Court Opinion

ID: 9451911
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:26:54.957762+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:58.117368
License: Public Domain

BARNES, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
As Judge Powell has so carefully and conscientiously pointed out, the facts in this case do not resemble those of the Rochin case (342 U.S. 165, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952)), as my Brother Ely would have us believe, but more closely resemble Breithaupt v. Abram, 352 U.S. 432, 77 S.Ct. 408, 1 L.Ed.2d 448 (1957).
Rochin was clearly a case involving “physical abuse.” (See 342 U.S. at 167, 72 S.Ct. at 207) There the officers “were guilty of unlawfully breaking into and entering defendant’s room and were guilty of unlawfully assaulting and battering defendant while in the .room,” and, after handcuffing him, the officers “were guilty of unlawfully assaulting, battering, torturing and falsely imprisoning the defendant at the alleged hospital.”
In Rochin this “conduct * * * shocked the conscience” of the Supreme Court. It shocks mine. It disclosed methods “too close to the rack and screw to permit constitutional differentiation.”
In Breithaupt, supra, the unconscious defendant was subjected to surgical procedure, without his consent. Yet, Mr. Justice Clark, writing for the Court, concluded :
“that a blood test taken by a skilled technician is not such ‘conduct that shocks the conscience,’ Rochin, supra, at 172 [72 S.Ct. at page 209], nor such a method of obtaining evidence that it offends a ‘sense of justice,’ Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 285-286 [56 S.Ct. 461, 464-465, 80 L.Ed. 682] (1936).” 1 (352 U.S. at 437, 77 S.Ct. at 411.)
That any invasion of the body is determinative of the due process question *877is urged by the minority in Breithaupt supra (352 U.S. at 441, 77 S.Ct. at 413), as the proper rule, but this is rejected by the majority opinion. Mr. Chief Justice Warren urges that due process means—
“at least that law-enforcement officers in their efforts to obtain evidence from persons suspected of crime must stop short of bruising the body, breaking skin, puncturing tissue or extracting body fluids, whether they contemplate doing it by force or by stealth.” (Id. at 442, 77 S.Ct. at 414.)
And Mr. Justice Douglas urges that:
“the conception of due process is not limited to a prohibition of the use of force and violence against an accused, [citing Leyra v. Denno, 347 U.S. 556, 74 S.Ct. 716, 98 L.Ed. 948]” (Id. at 443, 77 S.Ct. at 414.)
Yet this “libertarian approach” was not approved by the majority.
The methods used and conduct pursued in Rochin were not the methods used or conduct pursued here. Defendant Blefare willingly acquiesced to a rectal examination. He was requested to drink an emetic, and he did, without protest or objection. Defendant Michel did not protest or object to the anal examination, the saline water swallowing or the saline solution introduced by tube. “I just didn’t say anything at all.” (R.T. 207) Blefare consented to be searched by a physician (R.T. 94), and protested only the swallowing of a tube — a process that without contradiction was uncomfortable but not painful, and the filling of the stomach cavity with a saline solution — a procedure frequently followed in removing foreign objects from a baby’s stomach and daily used on adults in barium *878fluoroscopic examinations. More important, the doctor performed carefully, expertly and with medical propriety precisely that which the defendants proposed to do for and to themselves. Defendant Blefare knew when he voluntarily swallowed the narcotics he would force his body to regurgitate the lethal poison; he swallowed the packets with the intention of so retrieving them for the narcotics trade — “using the stuff the doctor gave me.” (R.T. 9, line 11.) It does not shock my conscience to require a defendant to do, under careful medical supervision, that which defendant himself willingly and knowingly proposed to do, without medical supervision, for his own selfish pleasure or profit,2 particularly when there is uncontradicted medical testimony this is the only alternative to the creation of a lethal situation.
