590, 61 L.Ed.2d 235 (1979).
In recent years, the Supreme Court has articulated exceptions to the warrant requirement, which allow warrantless searches and seizures in situations where: 1) the individual consents, see Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 183-84, 110 S.Ct. 2793, 2798-99, 111 L.Ed.2d 148 (1990); 2) the search or seizure is incident to a lawful arrest, see United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 227-29, 94 S.Ct. 467, 473-74, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973); 3) the item to be seized is an instrumentality of the crime within plain view, see Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 464-73, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2037-42, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971); 4) the action falls under the “automobile exception,” see California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565, 111 S.Ct. 1982, 114 L.Ed.2d 619 (1991); and 5) an official has “reasonable suspicion” of illegal activity and initiates a “stop and frisk,” see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).
The majority opinion completely mistakes these exceptions for the rule. The majority bases its holding on Place’s simple recognition of those exceptions:
Where law enforcement authorities have probable cause to believe that a container holds contraband or evidence of a crime, but have not secured a warrant, the Court has interpreted the [Fourth] Amendment to permit seizure of the property, pending issuance of a warrant to examine its contents, if the exigencies of the circumstances demand it or some other recognized exception to the warrant requirement is present.
Maj. op. at 486 (quoting Place, 462 U.S. at 701,103 S.Ct. at 2641). The majority’s belief that this portion of Place states that having probable cause is itself enough to seize a bag without a warrant renders the clause beginning with “if’ entirely meaningless. It likewise renders meaningless the warrant requirement itself.
The majority in effect establishes a new and unprecedented exception to the warrant requirement, one that allows a seizure whenever a magistrate properly determines after-wards that probable cause existed at the time of the government’s action.3 The majority does this despite the “familiar principle ... that no amount of probable cause can justify a warrantless search or seizure absent ‘exigent circumstances.’” Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 468, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2039, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971).4 Coolidge pro*490vides a particularly relevant example of the logic the majority rejects. See 403 U.S. at 464-68, 91 S.Ct. at 2037-39. In that case, the Court considered a warrantless seizure and subsequent search of an automobile where it assumed the state had probable cause to seize the car. Id. at 464, 91 S.Ct. at 2037. Though the government argued that the seizure fit under the “plain view” exception to the warrant requirement, the Court rejected that position and found the search unconstitutional. Thus, Coolidge emphasizes that where officers fail to obtain a warrant, even a seizure supported by probable cause must fit into one of the exceptions if it is to survive constitutional scrutiny. Furthermore, the Coolidge Court decided it did not even have to address the constitutionality of the search, given that the seizure was illegal. Id. at 464-65, 91 S.Ct. at 2037.5
As well as contradicting established law, the majority’s exception virtually swallows the rule, undermining the protection that the warrant requirement provides to all citizens when it mandates that “well-intentioned but mistakenly overzealous” officers go before a neutral magistrate before executing a search or seizure. Coolidge, 403 U.S. at 481, 91 S.Ct. at 2046. This new exception erodes the Fourth Amendment in an undesirable and harmful way.
II
Even assuming the majority’s constitutional framework, however, I disagree that the officers had probable cause to seize Res-press’ luggage.
Officer Jones took notice of Respress from the time the latter deplaned. Respress was arriving in Cincinnati from Ontario, California, which Jones considered to be a drug source city. Respress was one of the last passengers to deplane, and he wore a sweat suit and gold jewelry and had no carry-on baggage. After entering the lobby, he smoked a cigarette and asked a ticket agent about his connecting flight. Then he walked to his connecting flight. Everything Res-press had done to this point is not only consistent with innocent behavior, but is common everyday behavior that hardly distinguishes him from other citizens in an airport.6
Some of the things that happened from this point were somewhat more unusual, but only mildly suspicious. Jones found out from the airline that Respress had paid cash for his ticket shortly before departure. Res-press willingly agreed to let Jones question him, and Respress explained that there was a discrepancy between the names on his ticket and on his driver’s license because someone else had bought his ticket. He also explained that someone else had bought the one-way ticket for the flight he took to Ontario.
The most suspicious thing that Respress did occurred after his questioning by Jones. He left the airport, apparently deciding not to take his connecting flight. Officers, soon joined by Jones, stopped the taxi that Res-press had entered, and obtained Respress’ consent to search his person twice. The searches revealed no weapons nor anything of note except for $700 cash. Respress said *491that he decided to visit a Mend in Cincinnati and would pick up his bag at its destination. He never, however, indicated he was “abandoning” or relinquishing his ownership of the luggage. Respress’ descriptions of where he was going in Cincinnati appeared confused, and officers searching the taxi found his airline ticket inside behind the seat cushion. The officers did not arrest Respress for anything, and he went on his way.
The majority opinion argues that the police had probable cause at this point, such that they could have arrested Respress. I disagree. At the time, the officers did not have “reasonably trustworthy information [ ] sufficient to warrant a prudent man into believing” that Respress had committed a drug offense. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 225, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964). This is not a ease where officers had knowledge that a crime occurred and were pursuing a suspect. They had no knowledge that a crime of any sort had occurred. The officers found no paraphernalia nor anything else on Respress’ person connecting him to drugs. He carried no weapons. They did not see him associating with known criminals nor with anyone else suspicious. They knew of no prior record of criminal activity or involvement. They did not see him placing anything in his luggage or removing anything from it. The majority here finds probable cause in a situation where Respress has done nothing more than act suspiciously. Officers cannot arrest citizens who have acted as Respress did, giving no “reasonably trustworthy” indications of ties to a drug crime.7
