Court Opinion

ID: 9455726
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:31:24.59464+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:42.654926
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Chief Judge, with whom HAYS, Circuit Judge, joins
(concurring).
While I concur in all that Judge Blumenfeld has written for the court, I think it needs to be said that, even were the principles of Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed. 2d 685 (1969) to be applied, the search of Lozaw’s apartment and the seizure of the marihuana was a reasonable and lawful consequence of a lawful arrest. More than that, under all the circumstances which culminated in Lozaw’s arrest, it was the clear duty of the agents to make the arrest and seizure immediately, without a search warrant, and with the least possible delay.
It was shortly after 2:00 A.M. when Bernal and Mestre walked out of apartment 4Q at 72 Barrow Street, in Greenwich Village, with a heavy suitcase. Narcotic Agents saw this and heard one of them say to someone in the apartment “We’ll be back later for the rest of the stuff.” They brought the suitcase down to where Agents Lepore and Ioppolo were waiting for them in a parked car. When Lepore opened the suitcase, Bernal said “Not here, not here * * * [we] still have over a hundred pounds of grass up in that apartment and I don’t want the area to be heated up.” Knowing that the contents of the bag was marihuana — something over 60 pounds —Agent Lepore then arrested Bernal and Mestre.
At the same time Agent Raugh returned to the car from his observation post in the apartment house and told Le-pore and Ioppolo what he had seen and heard. Previously at 10:30 P.M. when Lepore telephoned Mestre’s apartment at 123 East 38th Street, Mestre had told Lepore to meet him at the 38th Street apartment a few hours later between 2:00 and 6:00 A.M., but not later than 6:00 A.M. as no marihuana would be left. Consequently Lepore and Ioppolo went to Mestre’s apartment at 2:00 A.M. and, after showing Mestre that they had the $4,800 agreed upon as the price for the 28 kilograms, Mestre and the two agents drove down to Greenwich Village.
Thus by the time the agents had arrested Mestre and Bernal they knew that other persons in apartment 4Q were *918in possession of a large quantity of marihuana which they expected to dispose of in the next three or four hours.
As Judge Blumenfeld has pointed out, there was ample probable cause for Lozaw’s arrest when he opened the door of apartment 4Q. To use the words of Mr. Justice Stewart’s opinion in Chimel, at page 759, 89 S.Ct. at 2038, quoting Mr. Justice Murphy in Trupiano v. United States, 334 U.S. 699, 708, 68 S.Ct. 1229, 1234, 92 L.Ed. 1663 (1948), “the inherent necessities of the situation at the time of arrest” required an immediate search of the apartment 4Q for the marihuana still there. Marihuana was found in an open suitcase on the top of a commode in the bathroom, in the bathtub and in paper bags on the floor in the living room.
While it is true that the search conducted by the agents went beyond “the area from within which he might have obtained either a weapon or something that could have been used as evidence against him,” Chimel, supra, at page 768, 89 S.Ct. at 2043, it is also true that the search of the apartment had to be made immediately if the remaining marihuana was to be found. The agents could not know how many others were involved in the distribution of the marihuana; it could have been many more than the five men they had seen— Mestre, Bernal, Lozaw and two other men in the apartment whom they also arrested. Any extended delay would increase the risk of danger to the officers from others who would soon be aware of what had happened and the risk that others would find some means of making away with the marihuana. It would have taken the agents at least 10 hours, and probably somewhat longer, before they could have obtained a warrant and gotten it back to Barrow Street for execution. Search warrants are not obtainable on short notice, particularly at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. Even during business hours and under the most favorable circumstances, with an Assistant United States Attorney available, a stenographer ready and the United States Commissioner at hand, and with no lunch hour or other matters intervening, four or five hours would go by before the two agents necessary to establish probable cause could return to Barrow Street with a search warrant. Assuming staff to be available by 9:00 A.M., it would have been sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 P.M. before the search could have proceeded under a warrant.
I cannot believe that anything written in the prevailing opinion in Chimel could be interpreted to require law officers to obtain a search warrant before searching an apartment which they knew was then and there being used for unlawful possession and sale of narcotics.
In Chimel the officers had secured an arrest warrant and they obviously had the same ample time to secure a search warrant. Here the facts which gave the agents probable cause to arrest Lozaw were not known to them until immediately before they had to act and arrest Lozaw. This was not a routine search incidental to an arrest. See generally American Law Institute, Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure, Tentative Draft No. 3 (April 24, 1970), Article 3.
For these reasons I would hold the search to be lawful even if the principles in Chimel were applied. Arrests and seizures in narcotics cases are frequently required under circumstances very similar to those which faced the officers here on the night of August 5 and 6, 1968. It would be most unfortunate if anything said in our opinion would lead to the belief that action similar to that so effectively taken here might be unlawful.