Court Opinion

ID: 9468657
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:20:09.267059+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:58.626664
License: Public Domain

*509MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part and concurring in part:
Whenever the exclusionary rule applies, with the resulting suppression of trenchant evidence of guilt, and the substantial and regrettable consequence that an offender against society may go free, the judge is apt to wince or at least to feel a twinge. Perhaps the exclusionary rule, in its entirety, or as to possible exceptions, should be reexamined. Mr. Justice Cardozo, after all was a force to be reckoned with and he disapproved of the rule.1 See People v. DeFore, 242 N.Y. 13, 150 N.E. 585 (1926).
Still, a study looking to possible revision is not open to those who sit at a level beneath the rank of the United States Supreme Court. Unless and until that Court reconsiders the predominating weight it has assigned to stringent measures to keep the policeman decent and law-abiding at practically any cost in terms of convictions of the perpetrators of crime, it behooves us to give full force to what it has laid down as the law. The responsibility extends to preservation of the vitality of related rules. We should not avoid or vitiate the effectiveness of the exclusionary rule by distorting what constitutes the essential ingredients of a proper search or seizure.
It is my regretful conclusion that such a distortion — an attempt, by two wrongs, to make a right — occurs in the majority opinion.
First, it must be emphasized that the law enforcement officers had. nothing more to go on than (a) awareness that some unidentified group in the neighborhood was engaged in a drug importation scheme and (b) an informer’s tip that a large boat was engaged in a drug smuggling caper. Perceiving one large boat in the vicinity on the Potomac River, the officers drew alongside, and with no real justification other than the vessel’s size and location in the vicinity2 peremptorily compelled the vessel to. accompany them to shore and conducted a war-rantless search.3 Regardless of whether there was enough to permit a Terry stop, there was, I submit, no reasonable basis for seeking a warrant. The search was illegal both because no warrant was sought and because no warrant, if one had been sought, would have issued in the absence of probable cause.4 It also was fruitless. No marijuana was discovered. The officers who *510conducted the search deserve an expression of judicial disapproval, at least in the way of a rebuke, for their trampling on the constitutional Fourth Amendment rights of the citizens aboard that vessel.
No doubt disappointed, yet undeterred by their lack of success, the enforcement officers turned to the next big boat in the vicinity. Again with nothing more than size to go on, they drew alongside with every intention of boarding and conducting a warrantless search. They intended an unlawful act. The boat turned out to be one known to one of the officers, so the planned unlawful search was aborted. Nothing if not dogged in their determination to proceed in defiance of the Fourth Amendment, the officers bore down on a third large vessel, the CENTAURUS.
This time, a beneficent fate intervened to provide the providential and fragrant whiff of marijuana just as the first officer was about to transfer to the suspect vessel. And still more manna fell from Heaven: the words “You have got us” emerged from one of the party aboard the CENTAURUS. At that point a Terry stop was certainly justified. So, too, we may assume, was the arrest of all aboard, which promptly occurred. Also, unlike the situation the first time, there was probable cause to justify a search. We may assume that exigency justified making a search, without a warrant, of the vessel. United States v. Laughman, 618 F.2d 1067 (4th Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 447 U.S. 925, 100 S.Ct. 3018, 65 L.Ed.2d 1117 (1980).
That leaves unanswered, however, the question of the propriety of going further, as to covered parcels discovered in the search of the vessel, and breaking them open to ascertain their contents, although no warrant had been sought. Again there was probable cause, but a significant difference also existed. The search of the vessel justified an arrest of all aboard, which promptly occurred. Hence, mobility of the CENTAURUS and any associated exigency about breaking open the bales were at an end.
It is elementary that probable cause alone does not permit a search. It only provides a substantiating basis for issuance of a warrant.5 A warrantless search is per se unreasonable in all but a very narrow set of circumstances.6 The exceptions to the requirement that a warrant be obtained are “few.” Robbins v. California, 453 U.S. 420, 423, 101 S.Ct. 2841, 2844, 69 L.Ed.2d 744 (1981).
The arrest of the occupants of the CENTAURUS preceded any effort to open and inspect the contents of any of the burlap-covered and cigarette carton packaged bales found below deck in the CENTAURUS. Consequently, any removal of the vessel from the supervision of the authorities, likelihood of dissipation of evidence, resort to the packages for concealed weapons, or disappearance of persons aboard the vessel had evaporated before invasion of the bales occurred.7
The possibly unique treatment of automobiles derives from “their inherent mobility, *511which often makes obtaining a judicial warrant impracticable.” United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 12, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 2484, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977); Robbins, supra, 101 S.Ct. at 2845. The invasions without warrants here took place as to some bales split open subsequently, during the course of unloading by government agents or employees, which occurred on the following day when the CENTAURUS was fully secure at a Naval Ordnance Station. Thereafter, while the vessel was equally secure, DEA agents, without warrants, broke open some of the bales.8
The arguably applicable circumstances advanced to excuse obtention of a warrant are (a) exigency or (b) plain view.
No one, however, should seriously contend for exigency. On navigable waters the boat presented little, if any, resemblance to a fleeting motor vehicle on the public streets. The law enforcement officers, having arrested the ship’s complement, were in complete control, in a position effectively to frustrate any flight of the boat, dissipation of evidence or disappearance of persons.9