I would hold that the officers here, like those in many airport seizure cases, had reasonable suspicion to briefly detain Respress’ luggage. This approach does not unreasonably hamper law enforcement. In fact, the Court created the reasonable suspicion exception to the warrant requirement for the purpose of giving officials the latitude they need to fight crime. This is all the latitude they need in cases such as this one. Here, all the officers had to do to operate constitutionally is what they originally considered— phone the Akron airport officials and ask them to have narcotics dogs sniff the bags upon Respress’ arrival.
Ill
Not only is this a “reasonable suspicion” case, but it has always been one. In the nearly two years since the seizure of Michael Respress’ bag, all dispute has focused upon whether the officers had reasonable suspicion to seize it. The more extreme notion that the officers actually had probable cause to do so never entered this case until appearing today as the basis for the majority’s opinion.
Even Officer Joseph Jones, who seized the bag, testified that he believed he had authority to do so without a warrant because he had a reasonable suspicion of narcotics. When the parties first briefed the case before a Magistrate, the government argued only that the seizure was justified by reasonable suspicion. The Magistrate found that reasonable suspicion did permit the seizure, and the district court adopted that finding. In this appeal, the government’s written brief argues that reasonable suspicion justified the seizure, and it never even hints that probable cause could do so. In fact, at oral argument, the government responded to questioning by conceding that it “probably did not have probable cause” at the relevant time and that “the question might better be ... did the facts that they knew, when they seized the bag, amount to reasonable suspicion?”8
*492The fact that everyone involved with this case was, until today, discussing it in terms of reasonable suspicion highlights the novelty of the majority’s approach. It also points to an important consequence of the majority’s new interpretation of the Constitution. When warrantless airport seizures are effected under the Terry/Place exception, airport officials (and government lawyers) have one set of constitutional standards to look to. If this case is to create a separate exception, policemen in this circuit will need to make judgments regarding which legal category their suspicion fits under when they decide whether they can detain luggage and for how long. Likewise, we can expect future airport seizure litigation — relatively common cases that already demand difficult evaluations of the circumstances of the police action — to involve the added dimension of boxing the circumstances into the proper category based upon the level of suspicion that officers are presumed to have had.
Like the court and magistrate below, I believe this is a reasonable suspicion case and therefore should be analyzed under reasonable suspicion precedents. This position is supported by the many airport surveillance/“drug courier profile” cases, which usually involve facts similar to the ones here and uniformly ask if they constitute reasonable suspicion.9
IV
Reasonable suspicion is one of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement, deriving from Terry’s acceptance of police “stop-and-frisks” of suspicious persons. Place expanded Terry to this very context, holding that an official could seize a bag based upon reasonable suspicion that it contained narcotics.
Having found that the officers had reasonable suspicion to briefly detain the bag, I would nonetheless find that their detention of it for approximately ten hours before obtaining a warrant violates the time limitations required by Terry and set out in Place. In Place, the Court concluded that:
when an officer’s observations lead him reasonably to believe that a traveler is carrying luggage that contains narcotics, the principles of Terry and its progeny would permit the officer to detain the luggage briefly to investigate the circumstances that aroused his suspicion, provided that the investigative detention is properly limited in scope.
*493Place, 462 U.S. at 706, 103 S.Ct. at 2644 (emphasis added). Place held that even though a brief seizure can be permissible, the 90-minute detention of the bag in that ease was unreasonable. The Place Court did not establish a rigid time formula for permissible luggage seizures, but found that the Court had never approved such a lengthy detention of baggage before. Id. at 710-11, 103 S.Ct. at 2646-47. In finding the 90-minute detention unreasonable, the Court relied in part on the fact that the police could have minimized the intrusion upon the defendant by calling ahead to the airport where he was to arrive and arranging for narcotic detection dogs to sniff them there. Id. at 710, 103 S.Ct. at 2646. Instead, the officials spent time taking the defendant’s bags to another location where such dogs were available.
Following the Place Court, I would find this ten-hour detention of the luggage unreasonable.10 Officer Jones testified here that he had at first planned to call ahead to the Akron airport to arrange for a dog-sniff of Respress’ baggage when he arrived. Later, Jones changed his mind and had the bags seized in Cincinnati, held them overnight, and obtained a search warrant the next morning. Though local officials may wish to receive the credit for stopping crime in their airport, Place requires them to minimize the intrusion upon individuals whose luggage they seize. If Cincinnati officers wish to themselves examine the luggage of persons who create a reasonable suspicion, they ought to have a narcotic detection dog available at their disposal. We must remember that though some of those who interpose Fourth Amendment principles are viewed as unsavory or sinister individuals, the Amendment’s protections nevertheless extend to them as well as to the “innocent.” In this respect, I align myself with the wise counsel Lord Atkin offered during the darkest days of World War II: “In England amidst the clash of arms the laws are not silent.”11 Similarly, in the United States, as the so-called war on drugs is waged, the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment do not stand mute. The Supreme Court has made clear that the Amendment protects citizens from such lengthy seizures of their personal effects as occurred here.
For this, and for the other reasons stated, I dissent from both the reasoning and the result of this opinion.

