Court Opinion

ID: 9482845
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:02:30.780678+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:14.675669
License: Public Domain

LAY, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I find the majority's failure to find an illegal search and seizure directly contrary to Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 107 S.Ct. 1149, 94 L.Ed.2d 347 (1987). The Court in Hicks held that an illegal search occurred when police officers, who had entered an apartment under the exigent circumstances of a recent shooting, conducted an additional search unrelated to that exigency. While in the apartment, the officers noticed two sets of expensive stereo components along with weapons and a stocking cap mask. Suspecting the stereo components were stolen, an officer moved some of the com*1365ponents in order to secure their serial numbers. When it was later determined that some of the serial numbers matched those on the stereo equipment taken in an armed robbery, a warrant was obtained and executed to seize the equipment.
The Court found that the search exceeded the scope of the plain view doctrine1 because view of the components themselves did not reveal that they were stolen. Although the court found that the mere recording of the serial numbers did not constitute a seizure or meaningfully interfere with the respondent’s possessory interests, it nevertheless held that the moving of the equipment without probable cause did “constitute a ‘search’ separate and apart from the search for the shooter, victims, and weapons that was the lawful objective of his entry into the apartment.” 480 U.S. at 324-25, 107 S.Ct. at 1152. On behalf of the Court, Justice Scalia reasoned:
[Tjaking action, unrelated to the objectives of the authorized intrusion, which exposed to view concealed portions of the apartment or its contents, did produce a new invasion of respondent’s privacy unjustified by the exigent circumstance that validated the entry. This is why ... the “distinction between ‘looking’ at a suspicious object in plain view and ‘moving’ it even a few inches” is much more than trivial for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. It matters not that the search uncovered nothing of any great personal value to respondent — serial numbers rather than (what might conceivably have been hidden behind or under the equipment) letters or photographs. A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable.
480 U.S. at 325, 107 S.Ct. at 1152-53.
There is no question that the officers in the present case had the right to board the bus to question passengers. See Florida v. Bostick, — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 115 L.Ed.2d 389 (1991). At the time the canine, Jupp, identified the odor of narcotics supposedly emanating from the overhead baggage compartments, however, the officers had no knowledge as to which bags might contain narcotics. As the majority describes, the baggage was in an enclosed overhead baggage area which, although not compartmentalized, did contain individual doors above the passenger seats. At best, the officers had a generalized suspicion that perhaps one or more of the travelers’ bags might contain narcotics. They did not have even a reasonable suspicion to believe a particular bag contained narcotics. Because Jupp could not “alert” to any particular bag, the officers proceeded to open the closed overhead luggage compartment doors and remove pieces of luggage for Jupp’s inspection. After Jupp alerted to two suitcases belonging to the two defendants, an officer put the luggage back into the overhead compartment and left the bus.
My main disagreement with the majority is as to its conclusion that the defendants had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the luggage they placed in the overhead compartment. Based on its conclusion that the overhead compartment is a “public area,” the majority reasons that the temporary removal of the defendants’ bags could not have been a search or a seizure. I respectfully disagree. Under the totality of facts in the present case, I respectfully submit that an unauthorized search and seizure occurred.2
The majority urges that no seizure occurred because the bags were left unattended in a public area. The cases cited by the majority, however, are not on point. See United States v. Riley, 927 F.2d 1045 (8th Cir.1991); United States v. Lovell, 849 F.2d 910 (5th Cir.1988). Those cases held that no seizure occurs when bags in the custody of a third party common carrier *1366are briefly detained and subjected to a canine sniff test. Riley and Lovell are readily distinguishable. In the present case, the defendants declined to check their personal luggage with a third party, the bus company, preferring instead to place their effects in the more private and accessible compartments above their seats on the bus.
The majority’s reliance upon United States v. Aldaz, 921 F.2d 227 (9th Cir.1990), and United States v. Lux, 905 F.2d 1379 (10th Cir.1990), is similarly misplaced. In those cases, authorities were permitted to seize and detain packages being transported by a third party, the United States Postal Service, upon a finding that the authorities had “a reasonable and articula-ble suspicion of criminal activity.” Aldaz, 921 F.2d at 229 (emphasis added); see also Lux, 905 F.2d at 1382. In the present case the defendants neither relinquished their bags to a third party, which might have diminished their reasonable expectation of privacy, nor did they act in a manner which could have aroused the reasonable suspicions of the officers. I must strongly disagree with the majority’s statement that there is “no meaningful distinction between these mail cases and our situ-ation_” Maj. op. at 1364. In placing their bags in the enclosed overhead compartment while they briefly left the bus at a refueling stop, the defendants had every reasonable expectation that no one would displace or disturb their bags without their consent.3 In any event, the reasonable expectation that a bus driver or fellow passengers might readjust baggage so as to accommodate other luggage is far removed from the expectation that the police would remove the bag to facilitate a search for drugs.
