Court Opinion

ID: 9642586
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 18:03:37.88666+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:49.820496
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The facts contained in the affidavits used to obtain the search warrant were perhaps not enough to justify its issuance; if the case turned upon them alone I should be in some doubt, after Taylor v. U. S., 285 U. S. -, 52 S. Ct. 466, 76 L. Ed.-, though even then I am not clear that they did not give reasonable ground for supposing that illicit beer was being made on the pi’emises. Quandt v. U. S., 47 F.(2d) 199 (C. C. A. 2). But this seems to me beside the point. When the officers came to the premises with their search warrant, they found the gutter of the street awash with what looked like beer, flowing out of a pipe which apparently led from the brewery, for brewery it plainly was, whether innocent or not. They had not then entered, or taken any other action which required the justification of a search warrant. One of them tasted some of the outflow and thought it beer, but on that I do not rely. It seems to me enough that the brewery was in operation and that somebody within was obviously spilling the beer. Possibly it was theoretically conceivable that this might have been for some innocent reason; the brew might have spoiled and was being thrown away. That, however, appears to me an excessively strained interpretation to put upon what they saw; it was reasonably certain that those inside were disposing of the beer because it was unlawful; the moment selected *958for this unusual proceeding fitted too aptly with the inference that they had learned of the proposed raid. This was all set out in affidavits which the judge refused to receive, and it should have left no doubt in the officers’ minds that they had interrupted an illicit brewery in course of operation, and that the operators were in the act of disposing of the incriminating beverage. The conclusion was indeed more than reasonable, it was inevitable, that a felony (section 91, title 27, U. S. C. [27 USCA § 91] ), was in course of commission, or at best just ending, before their eyes.
In Rouda v. U. S., 10 F. (2d) 916, we held that prohibition officers had larger powers of arrest than peace officers; here we need only say that they had as large. That much has without discussion been repeatedly assumed. Carroll v. U. S., 267 U. S. 132, 45 S. Ct. 280, 69 L. Ed. 543, 39 A. L. R. 790; Gerk v. U. S., 33 F.(2d) 485 (C. C. A. 8); Elrod v. Moss, 278 F. 123 (C. C. A. 4); McBride v. U. S., 284 F. 416 (C. C. A. 5); United States v. Peterson, 268 F. 864 (D. C.). The right to arrest when a felony is committed in an officer’s presence is too well established for debate (Bishop Crim. Proc. § 183); to effect the arrest he may break and enter any premises not a dwelling (op. eit. §§ 194, 197). It seems to me that in the ease at bar the manufacture of beer was taking place in the officers’ “presence.” The brewery was visibly in operation; they saw its product being turned out. True, the walls of the building prevented their seeing the actual brewing, but that I conceive is not final. Thus in Agnello v. U. S., 269 U. S. 20, 46 S. Ct. 4, 70 L. Ed. 145, 51 A. L. R. 409, they looked through the window and saw a sale; they were scarcely “present” at it, if they must be in the room. The word is used more loosely than that; it includes, I think, any acts which are manifested to the officer’s senses, though he be separated from the offender by a wall or other partition. Certainly it cannot be that if he be in one room, and hears or sees an assault being committed in the next, it is not committed in his “presence.” Garske v. U. S., 1 F.(2d) 620 (C. C. A. 8); Wida v. U. S., 52 F.(2d) 424 (C. C. A. 8). Thus I think that aside from any warrant the officers had power to enter and arrest the offenders. When once in, they might seize the contraband which they found; in this they were not confined to what was on the person of the offender, as in the case of evidence. For example, though the warrant do not specify all the liquors seized, they may be taken if the entry is lawful [Steele v. U. S. No. 1, 267 U. S. 498, 45 S. Ct. 414, 69 L. Ed. 757; Marron v. U. S., 275 U. S. 192, 48 S. Ct. 74, 72 L. Ed. 231; United States v. Old Dominion Warehouse, 10 F.(2d) 736 (C. C. A. 2)]; and the same is true if there be no warrant at all (Agnello v U. S., 269 U. S. 20, 30, 46 S. Ct. 4, 70 L. Ed. 145, 51 A. L. R. 409. Cf. Carroll v. U. S., 267 U. S. 132, 45 S. Ct. 280, 69 L. Ed. 543, 39 A. L. R. 790). As I have just suggested, seizures of evidence as such are much more circumscribed [Lefkowitz v. U. S., 285 U. S. 452, 52 S. Ct. 420, 76 L. Ed.-; U. S. v. Kirsehenblatt, 16 F.(2d) 202, 51 A. L. R. 416 (C. C. A. 2)]; here none would have been within the power of the officers, except so far as it was on the person of' the offender, or perhaps close beside him. Again, they might not have seized a mass of contraband and lawful property and picked it over at their leisure. [United States v. 1013 Crates, 52 F.(2d) 49 (C. C. A. 2)]. This they did not do; rather they selected only that which they found to be confiscable, taking their time to do so. But these chattels were not property at all, strictly speaking (section 25, tit. 2 National Prohibition Law [27 USCA § 39]), though access to them must indeed be lawfully gained, and their possessors were free from violent invasion of the curtilage where they had placed them. Their privilege ended there; it did not protect them from the consequences of the crime which had outlawed them; the contraband could itself be seized, whenever it could be lawfully got at.
Nor can I understand why the possession of the search warrant, even if it was invalid, should have stripped the officers of powers which they had without it. We ruled the opposite in U. S. v. Gowen, 40 F.(2d) 593, and though our decision was reversed in Go-Bart v. U. S., 282 U. S. 344, 356, 51 S. Ct. 153, 158, 75 L. Ed. 374, this much was assumed to be correct. The same thing was squarely decided in Billingsley v. U. S., 16 F.(2d) 754 (C. C. A. 8), and by implication in Stallings v. Splain, 253 U. S. 339, 342, 40 S. Ct. 537, 64 L. Ed. 940; Marron v. U. S., 275 U. S. 192, 198, 199, 48 S. Ct. 74, 72 L. Ed. 231; Vachina v. U. S., 283 F. 35 (C. C. A. 9); and Fryar v. U. S., 3 F.(2d) 598 (C. C. A. 6). In Murby v. U. S., 293 F. 849 (C. C. A. 1), the First Circuit did indeed refuse to eonsid'er whether there was other justification for the search than the warrant, though it does not appear that there was any. So far as the decision is to be taken as a ruling it is contrary, I think, to both principal and au*959thority. I do not see that Salata v. U. S., 286 F. 125 (C. C. A. 6), touches the question at all.
As I view the case it is not therefore necessary to decide whether the United States could adopt the seizure even if it was unlawful, and I pass that point, except to_reserve ' it. As I have said, the ease at bar involves no evidence as such, but only the return of contraband property, against which a libel of mformation is now pending, which must fall with the return of the property.