Court Opinion

ID: 9462792
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:50:37.862214+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:47.580581
License: Public Domain

GEE, Circuit Judge,
with whom GOLDBERG, GODBOLD and CLARK, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting.
This is a troublesome case. I would not strongly argue that the majority opinion is wrong, but I cannot convince myself that it is right.1 The panel opinion states the reasons why I think Tharpe’s conviction should be reversed. United States v. Tharpe, 526 F.2d 326 (5th Cir. 1976). These need be gone into here only insofar as they conflict with the present majority view.
It cannot be seriously maintained that either the present majority opinion or Officer Martin’s procedures which it approves are not “reasonable,” as that term is commonly used. Both are. The question is whether they are so in fourth amendment terms and when laid alongside the amendment’s bias against warrantless bracing of people on a public street. Actions reasonable in the first sense are not always so in the second. See Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 277, 93 S.Ct. 2535, 37 L.Ed.2d 596 (1973) (Powell, J., concurring); cl id. at 269-74, 93 S.Ct. 2535 (plurality opinion). It does not seem to me that these actions are constitutionally “reasonable.”
More particularly, we deal here with the dimensions and configuration of a specific inroad on the fourth amendment, sanctioned and delineated by the Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), and Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968). I think its area smaller and its sides less sloping than the majority opinion indicates. Terry found a warrant-less pat-down reasonable
where a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and dangerous .
392 U.S. at 30, 88 S.Ct. at 1884 (emphasis added). Sibron echoes Terry:
The police officer is not entitled to seize and search every person whom he sees on the street or of whom he makes inquiries. Before he places a hand on the person of a citizen in search of anything, he must have constitutionally adequate, reasonable grounds for doing so. In the case of the self-protective search for weapons, he must be able to point to particular facts from which he reasonably inferred that the individual was armed and dangerous.
392 U.S. at 64, 88 S.Ct. at 1903 (emphasis added).
Neither Terry nor Sibron requires that the policeman be “scared.” Nor does the panel opinion construe either to do so; indeed it does the contrary.2 What they do require, what I am unable to read them otherwise than as requiring, is that to make a valid, warrantless pat-down, the officer proposing to do so must first (1) have “reasonably inferred” (Sibron) or come “reasonably to conclude” (Terry), (2) on the basis of the specific and articulable facts, (3) that the person concerned is or may be “armed and dangerous.” Thus, it is not enough that he merely have acted reasonably; he is about to do a thing constitutionally extraordinary — to halt and search a citizen without a warrant, without arresting him, and without probable cause to arrest him — and his basis for doing so must fall within the extraordinary exception cut out by the Court or fail.
*1103Officer Martin’s actions do not seem to me to do so. Let it be granted that his situation was dangerous, even that he reasonably could have concluded Tharpe was dangerous: the odds were three to one, it was nighttime, he had just arrested Tharpe’s companion, and Tharpe had been drinking. Let it even be granted that Martin reasonably could have concluded that Tharpe was armed, though this seems much more doubtful: he was a known burglar, suspected of a recent unsolved burglary, and he was in bad company.3 The difficulty in this case is that Officer Martin drew none of these conclusions; certainly, he gave no indication in his testimony that he had done so. Instead, when asked why he searched Tharpe, he candidly responded that he did so because “ . . .1 don’t close people up behind me in a car without patting them down.” Again, and more pointedly, he explained that his reason for searching Tharpe was not because he knew Tharpe was suspected by the Red Bay, Alabama, police of a recent burglary, but because he was going to take him in to the station:
Q The reason you searched these boys is because they were in the car with Raymond Hester, wasn’t it?
A No, sir, not necessarily. Because I knew that the information I had received from Red Bay Police Department, one reason, that they would bear watching.
Q Would bear watching?
A. Yes, sir.
Q But if you hadn’t received that word, would you have searched them?
A Yes, sir, before I loaded them into the back seat behind me and hauled them to the police station, yes, sir, I pat them down, for my own protection.
(emphasis added).
Of course, this procedure was prudent, but it puts the cart before the horse: surely we do not mean to declare that whenever a policeman decides to take someone to the station, for any reason or for no reason, he may search him first. For me, Officer Martin’s candor has undone his search. While a reversal is a sorry reward for candor or poor articulation, I fear it is one mandated by the strict requirement of Terry and Sibron that police who take extraordinary measures must bear the burden of justifying them. I therefore respectfully dissent.

. So commences Judge Coleman’s dissent from our panel opinion, here reversed by the court en banc. United States v. Tharpe, 526 F.2d 326, 329 (5th Cir. 1976).

. 526 F.2d at 328 n.6.

. I confess to having great difficulty with the apparent lesson here that persons who have been convicted of burglary in the past must keep good company and avoid localities where an unsolved burglary has been committed on pain of being searched at will. I cannot say such a rule is utterly unreasonable, but I doubt it squares with Terry and Sibron.