The majority also suggests that by leaving their belongings unattended, the defendants relinquished their expectation of privacy in the luggage. I again must disagree. There was clearly no abandonment by these young women when they temporarily placed their luggage in the enclosed compartment above their seats on the bus. See United States v. Most, 876 F.2d 191 (D.C.Cir.1989) (Wald, C.J.). In Most, the defendant left a plastic shopping bag in the care of a grocery store clerk. Even though the defendant had left the store when the officer searched the bag, the court found that there had been no abandonment and upheld the defendant’s reasonable expectation of privacy. Here, the officers could not possibly have believed that the defendants did not intend to return to the bus after the brief refueling stop.
There should be little question under Hicks that a search occurred when the officers removed the baggage from the overhead compartment to the aisle to “facilitate the canine sniff test.” The majority reasons that the “defendants have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the ambient air surrounding their luggage ... [which] Jupp invaded.” Maj. op. at 1363. This misses the point. Whether a search and seizure occurs depends on the totality of circumstances. Here, the majority reasons only an unobtrusive “sniff” took place “of the ambient air” surrounding the defendants’ luggage. This overlooks the preceding seizure of the luggage from the privacy of the overhead compartment in which the luggage rested. This seizure was executed without permission, without reasonable suspicion and without probable cause. It was done to facilitate the incriminating sniff by Jupp. I respectfully submit these overall facts amounted to unauthorized search and seizure. The circumstances are tantamount to the seizure of the conversation obtained by an illegal wiretap in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). As the Court in Katz stated, “[w]hat a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection .... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the *1367public, may be constitutionally protected.” 389 U.S. at 351-52, 88 S.Ct. at 511.4
Here the majority emphasizes that a canine sniff is not in itself a search. But our disagreement relates to the infringement of the defendants’ expectation of privacy when the officers randomly seized defendants’ luggage from the security of the overhead compartment to allow Jupp to sniff it. Cf. United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 1656, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984) (“A ‘search’ occurs when an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable is infringed.”). By removing the luggage from the overhead compartment, the officers here clearly initiated “a new invasion of respondent’s privacy unjustified by the ... circumstance that validated the entry.” Hicks, 480 U.S. at 325, 107 S.Ct. at 1152.
In his dissent in Florida v. Bostick, Justice Marshall condemned the majority’s refusal to strike down the suspicionless “dragnet-style” police sweeps of buses in interstate or intrastate travel. He endorsed the view of a Florida court which observed:
[T]he evidence in this cause has evoked images of other days, under other flags, when no man traveled his nation’s roads or railways without fear of unwarranted interruption, by individuals who held temporary power in the Government. The spectre of American citizens being asked, by badge-wielding police, for identification, travel papers — in short a rai-son d’etre — is foreign to any fair reading of the Constitution, and its guarantee of human liberties. This is not Hitler’s Berlin, nor Stalin’s Moscow, nor is it white supremacist South Africa.
111 S.Ct. at 2391 (Marshall, J., dissenting) (quoting Bostick v. State, 554 So.2d 1153, 1158 (Fla.1989) (quoting State v. Kerwick, 512 So.2d 347, 348 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1987))).
Although suspicionless police sweeps were permitted in Bostick, the entry of a bus by officers accompanied by a police dog, in my judgment, offends the sensibilities of most members of the public. One need not possess a vivid imagination to picture the frightened reaction of seated passengers in a cramped bus when police board with a muscular, sharp-toothed German shepherd which proceeds to sniff around their possessions and person. Surely society must condemn such action. In my view, intrusive police practices go far beyond the outer limit when police accompanied by dogs board buses to sniff out drugs which they have no reasonable suspicion to believe exist. More important than my personal view, however, intrusion into an individual’s privacy interests in his stored luggage, by removing the luggage without probable cause, clearly violates the Fourth Amendment under Hicks.
The majority’s decision that individuals have no legitimate expectation of privacy when they place personal belongings in closed overhead compartments on common carriers will come as quite a surprise to the traveling public.
I respectfully dissent.

. See Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971).

. "A 'search' occurs when an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable is infringed. A 'seizure' of property occurs when there is some meaningful interference with an individual’s possessory interests in that property.” United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 1656, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984) (footnote omitted).

. The Court in Jacobsen reaffirmed the principle that an individual retains a legitimate expectation of privacy in personal effects while in transit. 466 U.S. at 114, 104 S.Ct. at 1657.

. Assume police officers lawfully within a person’s home removed a suitcase to the front yard to allow a trained canine to sniff for drugs; could anyone reasonably argue that an unauthorized search had not taken place?