. The Fourth Amendment provides:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

. See also Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1879, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) ("the police must, whenever practicable, obtain advance judicial approval of searches and seizures through the warrant procedure ... in most instances failure to comply with the warrant requirement can only be excused by exigent circumstances.”); Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 758, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 2590, 61 L.Ed.2d 235 (1979) (“In the ordinary case, therefore, a search of private property must be both reasonable and pursuant to a properly issued warrant.”); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 454-55, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2031-32, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971).

. The majority actually goes much further than this, for no magistrate ever determined that probable cause existed at the time of this seizure. A magistrate found, after Respress had not picked up the bag by the next day, that probable cause then existed to search it. Because of the time that had passed, the majority is in error when it applies the magistrate's probable cause finding "ipso facto” to a seizure that occurred earlier. Maj. op. at 486. We should not presume a finding of probable cause, as the majority shows it does in its third footnote, where the magistrate does not make one.

.If the majority means to say that exigent circumstances exist here, I see nothing that would make immediate seizure more necessary in this case than any routine airport surveillance case. The burden is on the government to show exigent circumstances. Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U.S. 740, 750, 104 S.Ct. 2091, 2098, 80 L.Ed.2d 732 (1984); United States v. Ogbuh, 982 F.2d 1000, 1003 (6th Cir.1993). I can see no good reason *490why the officers could not have waited for dogs to sniff the bags in Akron.

. The rule that probable cause does not redeem the failure to obtain a warrant has long applied to searches as well as seizures. See, e.g., Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 514, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967).