*512As for plain view,10 reliance is placed on the facts that (1) a small quantity of marijuana was contained in a container set out in the galley area for use by those on board; (2) there were stored below a large number of bales,11 (3) some marijuana residue was scattered on top of some of the bales, and (4) the old reliance which justified boarding of the CENTAURUS in the first place, there was an aroma of marijuana.
Of course, if, on opening, those bales had disclosed their contents to be cotton or rags, the case would have taken on a very different aspect.12 One may question whether the small amount (about 2 ounces) of marijuana available for personal use would have even led to criminal charges. The immediate expected response is: “But it wasn’t cotton, or rags, it was marijuana.” That sort of after-the-fact reasoning, however, *513ignores the possibility that things could well have been otherwise. We, in court, only see the case where an unwarranted breaking of a package actually turns up contraband. An apparent 100% in smelling percentage may, on undistorted statistics (/. e. statistics not skewed by the consideration that prosecutions rarely if ever eventuate when the smell is “pot” but the bale contents turn out to be something else), reduce to 50% or less. Moreover, whatever the likelihood percentage, that does not bring the contents of the bales into plain view. Even if the likelihood that marijuana lies behind the covering of the bales is very high, that fact does not have relevance as to what the eye could see. Probability is simply not visibility.
As Robbins v. California, supra, has established, it takes an open package, or one whose configuration is distinctive as to its contents (/. e., a kit of burglary tools or a gun case) to bring into play the plain view exception to the generally unyielding rule that a warrant must first be obtained. Here,. however, the contents of the bales fitted neither description. The bursting open of bales did not occur until the next day, and was the product of the government’s activities, not of anything done by the defendants. The burlap coverings were as opaque as the green plastic covering the marijuana in Robbins, and more durable than the paper bag referred to in the Court’s opinion as being entitled to an expectation of privacy.
Nor does the strong likelihood, based on other facts, that the concealed contents are marijuana have anything to do with whether they are revealed to the naked eye. Rather, the other facts merely enhanced the probable cause to believe the hidden substance was marijuana, thereby making the basis for a warrant all the stronger. The fact that an officer is manifestly entitled to a warrant is not a reason to excuse him from the necessity to apply for it.13
I do not ignore the contention that the phrase “plain view,” while, from a strict linguistic point of view, it refers to only one of the senses, nevertheless may be broadened to apply to the others. In the dark, the sense of touch may convey as precise an impression as the eye does in daylight. But the “view” must be “plain.” Smell is by nature fleeting and evanescent. It also is too easy, after the fact, to assert and essentially impossible to refute. Hence to accept it here would justify any and every war-rantless search which turns up marijuana, however securely packed, regardless of the unmentioned occasions when the same nose betrayed its owner, when the bales turned out to contain tea, or spices, or rags or cotton.
Indeed, in this very case, the reliance on smell to construct a plain view exception for the contents of the bales is rendered suspect because of the presence of a small container of marijuana available for, use by the crew members. It also gave off a scent. While it heightened the probability that the bales contained marijuana, nevertheless, it reduced substantially the basis for contending that what was smelled emanated from the bales. Nothing in the evidence produced showed that the bales were known to be the source of what was in the small container. The contents of the bales were simply *514not visible, by sight or by smell. They, consequently, were not in plain view.14
The residue scattered on top of some bales also merely increases the probability, not the visibility. It is at least as likely as any other explanation that the residue came from something earlier stowed above the bales, perhaps containers already off-loaded elsewhere. The bales beneath the residue are by no means certainly their source. Furthermore, the record in no way connects the bales broken open by the DEA, or during off-loading, with those on which marijuana residue was scattered. '
The enforcement officers brought the CENTAURUS to shore and tied it up in a manner secure, not only against wind and weather, but also against intrusion. A day later the bales were off-loaded. The initial breakage of bales occurred in the course of that operation. All the time which could be needed for obtaining a warrant existed, yet no one bothered to get one. The same was even more true for the DEA sampling of the contents of the bales, without a warrant, which took place still later. We should not encourage lawlessness by excusing the neglectful and the sloppy, by pretending a nonexistent exigency, and by imagining that what could not be seen was in “plain view.”
The ironic aspect of all this is that, had the prosecutor thought about it, he need not have pushed for unlawful proof about the contents of the bales. Had he contended himself with evidence (a) of the small container of marijuana for individual use, and of the scattered residue, and (b) showing the existence of the many bales, as to which an inference (the basis for a finding of probable cause which would have supported an application for a warrant) could, under all the circumstances here present, have been drawn as to their contents, even though the contents were not in plain view, he probably would have secured his convictions. The convictions would not, then, have been at the price of permitting tainted evidence, obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Instead, he went too far, preferring what may well have been overkill. The convictions so obtained should not stand. I would reverse to permit a new trial undefiled by constitutional violations.
As to the other issues addressed by the majority, I concur in the conclusions they have reached.