I regret to state that it is my opinion my Brother Ely’s dissenting opinion generates more fury than light on the facts of this case. He leaves the record to rely on his own adjectives and nouns. I cannot think any fair-minded reading of the record could justify the intemperate language used in his dissenting opinion.
Defendants become “victims”; they are “manhandled”; that Michel’s arms were held becomes “violence”; and the medically simple insertion of the tube becomes a “struggle”. Although the only evidence in the record is that the giving of an emetic after the insertion of a four millimeter (or roughly of an inch) tube, even in a baby’s stomach, is “the best and easiest way” (R.T. 133, lines 11-14) to produce a vomiting, and that the insertion of such a tube and its use for several days is “routine post-op-eratively” (R.T. 178-9), Judge Ely rejects this uncontradicted testimony for his own conclusion that because of the “struggles”, this “violence”, the “bleeding”, and “the absence of trained medical or nursing personnel to assist the doctor in the event of rupture of the esophagus or other organs,” the procedure here used cannot be a “procedure to which babies are frequently subjected.” Judge Ely thus assumes the role of doctor and advocate, and leaves that of an appellate judge.
In his opening paragraph, Judge Ely places in quotation marks an alleged statement of Agent Quinlan — that he suffered an “attack of nausea.” Nowhere does Agent Quinlan so testify. Counsel for defendants — in an attempt to color the evidence — uses such language, but Quinlan actually denied he was ill. He stated:
“Q. Now what did you seek of these officers [in the other rooms on the doctor’s premises], as you spoke with them after the Defendant Michel was given the cup of solution ?
“A. After he was given the cup of solution ?
“Q. Yes.
“A. Well to tell you the truth, I was just getting out of there. I have a sort of weak stomach, and I was just getting out of there for relief, asking someone else to go on in to sit for awhile, while I went out and had a smoke.
“Q. The rectal probing and the giving of the cup of solution made you ill, Officer?
“A. Not ill, but I didn’t feel too good about it either.” (R.T. 124, line 24 to 125, line 10.)
Further, whatever feeling Officer Quinlan had was unrelated in any way to the use of the tube to the stomach, for up to the time when the incident occurred no tube had as yet been used. It is the use of such tube to which my Brother Ely objects, not a rectal probe or the use of an emetic. The tube plus an emetic or an emetic alone produce a similar retching and vomiting. It seems to me too nice a distinction to automatically classify the first such result as “revolting” and “savage,” while the second is not.
Again, while there is an admitted conflict in the evidence on certain points, we *879are required to accept the evidence which supports the finding of fact. This the majority opinion does, and states (with reference to transcript pages), the defendant Michel made no objection whatever to either the anal search, the drinking of the saline solution, or the insertion of the tube. In the dissent, however, (fifth paragraph) it is said “the victims were forceably manhandled.” (Emphasis added.)
Again, my Brother Ely continues to set up straw men that he may strike them down. He states the majority opinion places “great reliance upon the fact that both defendants did disgorge illicit contraband.” That the defendants did is mentioned as a fact in the case, but nowhere is it suggested in the majority opinion that the results of an illegal search can ever justify such a search.
Once again, my Brother Ely paints a bloody picture in aid of his legal position. He asserts “the forcing of the tube into his [Michel’s] stomach was attended with such violence as to induce bleeding.” The facts are later enlarged so that he finds “a tube was so imperfectly jammed through and into his nose and body as to produce torn tissue and consequent bleeding.”
Never once during the original hearing of the motion to suppress was there any reference to blood or torn tissue (R.T. 1-53). The only references in the Reporter’s Transcript to bleeding occur:
(1) At page 79, referring to blood smears on Michel’s arm from his injecting heroin into his arm.
(2) At page 187, the existence of any blood coming from Michel was denied.
