Court Opinion

ID: 9491844
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:25:12.503647+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:58.292170
License: Public Domain

DENNIS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion. I agree fully with the conclusions and sentiments of Judge Politz’s dissenting opinion. As he points out, this is not a typical automobile inventory case but a “unique situation of an admittedly pretextual stop and arrest, followed by a pretextual impoundment, to obtain a pretextual inventory search for drugs”' — -“[a] combination of pretext and continuing bad faith [that] cannot be tolerated [under] the Fourth Amendment ].” Indeed, the evidence demonstrates beyond any doubt that from the very beginning it was the investigatory motive of the Houston Police-DEA-FBI law enforcement unit to search defendants’ vehicle for illegal drugs that instigated and orchestrated all of the federal, state and local law officers’ actions towards the defendants. Toward this investigatory end, the law enforcement officers in bad faith attempted to use a pretextual traffic offense arrest, a pretextual im-poundment of the defendants’ vehicle and a pretextual inventory of the vehicle as a ruse for a warrantless drug search. Because a bad faith, pretextual automobile inventory does not create any exception to the warrant requirement, the planned inventory search in this case would have been unconstitutional had it been carried out. Therefore, the prophesied inventory can not serve as a “lawful means” by which the drugs could have been discovered under the ultimate or inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule. While I join in Judge Politz’s dissenting opinion, I add this brief opinion to point out specifically how the Supreme Court’s decisions clearly support our conclusions and indicate that the panel opinion was correct and should be reinstated and affirmed.
An ultimate or inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule was recognized by the Supreme Court in Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984). In that case, the evidence supported a finding that a search party ultimately or inevitably would have discovered the victim’s body even had the defendant, whose statement directing police to the site was the result of a postarrest interrogation in violation of his right to counsel, not been questioned by the police. The Court succinctly defined the exception: “If the prosecution can establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the information ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means — here the volunteers’ search — then the deterrence rationale has so little basis that the evidence should be received.” Id. at 444, 104 S.Ct. 2501 (emphasis added). Accordingly, in the present case the prosecution, in order to avail itself of the inevitable discovery exception, would have had to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the drugs in the defendant’s vehicle would have been ultimately or inevitably discovered by the lawful means of a lawful inventory had the police not conducted an unconstitutional warrantless search in the absence of exigent circumstances.1
*736The inventory of the defendants’ vehicle that the majority opinion hypothesizes that officer Nettles would have conducted (had the unlawful warrantless drug dog assisted search not occurred) would not have been a lawful means of discovery because it would have been a bad faith, pretextual inventory. It is true that the Supreme Court has “never held, outside the context of inventory search or administrative inspection ..., that an officer’s motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the Fourth Amendment!!]” Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 812, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996). But the Court has repeatedly indicated for discerning readers that improper ulterior motives will invalidate police conduct in the context of inventory searches. In Whren, id. at 811, 116 S.Ct. 1769, the Court acknowledged that in Florida v. Wells, 495 U.S. 1, 4, 110 S.Ct. 1632, 109 L.Ed.2d 1 (1990), it stated that “an inventory search must not be used as a ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence”; that in Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 372, 107 S.Ct. 738, 93 L.Ed.2d 739 (1987), in approving an inventory search, the Court thought it significant that there had been “no showing that the police, who were following standard procedures, acted in bad faith or for the sole purpose of investigation”; and that in New York v. Burger, 482 U.S. 691, 716-717, n. 27, 107 S.Ct. 2636, 96 L.Ed.2d 601 (1987) the Court observed, in upholding the constitutionality of a warrantless administrative inspection, that the search did not appear to be “a ‘pretext’ for obtaining evidence of ... violation of ... penal laws.” Significantly, the Supreme Court in South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 376, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1976), setting forth the high court’s first full articulation of the inventory exception, in approving an inventory after impoundment of a car left illegally parked for an extended period, expressed the following caveat: “[T]here is no suggestion whatever that this standard procedure, essentially like that followed throughout the country, was a pretext concealing an investigatory police motive.” (Footnotes omitted).
The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that everything the police did in the present case was a pretext or ruse that was meant to conceal the Houston-DEA-FBI unit’s investigatory police motive and actions to search the defendants’ vehicle for evidence of suspected illegal drug activity. The district court either committed an error of law by assuming that the police officers’ bad faith, pretextual motives and pretextual conduct cannot invalidate an inventory search under the Fourth Amendment or made clearly erroneous factual findings by ignoring the clear and convincing proof of such ulterior motives and bad faith conduct. Because the majority has repeated the same constitutional errors, I respectfully dissent.

. Because the officers did not have probable cause to search the defendants' vehicle for drugs at the time of the arrest, the fact that such probable cause arose after the vehicle was removed from the highway and impounded did not on its own, in the absence of demonstrated exigent circumstances, provide a constitutional basis for a search of the vehicle without a search warrant. See Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 51, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970) ("Only *736in exigent circumstances will the judgment of the police as to probable cause serve as a sufficient authorization for a search." Id. at 51, 90 S.Ct. 1975, citing Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 153, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925)). Accordingly, that theory cannot be used to support the judgment herein.