Court Opinion

ID: 9497557
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:53:48.652514+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:15.598479
License: Public Domain

WARDLAW, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the judgment but disagree with the majority’s analysis in Part II.B. The majority announces a new rule that muddies an area of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence which the Supreme Court has said must be clear, and renders a decision inconsistent with our prior case law.
I.
We cannot expect police officers to abide by ambiguous rules. As the Supreme Court in New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), so perspicuously observed, “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 literally impossible of *954application by the officer in the field.” Id. at 458, 101 S.Ct. 2860 (quotations and citations omitted). The panel majority’s rule infuses such subtle nuance where none is called for. The old standard, requiring that a search of an automobile “incident to” an arrest proceed only after the arrest, constituted a straightforward rule to “regulate police in their day-to-day activities.” Id. at 458, 101 S.Ct. 2860. By holding that, in some not fully delineated circumstances, a warrantless search of a vehicle incident to an arrest may precede the arrest, the majority requires police officers to consider both whether a pre-arrest automobile search is sufficiently contemporaneous with the arrest, and whether probable cause precedes the search, even if an arrest does not. Because “the protection of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments can only be realized” if police officers are presented with “a straightforward rule, easily applied, and predictably enforced,” id. at 458, 101 S.Ct. 2860, we are constitutionally obligated to hew that standard carefully. We can do better than the rule that the majority announces today.
The panel majority’s rule also runs contrary to our precedent. As the majority admits, no case holds that probable cause for an arrest is sufficient to justify a search of an automobile as “incident to arrest.” Rather, we have specifically held that an officer who possessed probable cause to arrest a suspect, but failed to do so, could not conduct a warrantless search of the suspect’s automobile “as incident to arrest.” United States v. Parr, 843 F.2d 1228, 1229-31 (9th Cir.1988). At the time that Parr was decided, Belton had already established that the “incident to arrest” exception applies to vehicles. See Belton, 453 U.S. at 455, 101 S.Ct. 2860. Further, the Court in Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 100 S.Ct. 2556, 65 L.Ed.2d 633 (1980), had found that probable cause to arrest supplies sufficient justification for the warrantless search of a suspect’s person. See 448 U.S. at 111, 100 S.Ct. 2556. Because Parr nevertheless held that the pre-arrest search of the suspect’s car did not fall under the “incident to arrest” exception, see Parr, 843 F.2d at 1231, Pair’s conclusion controls this case. Because authority to rule contrary to Parr rests exclusively with the en banc court, we must hold that the search “incident to arrest” exception is inapplicable to pre-arrest, warrantless searches of automobiles based solely on probable cause to arrest.
In splicing and dicing Parr’s requirement of a formal custodial arrest before a warrantless search of the car takes place, the panel majority reasons that Parr did not prohibit a warrantless automobile search that was “contemporaneous” with an arrest. This reasoning is flawed for two reasons. First, as noted above, what is “contemporaneous” is in the eye of the beholder, and thus the majority’s new rule undermines Pair’s holding. Second, in making its fine distinction, the majority mistakenly relies upon some of our other cases, which it describes as stating that warrantless automobile searches fall under the “incident to arrest” exception if those searches are performed “contemporaneously with” the arrest. These cases are a chimerical underpinning for the majority’s argument. In both United States v. McLaughlin, 170 F.3d 889 (9th Cir.1999), and United States v. Hudson, 100 F.3d 1409 (9th Cir.1996), searches “contemporaneous with” arrests in fact occurred after the arrests. Therefore, when the McLaughlin court reasoned that the search in question was permissible as part of “one continuous series of events closely connected in time,” the court was considering whether a search that took place five minutes after an arrest could still be justified as “incident to” the arrest. McLaughlin, 170 F.3d at 893. McLaugh*955lin’s reasoning cannot be imported here to contradict Parr’s directly applicable precedent. Until today there was no “search contemporaneous with an arrest” exception for warrantless automobile searches; if that is the direction my colleagues wish to go, the appropriate way is through en banc review.
II.
I concur in the judgment because I believe that the inevitable discovery doctrine provides an appropriate exception to the exclusionary rule in this case. The inevitable discovery doctrine permits admission of evidence that would otherwise be excluded, “if the government can prove that the evidence would have been obtained inevitably [by lawful means] and, therefore, would have been admitted regardless of any over-reaching by the police.” Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 447, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984). The doctrine “applies only when the fact that makes discovery inevitable is born of circumstances other than those brought to light by the illegal search itself.” United States v. Reilly, 224 F.3d 986, 995 (9th Cir.2000).
Officers Price and Ratcliff inevitably would have discovered the counterfeit currency and related paraphernalia in Smith’s car through lawful means. Officer Price placed Smith under arrest while Officer Ratcliff was searching the Camaro, but certainly before the search concluded. Thus, the evidence uncovered pursuant to the search did not serve as the basis for the arrest. Cf. United States v. Boatwright, 822 F.2d 862, 865 (9th Cir.1987). Because Officer Price would have arrested Smith absent the fruits of any search (in fact, he did), any subsequent search of the vehicle would qualify as a lawful search incident to arrest under Belton. See Belton, 453 U.S. at 460, 101 S.Ct. 2860. Officer Price and Ratcliffs testimony demonstrates that, had they not searched before, the officers would have conducted a post-arrest search of the vehicle, and, eventually, an inventory search. See United States v. Ramirez-Sandoval, 872 F.2d 1392, 1399 (9th Cir.1989) (“The government can meet its burden by establishing that, by following routine procedures, the police would inevitably have uncovered the evidence.”) (citations omitted). Accordingly, the information that Smith seeks to suppress “ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means,” Nix, 467 U.S. at 444, 104 S.Ct. 2501, and is therefore admissible under the inevitable discovery doctrine. See id.; Ramirez-Sandoval, 872 F.2d at 1399.
Although neither, the parties nor the district court addressed the inevitable discovery doctrine in their discussion of Smith’s motion to suppress, we “may affirm on any ground supported by the record, even if it differs from the rationale of the district court.” Martinez-Villareal v. Lewis, 80 F.3d 1301, 1305 (9th Cir.1996). Smith has fully litigated all of the facts pertaining to the search of his car; “all of the evidence is in the record and all of the relevant facts have been resolved.” United States v. Henderson, 241 F.3d 638, 649 (9th Cir.2000). Thus, a finding that the officers would have inevitably discovered the counterfeiting evidence would not “unfairly deprive [him] of the opportunity to adduce evidence.” Parr, 843 F.2d at 1232; see also Giordenello v. United States, 357 U.S. 480, 488, 78 S.Ct. 1245, 2 L.Ed.2d 1503 (1958); United States v. Salazar, 805 F.2d 1394, 1399-1400 (9th Cir.1986). Because the record supports the conclusion that the district court’s denial of Smith’s motion to suppress was proper under the inevitable discovery doctrine, I concur in the judgment on that ground.