(3) At page 203, the defendant Michel said: “After I brought up the packets, I kept throwing up and throwing up, and I brought up a little bit of blood.” 3
*880More fundamentally, I fail to see how the dissenting opinion reaches the evil it purports to be against. It does not go on to say that the “bodily intrusion” (undertaken upon reasonable cause by a border officer, but “independent of consultation with any judicial officer”) would be eliminated by requiring the obtaining of a search warrant, presumably a warrant to authorize the tube feeding of an emetic. The minority opinion frankly states “there was no feasible alternative procedure to enable the officers to search appellants’ stomach.” Should misguided law violators be freed to permit them to produce their own vomiting, in their own way, or, if this were not done, to die? Neither course could suffice, and recognizing this, the dissenting opinion merely suggests that we should pass on each case as to whether the search was reasonable or was not reasonable. He concludes it was not reasonable here — because of the possibility of obtaining a search warrant. Assuming that a search warrant could properly be issued for a border search, I fail to see how the warrant would make the actual performance of the search by emetics more reasonable.
I prefer the Fifth Circuit solution to the problem. King v. United States, 258 F.2d 754 (5th Cir. 1958); Ramirez v. United States, 263 F.2d 385 (5th Cir. 1959); Barrera v. United States, 276 F.2d 654 (5th Cir. 1960); Lane v. United States, 321 F.2d 573 (5th Cir. 1963), cert. den. 377 U.S. 936, 84 S.Ct. 1340, 12 L.Ed.2d 299 (1964). And see, as to anal border searches: Denton v. United States, 310 F.2d 129 (9th Cir. 1962); and discussion in Blackford v. United States, 247 F.2d 745 (9th Cir. 1957), cert. den. 356 U.S. 914, 78 S.Ct. 672, 2 L.Ed.2d 586 (1958).
I have in mind that this was a border search, which Rochin v. People of State of California, supra, was not. A border search is unique. Landau v. United States Attorney, 82 F.2d 285 (2d Cir.), cert. den. 298 U.S. 665, 56 S.Ct. 747, 80 L.Ed. 1389 (1936); Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 623-624, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886); King v. United States, supra. Because it is a border search cannot make any conduct reasonable, but it probably makes searches lawful that would not be such within the United States (as for example, a search without probable cause, but based on mere suspicion). I note particularly the line drawn in the last full paragraph of the King opinion between the King case facts and those in Rochin v. People of State of California, supra, Irvine v. People of State of California, 347 U.S. 128, 74 S.Ct. 381, 98 L.Ed. 561 (1954), and Breithaupt v. Abram, supra. I also note the denial (for what it is worth) by an eight to one vote of a petition for certiorari in King (359 U.S. 939, 79 S.Ct. 652, 3 L.Ed.2d 639 (1959)). This was followed by the unanimous denial by the Supreme Court of a petition for certiorari in Lane v. United States, supra, where the Fifth Circuit drew the line between evidence produced by an emetic “hesitantly taken” (321 F.2d at 576) but without violent force, and the Rochin facts of emetic forced by “assault, battery and torture.”
Under all the circumstances peculiar to this case, this was a reasonable search and seizure. The district court so found, and its factual finding should be affirmed. Blackford v. United States, supra, 247 F.2d at 751. The officers used the only procedure available to them, and did it in a humane, careful and scientific manner.

. A majority of the Supreme Court itself, in explaining in 1953 why Irvine v. California, 347 U.S. 128 at 133, 74 S.Ct. 381, at page 383, 98 L.Ed. 561, could not *877be brought “under the sway of Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183,” said:
“That case {Rochin] involved, among other things, an illegal search of the defendant’s person. But it also presented an element totally lacking here— coercion, * * * applied by a physical assault upon his person to compel submission to the use of a stomach pump. This was the feature which led to a result in Rochin contrary to that in Wolf. Although Rochin raised the search-and-seizure question, this Court studiously avoided it and never once mentioned the Wolf case. Obviously it thought that illegal search and seizure alone did not call for reversal.”
In Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), the Wolf case (Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 93 L.Ed. 1782 (1949)) was not overlooked. It was overruled. At page 666, 81 S.Ct. at page 1697 Mr. Justice Black, concurring, states:
“Only one thing emerged with complete clarity from the Irvine case — that is that seven Justices rejected the ‘shoek-the-eonseience’ constitutional standard enunciated in the Wolf and Rochin eases.”
And see note 4 in Justice Black’s dissent in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, at 511-512, 85 S.Ct. 1678, at 1696-1697, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965).
But the majority in Mapp did go back to the reasonable or unreasonable search and seizure question of Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886) and Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914).
In Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 31-32, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 1629, 10 L.Ed.2d 726 (1963), the first case after Mapp v. Ohio, supra, the majority opinion discloses what Mapp did not do.
“Second, Mapp did not attempt the impossible task of laying down a ‘fixed formula’ for the application in specific cases of the constitutional prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures; it recognized that we would be ‘met with “recurring questions of the reasonableness of searches” ’ and that, ‘at any rate, “ [reasonableness is in the first instance for the [trial court] * * * to determine,” ’ id., [367 U.S.], [81 S.Ct., at 1690, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081], at 653, thus indicating that the usual weight be given to findings of trial courts.”
The Court in Ker then re-emphasized by reiteration that “the reasonableness of a search is in the first instance a substantive determination to be made by the trial court from the facts and circumstances of the ease and in the light of the ‘fundamental criteria’ laid down by the Fourth Amendment and in opinions of this Court applying that Amendment.” (374 U.S. at 33, 83 S.Ct. at 1630.)
That is the test applied by the majority in rejecting Rochin as controlling.

. Of. remarks of Judge Chambers’ concurring opinion in Blackford, supra, 247 F.2d at 754.

. A point scarcely worth mentioning, but one indicative of the “aura” attempted to be placed about the facts of this case, is the continued reference in the dissenting opinion to a “stomach pump.” And this is important to the dissenting opinion, because in note 1 it cites Rochin v. People of State of California, supra, as “condemning” the method of using a stomach pump, or any other “physical” treatment. I do not so read the case, as I have set forth in note 1 above; it condemns “illegal searches”, “assault and battery” and “physical abuse” and rightly so.
This use of the term “stomach pump” is sought to be justified by the dissenting opinion in its explanatory note 2 because (1) “the gravity flow” into the stomach “is so called by various witnesses through the transcript of their testimony,” and because (2) in Rochin, supra, the Supreme Court used the term “stomach pump,” and if it’s good enough for the Supreme Court, it is good enough for the author of the dissenting opinion.
In Rochin, the term “stomach pumping process” was first rather timidly used by counsel for the defendant (R.T. 12). The witness, Officer Jones, then used the term (R.T. 34), and frequently repeated it. Counsel for the defendant in Rochin thereafter used it freely — even referring to what was apparently a city operated emergency hospital as a “pump station” (R.T. 40) or a “pumping station” (R.T. 42).
In Rochin, Dr. Edward Meir, presumably a medical doctor (although this is not shown in the record except by hearsay) was never called upon to testify. The defendant did not testify, except to give his name. No other person present at the “recovery” of the narcotics testified.
In this ease, the record was entirely different. The term “stomach pump” was used but once or twice. And more important, Dr. Salerno, who administered the emetic, was a medical doctor in the general practice of medicine and surgery (M.D., Western Reserve University); had previously received a degree as Doctor of Pharmacology from the University of Chicago School of Medicine; and had been an instructor and assistant professor of Pharmacology in the School of Medicine at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He was licensed to practice medicine in Ohio and California. He testified the passage of the thin tube down the nose and throat was “simpler”, “safer”, and “caused less discomfort” than inserting through the mouth. (R.T. 169) He also testified the stomach was not pumped (R.T. 183), and that no stomach pump was used.
Thus, my Brother Ely, “in adopting the common terminology” adopts language not common to this case, and contrary to its record.