Court Opinion

ID: 9627644
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:49:26.401479+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:48.017784
License: Public Domain

ROVNER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree both with the result and the bulk of the reasoning in this majority opinion. I object only to the statement that a valid arrest eviscerates a resident’s objection to an officer’s request to search made while that resident was present on the property.
In my recent dissent in United States v. Henderson, No. 07-1014, 2008 WL 3009968 (7th Cir. Aug.6, 2008) (Rovner, J., dissenting), I argued that “where the police are responsible for the objecting tenant’s removal from the premises, his objection ought to be treated as a continuing one that trumps his co-tenant’s consent and so precludes a search of the premises unless and until the police obtain a warrant.” Id. at *10. My conclusion rested on the essential expectation of residential privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment, and specifically, on the social expectations paradigm upon which the Supreme Court relied in its decision in Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 126 S.Ct. 1515, 164 L.Ed.2d 208 (2006). “Only in a Hobbesian world,” I wrote, “would one person’s obligation to another [to obey the command to keep out] be limited to what the other is present and able to enforce.” Henderson, 2008 WL 3009968, at *11 (Rovner, J., dissenting)
On the flip side of this theory, once a tenant chooses to share access to the premises with another person and then leaves the premises voluntarily, that resident assumes the risk that a co-tenant may admit an objectionable person into the residence. Henderson, 2008 WL 3009968, at *11 (Rovner, J., dissenting). Under this reasoning, a court must consider not whether the resident was removed pursuant to a valid arrest, but whether the objecting resident was removed involuntarily or whether he abandoned the premises of his own volition. In this case, however, we need not be bothered with such a determination. Reed was never removed from the premises, nor was he present at the address when he said “Naw, it’s not my place. I can’t give you permission for that.” He was sitting in his car on the side of the road. He was not, therefore, a present and objecting tenant. Consequently, in sustaining the search, I would go no further than noting that Reed was absent from the premises when his girlfriend, who was present at the residence and had authority to consent, gave the okay for the search.