Court Opinion

ID: 9471757
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:40:25.850422+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:33.847971
License: Public Domain

GEORGE CLIFTON EDWARDS, Jr., Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I concur in Judge Keith’s dissent which follows but would like to add a few sentences.
In this case we should start with the basic Supreme Court holding that warrantless searches “are per se unreasonable ... subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 514, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). See also Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 390, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 2412, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978); Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 219, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 2043, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973).
The search of the DC-6 involved in this case was certainly not “the functional equivalent” of a border search, Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 93 S.Ct. 2535, 37 L.Ed.2d 596 (1973). The search party did not know that this plane, before it was searched, had crossed the borders of the United States and landed initially at the Memphis Airport, nor had it been constantly observed from the border to its landing at Memphis so as to make it subject to a “border” search or to exempt it from observance of warrant procedures under the Fourth Amendment.
Nor do I think there were exigent circumstances known to the customs officers which served to exempt the search party from seeking a search warrant from a Magistrate. A four-engine transport plane parked at an airport is not comparable in mobility to an automobile on the highway. The facts known to the searching party did not in my opinion approach the exigent circumstances relied upon for the warrant-less search in Chambers v. Maroney, 399 *109U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970). The customs officers in this case did not arrest or have any basis for arrest of the occupants of this plane prior to the warrantless search. Cf. Chambers v. Maroney, supra at 44, 90 S.Ct. at 1977, where the officers who made the search had detailed information on an armed holdup and description of the robbers and the escape vehicle.
The crucial fact in this case is that the circumstances claimed to constitute probable cause were not submitted to and determined by a neutral and detached Magistrate.