. In that statement, I do not intend to align myself with those who would do away with the exclusionary rule. A distinguished lawyer, speaking from the perspective of the prosecutor, presented a compelling case when he recently urged the rejection of two bills designed to weaken the exclusionary rule, and recommended extreme skepticism “of the many proposals, now very much in vogue, to modify a rule which has barred unconstitutionally seized evidence from federal criminal trials.... ” Stephen H. Sachs, Attorney General of Maryland, Statement of October 5, 1981 to the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Law.
Attorney General Sachs was the United States Attorney for the District of Maryland from 1967 to 1970, having previously served three years as an Assistant United States Attorney.

. Someone on the boat was observed throwing some unidentified object overboard. Anyone who sails knows that such is a frequent occurrence, generating no grounds for suspicion.

. On approaching, the law enforcement officers observed a registration violation, an expired decal posted on the side of the boat. They thereupon arrested the owner for a registration violation and compelled the vessel to accompany them to a boat basin to “board the boat and check it out.” The main reason (and evidently, in the circumstances, the only real reason) was the report of a boat suspected of drug smuggling.
The boat occupants were held while ownership of the vessel was checked. The officers then, without any probable cause, informed them that they were suspects in a drug investigation and sought permission to and did search the boat.
There is, of course, no finding that, on the totality of the circumstances, the consent to ' search that vessel was truly voluntary. It seems most questionable.

. The majority would brush aside the apparent lawlessness with the observation that “seizure and search of that vessel — not challenged here — turned up no contraband.” Slip op. at 4. The practical certainty that the innocent in such circumstances would not go so far as to press a legal claim only emphasizes the need for alertness on the part of the courts to curb such impermissible behavior. In all events, who would or could have standing to challenge that violation of law “here" — i. e. in the case before us?

. Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 758, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 2590, 61 L.Ed.2d 235 (1979):
The mere reasonableness of a search, assessed in the light of the surrounding circumstances, is not a substitute for the judicial warrant required under the Fourth Amendment.

. Walter v. United States, 447 U.S. 649, 657-58 n.10, 100 S.Ct. 2395, 2401-2402, 65 L.Ed.2d 410 (1980):
The fact that the labels on the boxes established probable cause to believe the films were obscene clearly cannot excuse the failure to obtain a warrant; for if probable cause dispensed with the necessity of a warrant, one would never be needed.
Cf. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 514, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967); McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 456, 69 S.Ct. 191, 193, 93 L.Ed. 153 (1948):
Power is a heady thing; and history shows that the police acting on their own cannot be trusted .... We cannot be true to that constitutional requirement [a prior warrant from a magistrate] and excuse the absence of a search warrant without a showing . . . that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative.

