Court Opinion

ID: 9482562
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:54:12.774242+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:04.265980
License: Public Domain

SILBERMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment:
I concur fully in the majority’s opinion with the exception of its lengthy detour (Maj.Op. at 718-21) to address a question which was, to say the least, “not fully argued” — whether the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule applies to primary as well as derivative evidence. Not only is discussion of this issue in no way necessary to our decision, since we assume that the exception would apply to the evidence here and determine that the discovery would not have been inevitable (Maj.Op. at 721), but, more important, the issue was, in fact, never raised in any intelligible form in this case. Nor, for that *722matter, was the issue ever presented to the panel in United States v. Gale, 952 F.2d 1412, 1414 (D.C.Cir.1992), our recent inevitable discovery opinion, or, apparently, to the Seventh and Ninth Circuits — which the majority indelicately chides for “ig-nor[ing]” the distinction (Maj.Op. at 720)— in United States v. Mancera-Londono, 912 F.2d 373, 375-76 (9th Cir.1990), and United States v. Arango, 879 F.2d 1501, 1507 n. 2 (7th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1069, 110 S.Ct. 1111, 107 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1990).1
Where the issue was argued, in United States v. Pimentel, 810 F.2d 366, 368-69 (2d Cir.1987), the Second Circuit flatly and persuasively rejected the distinction. See also United States v. Whitehorn, 829 F.2d 1225, 1232 (2d Cir.1987), cert. denied, 487 U.S. 1237, 108 S.Ct. 2907, 101 L.Ed.2d 939 (1988). Moreover, if the distinction ever was important, it may well have been undermined by the Supreme Court’s decision in Murray v. United States, 487 U.S. 533, 540-41, 108 S.Ct. 2529, 2535, 101 L.Ed.2d 472 (1988) — a point the the majority acknowledges (Maj.Op. at 720) but then brushes aside so as not to diminish its discourse.
Wholly apart, however, from this concern that my colleagues are muddying rather than elucidating the law in this area, striking out very much on their own where no circuit has gone before, my fundamental objection is to the interjection into the opinion of an issue not raised or argued by the parties. The majority’s justification for its lengthy discussion of the issue is labored and unconvincing (Maj.Op. at 718). It cannot be that the mere citation of a case by a party opens the door for Article III judges to propound their views on the relevance of any and all conceivable implications of the cited opinion to the case at hand. (Appellant cited Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984), only to acknowledge the inevitable discovery rule.) Under the majority’s approach, a party’s citation of a multi-issue case for a single one of its propositions would serve as a justification for virtually unlimited judicial exposition regarding propositions not at issue in the case.
I suppose, now that many of our law reviews are dominated by rather exotic offerings of increasingly out-of-touch faculty members, the temptation for judges to write about issues that interest them— whether or not raised by the parties or constituting part of the logic of the decision — is even greater. But I wish we would resist the temptation and decide one case at a time.

. The Eighth Circuit somehow avoided a scolding despite its holding (without any dicta expressing "doubts”) that the inevitable discovery rule applied to primary evidence in the unlawful search incident to arrest context. United States v. McConnell, 903 F.2d 566, 570 (8th Cir.1990), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 1011, 112 L.Ed.2d 1093 & — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 1393, 113 L.Ed.2d 449 (1991); see also United States v. Andrade, 784 F.2d 1431, 1433 (9th Cir.1986).