Court Opinion

ID: 9628872
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:33:27.064295+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:12.425611
License: Public Domain

GOLDEN, Justice,
dissenting, with whom THOMAS, Justice, joins.
I respectfully dissent. A number of points are now settled in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence:
1. The touchstone of the United States Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment analysis is always “the reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of a citizen’s personal security.” Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 108-09, 98 S.Ct. 330, 332, 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977) (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1878-79, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)).
2. Reasonableness depends “on a balance between the public interest and the individual’s right to personal security free from arbitrary interference by law officers.” Id. at 109, 98 S.Ct. at 332 (quoting United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 878, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 2579, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975)).
3. It is reasonable for a law officer as a matter of course to order the driver of a lawfully stopped motor vehicle to exit his vehicle. Id. at 110-11, 98 S.Ct. at 333.
4. It is reasonable for a law officer as a matter of course to order the passengers of a lawfully stopped motor vehicle to exit the vehicle. Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 117 S.Ct. 882, 137 L.Ed.2d 41 (1997).
5. On a theory of probable cause to search a motor vehicle, the automobile exception to the warrant requirement permits a search of the entire vehicle and anything in it that could contain the items being searched for. United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982); Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925).
6. “The scope of a warrantless search of an automobile thus is not defined by the nature of the container in which the contraband is secreted. Rather, it is defined by the object of the search and the places in which there is probable cause to believe that it may be found.” Ross, 456 U.S. at 824, 102 S.Ct. at 2172.
7. In Ross, the United States Supreme Court has an opinion in automobile search cases that provides “specific guidance to police and courts in this recurring situation.” Id. at 826, 102 S.Ct. at 2173 (Powell, J., concurring) (quoting Robbins v. California, 453 U.S. 420, 435, 101 S.Ct. 2841, *3732850, 69 L.Ed.2d 744 (1981) (Powell, J., concurring in judgment)).
8. Fourth Amendment doctrine is primarily intended to regulate the police in their day-to-day activities and, therefore, should be expressed in terms that are readily applicable by the law officer in the context of his or her law enforcement activities. New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 458, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 2863, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981). “A highly sophisticated set of rules, qualified by all sorts of ifs, ands, and buts and requiring the drawing of subtle nuances and hairline distinctions, may be the sort of heady stuff upon which the facile minds of lawyers and judges eagerly feed, but they may be ‘literally impossible of application in the field.’” Id. (quoting from LaFave, “Case-By-Case Adjudication” versus “Standardized Procedures”: The Robinson Dilemma, 1974 Sup.Ct. Rev. 127, 141).
9. “When a legitimate search is under way, and when its purpose and its limits have been precisely defined, nice distinctions ... between glove compartments, upholstered seats, trunks, and wrapped packages, in the case of a vehicle, must give way to the interest in the prompt and efficient completion of the task at hand.” Ross, 456 U.S. at 821, 102 S.Ct. at 2171.
Against this backdrop of settled principles, the majority would create an “ifs, ands, and buts” qualifier in the case of the female passenger’s purse which is left behind in the male driver’s automobile when all of the automobile’s occupants have exited the automobile in response to the law officer’s lawful request. The majority now requires the law officer to establish an independent probable cause with respect to the purse left behind in the automobile’s passenger compartment. In my judgment, the passenger’s act of leaving her purse behind as she exited the automobile demonstrates an absence of a reasonable expectation of privacy in that purse. In other words, by leaving the purse behind, the passenger has taken no precaution in order to maintain her privacy in that particular container. See Dean v. State, 865 P.2d 601, 613 (Wyo.1993) (stating factors to consider in determining whether an individual possesses a reasonable expectation of privacy).
The object of the law officer’s lawful search in this case was a controlled substance which could have been secreted in a small container, such as the purse which the passenger Houghton had left behind in the passenger compartment. Common sense tells us that the transfer of small containers of controlled substances between an automobile’s occupants can occur swiftly, silently, effortlessly, and without detection by even the keenest observer. As for me, the words of those who have carefully studied the problem have force, “it seems absurd to say that the occupants can take the narcotics out of the glove compartment and stuff them in their pockets, and drive happily away after the vehicle has been fruitlessly searched.” 3 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 7.2(e) at 508 (3d ed.1996) (quoting from Model Code of PreArraignment Procedure § SS 260.3(2) at 551-52 (1975)).
I would uphold the district court’s denial of Houghton’s motion to suppress the incriminating evidence found in her purse. Measured by the United States Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment doctrine, the law officer here acted reasonably.