. New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981) deals with a situation where search of the contents of the passenger compartment of an automobile incident to, and contemporaneous with, a lawful, *511though warrantless, custodial arrest occurred. One container in the passenger compartment was an item of clothing, a jacket. The court held that a warrant was not required in exigent circumstances, where the container searched was “within the immediate control of the arres-tee” and “from within which [an arrestee] might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” 101 S.Ct. at 2863, quoting from Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2040, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969).
The containers in the instant case, by contrast, were neither so accessible, nor so destructible. Furthermore, the search of the bales to ascertain their contents occurred, at the earliest, a day later. The Belton majority were careful to distinguish United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 15, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 2485, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977) on the precise grounds that “the search was conducted more than an hour after the federal agents had gained exclusive control of the [container] and long after respondents were securely in custody; the search therefore cannot be viewed as incidental to the arrest or as justified by any other exigency.” 101 S.Ct. at 2865.

. Testimony of Sergeant Hutchinson;
Q. Now, the bales themselves are for the most part burlap covered?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Inside the burlap there were cigarette carton boxes and inside of that was the substance?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, when, to your knowledge, was the first bale broken open to see what was inside? Was it that day or the next day? We will start there.
A. I have no recollection of the first day of the bales being broken open. I do recall the second day after we unloaded the bales.
Q. And on the next succeeding day, which was Monday, you had yet to open the bales or the DEA agent, as I understand your testi-
mony, had yet begin to open any of the bales; that is true, is it not, sir?
A. I have no knowledge on the first day which was Sunday, of anyone opening the bales. On the second day I seem to recollect that either by accident or on purpose, and I don’t know which, one or more of the bales were open.
Testimony of Officer Sciukas;
Q. Did you participate in the unloading of the vessel?
A. Yes, the next day.
Q. Do you know how many bales were finally gotten off?
Q. Were there any open containers of bales of marijuana that was in view that you saw?
A. Some of the bales were split and broken open. In the forward cabin area, when you looked through the forward hatch there was a bag of marijuana with rolling papers hanging in plain view, of a small quantity, maybe two ounces or so.
Q. As you were unloading were items found that were later secured?
A. Yes sir.
It should be observed that it is far from clear whether the testimony relates to the time of boarding the CENTAURUS or the time of offloading on the following day. In any event, nothing in the testimony establishes that the contents of bales split and broken open were visible. It is to be noted that, besides the burlap, the bales were covered by cigarette carton boxes as well.

. At oral argument, the government acknowledged that there were no exigent circumstances, saying:
COURT: Do you agree that there was no exigency to conduct this search?
AUSA: I’ll have to agree that there wasn’t any. But I’d like to qualify that Your Honor *512because there was no need and the reason
COURT: But there was no exigency because you by that time had complete control of the vessel; you were going to take it to a government controlled location; there was no way anybody could get at it and I take it that a magistrate or other person to issue a warrant was not very far away.
AUSA: Well it was Sunday but I concede that it could have been gotten.
COURT: You could have waited until Monday without any real risk of losing the loot.
AUSA: I think that is true.
COURT: But I want to make sure what we have is a situation where the exception is being argued for without exigency in the picture and it is only a question of whether there was such an abandonment of any expectation of privacy that you could go ahead and disregard the Fourth Amendment because there was no expectation of privacy. That is what your argument really is down to.
AUSA: Yes sir.
The situation differs markedly from that presented in United States v. Hensler, 625 F.2d 1141 (4th Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 980, 101 S.Ct. 1513, 67 L.Ed.2d 814 (1981) where the persons operating the vessel were not apprehended and so were free to return and make off with her at any time.
She had no line ashore, no anchor, indeed no moorings of any sort. Heeling at about 45 degrees with the tide, to all appearances she was quarry both to storm and stealth, to be carried out to sea or to the bottom, or towed to a more ready location for the discharge or dispensing of drugs.
Id. at 1143 (emphasis in original).
United States v. Laughman, 618 F.2d 1067, 1073 (4th Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 447 U.S. 925, 100 S.Ct. 3018, 65 L.Ed.2d 1117 (1980) also is not here pertinent, involving only the legality of a search without warrant which turned up marijuana residue, evidently perceptible to the naked eye. I accept that, here, the warrantless search of the vessel was legal. The question here concerns the right to make a further warrantless search of covered parcels, bales swathed in burlap.