. A quick survey of various cases involving drug courier profiles can easily establish how malleable the factors relied upon are. For instance, though Officer Jones says he found it suspicious that Respress had no carry-on luggage, in United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 5, 109 S.Ct. 1581, 1584, 104 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989), what the officer found suspicious is that the alleged courier did have carry-on luggage. Similarly, Jones found it suspicious that Respress was the second to last passenger to deplane, while the defendant in United States v. Moore, 675 F.2d 802, 803 (6th Cir.1982), created suspicion by being first to deplane. Additionally, the cases reveal quite a large number of "drug source cities," though the source city in this case (Ontario, California) is not often mentioned. See generally Sokolow, 490 U.S. at 13-14, 109 S.Ct. at 1588-89 (1989) (Marshall, J., dissenting) (cataloging profile's way of adapting to any particular set of observations). When courts give significant weight to an officer’s reliance on such descriptions, it becomes easy for the profile to be used as a pretext for a relevant factor the officer does not wish to articulate, namely the suspect’s race.

. The majority's probable cause determination is evidently based in part upon deference to the magistrate’s determination of the same. Such deference is not appropriate here, because the magistrate never found that the officers seized the bag based upon probable cause, but rather that they did so based upon reasonable suspicion. See note 3, supra. In any event, "we review a finding of probable cause using a de novo standard." United States v. Ogbuh, 982 F.2d 1000, 1002 (6th Cir.1993); accord United States v. Jaramillo, 891 F.2d 620, 626 (6th Cir.1989). Contrary to the majority's attempt to distinguish Ogbuh because it involved an war-rantless arrest, Ogbuh addressed a warrantless search as well. Id. Where, because of the absence of a warrant, a search or seizure must be justified by an exception to the warrant requirement, this circuit has emphasized that de novo review applies, as it does to any other conclusion of law. United States v. Straughter, 950 F.2d 1223, 1230 (6th Cir.1991).

. The following colloquy, taken from the recording of the argument, shows how the government *492resisted Judge Batchelder’s attempt to characterize this as a probable cause case and then assured me it was not one:
[Judge Batchelder] Is there a difference between the time limitation [... where] the question was reasonable suspicion [...] and between the situation in which by the time they decided to actually seize the luggage they had what perhaps amounted to probable cause and they wanted to get a warrant?
[Counsel] I think there is a difference your Honor and I think that's what occurred in this case. When they stopped that taxi cab, they probably did not have probable cause ...
[Judge Batchelder] ... isn't the question what [...] total information did they have pri- or to the seizure of the bag and was that sufficient to be probable cause?
[Counsel] That's correct your Honor. Or as the question might better be ... did the facts that they had, did the facts that they knew, when they seized the bag amount to reasonable suspicion?
[Judge Batchelder] ... they went and got a warrant, did they not?
[Counsel] They did, your Honor, and the warrant was issued. The magistrate issued the warrant. Based upon ...
[Judge Jones] A warrant to do what?
[Counsel] Search the bag your Honor ... [Judge Jones] But not probable cause to arrest or seize Respress?
[Counsel] No your Honor, he was not arrested or ... He was not arrested. He was told he was free to leave.
(Emphasis added.)
That the government avoids arguing probable cause here is of course not at all surprising, in that they did not do so in their brief and had not done so in the earlier proceedings.

. See, e.g., United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 109 S.Ct. 1581, 104 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989); United States v. Weaver, 966 F.2d 391 (8th Cir.), cert. denied,-U.S.-, 113 S.Ct. 829, 121 L.Ed.2d 699 (1992); United States v. Grant, 920 F.2d 376 (6th Cir.1990); United States v. Jaramillo, 891 F.2d 620 (7th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1069, 110 S.Ct. 1791, 108 L.Ed.2d 792 (1990); United States v. White, 890 F.2d 1413 (8th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 825, 111 S.Ct. 77, 112 L.Ed.2d 50 (1990); United States v. Quigley, 890 F.2d 1019 (8th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1091, 110 S.Ct. 1163, 107 L.Ed.2d 1066 (1990).

. See also United States v. Borys, 766 F.2d 304, 313 (7th Cir.1985) (75-minute delay unreasonable); Moya v. United States, 761 F.2d 322, 327 (7th Cir.1984) (3-hour delay excessive); United States v. Saperstein, 723 F.2d 1221, 1231-33 (6th Cir.1983) (13-hour delay excessive); United States v. Puglisi, 723 F.2d 779, 790-91 (11th Cir.1984) (3-hour delay unreasonable).

. Liversidge v. Anderson, 3 All E.R. 338, 361 (1941).