. The district court concluded that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy, although the concealed contraband was stowed, in bales, below decks, in hatches. The majority of the panel does not appear to approve that approach, however, for it explicitly, at 506-507, switches to a “plain view” rationale.

. A few of the bales were shown, at some later time, to be torn or cracked, but that point in time clearly came after the boarding and initial search of the CENTAURUS and the arrest of its entire complement. Indeed, the breaking open of any bale was not shown to have occurred until the next day when, in the course of offloading by the government, the splitting of some bales, revealing their contents, occurred. See at 503:
Either prior to or during the unloading, however, some of the packages had split and broken open, revealing their contents.
Cf. Id. 507:
.. . some of the bales — the record is unclear on the exact number — were split open and marijuana exposed to view prior to the search, that is, the opening and sampling of the bales by DEA agents.
(Emphasis in original.)
The majority does not suggest, nor does the record reveal, that any bales were broken open until after seizure of the CENTAURUS and arrest of her occupants had been fully complet,ed. Consequently, any creation of a plain view state for the contents of the bales was the work of the government agents, not of the vessel occupants. On the approach that would uphold the sampling of bale contents by the DEA in the present case, on the grounds that the contents were in plain view, there always will be plain view. The encouragement to sloppy work with emphasis on dropping, bumping and the like of closed containers will become routine.

. Compare the situation in Walter v. United States, supra, 447 U.S. 649, 656 n.6, 100 S.Ct. 2395, 2401, 65 L.Ed.2d 410, where the markings on packages created an inference that the contents were obscene, yet, since only 5 of the 25 film titles were used as a basis for prosecution, it was presumed that the other films were not obscene.

. Walter, supra, is instructive. There the wrappings of a shipment of twelve large packages had been torn open before it came lawfully into the government’s hands. Descriptive labels on the contents, 871 reels of film, gave the basis for an overwhelming inference that they were obscene. The government proceeded to screen the films without first obtaining a warrant.
The Supreme Court rejected the government’s argument that the opening of the packages, and one or more of the boxes containing reels of film before they came into government hands and the existence of visible labels establishing probable cause to believe the films were obscene justified a search without warrant. “Prior to the Government screening, one could only draw inferences about what was on the films.” 447 U.S. at 657, 100 S.Ct. at 2401. Prior to the government breaking open of the bales, one could only draw inferences about what was in them. The expansion of the search in both cases was significant. Each required a warrant to make it lawful. “That separate search was not supported by any exigency, or by a warrant even though one could have easily been obtained.” Id.

. The existence of a competing source of the aroma was not a factor in United States v. Haynie, 637 F.2d 227, 233 (4th Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 451 U.S. 972, 101 S.Ct. 2051, 68 L.Ed.2d 351 (1981); United States v. Hensler, 625 F.2d 1141, 1142 (4th Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 980, 101 S.Ct. 1513, 67 L.Ed.2d 814 (1981); or United States v. Sifuentes, 504 F.2d 845, 848 (4th Cir. 1974). Contra United States v. Bradshaw, 490 F.2d 1097, 1101 (4th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 895, 95 S.Ct. 173, 42 L.Ed.2d 139 (1974) (“The liquor was certainly not in ‘plain view,’ within the ordinary meaning of that phrase, when Agent Williams first detected the odor emanating from the truck. Nor did he, at that point, have any basis upon which to conclude, with certainty, that liquor was actually present in the truck. An alternative explanation of the smell was equally probable — that liquor had once been present in the truck but had since been removed leaving the truck permeated with its vapors. Agent Williams thus had no more than a reasonable ground to infer the presence of liquor at this point.”).
The present case is clearly distinguishable on the ground that here there was more than one explanation of where the smell came from. That very consideration was present in Robbins, supra, where a search without a warrant of two packages containing marijuana located in a recessed luggage compartment in a station wagon, was held to have violated the Fourth Amendment. The law enforcement officers had smelled marijuana on approaching the vehicle, and had found marijuana in the passenger compartment. Those considerations, nevertheless, did not eliminate the expectation of privacy for the two bricks of marijuana in the luggage compartment, or result in a finding that their contents were in plain view.
Note also that the smell of marijuana, though present, was not relied on in any way in the reaching of the result in New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981).