Court Opinion

ID: 9470819
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:16:49.113827+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:07.167700
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Chief Judge,
dissenting:
A U.S. customs pilot, acting pursuant to a warrant, went inside a plane used by Harold Dean Butts. The agent searched it and planted a beeper tracking device. Butts did not know it was there the day it was installed, during any part of the next sixty-two days when it lawfully remained there, or during the following three days when it should have been removed under the warrant’s terms.
The majority in this case excludes from use at trial the true facts derived from the monitoring of that beeper which revealed Butts’ criminal conduct. The exclusion is ordered not because the tracking device was placed in the plane, but because another intrusion was not made into the plane’s interior to remove the device. The majority decides this to protect Butts’ reasonable expectation of privacy. I cannot comprehend the logic of this reasoning.
The only way Butts’ reasonable expectation of privacy becomes legally cognizable is if the monitoring of the beeper signals after the sixty-second day became illegal. The meaning of and rationale for the Supreme Court’s holding in Knotts are clear: The monitoring of a signal from a beeper on a vehicle operated on public streets is neither a search nor a seizure because the “monitoring” [of] the beeper signals complained of by respondent [did not] invade any legitimate expectation of privacy on his part.” 103 S.Ct. at 1087. The monitoring of the beeper as Butts’ plane crossed from Mexico into U.S. airspace is not a search or a seizure because the whereabouts of Butts’ plane in the open, public airspace used by smugglers and all other aircraft users is not a matter he could expect to keep private. The expiration of the warrant is irrelevant to this expectation.
The majority opinion originates a requirement that any entry into a vehicle (plane, boat or car) to place a beeper requires a warrant based upon probable cause. It also creates a requirement that such a warrant have a time limitation. These two new strictures, originated for fourth amendment protection, should prove meaningless for others similarly situated if officers employing beeper techniques will recall our prior decisions. In Michael, we held that no warrant was required for attachment of a beeper to the exterior of a vehicle. In Conroy, we held that a government informant could surreptiously plant beepers on a ship if he could gain access to the vessel by subterfuge. Therefore, in the future, officers may avoid the new warrant and time requirements either through the exterior attachment of beepers ala Michael or via surreptitious entry ala Conroy.
The majority also seeks to bolster its view with precisely the same twenty-four hour *1154dragnet surveillance “bug-a-boo” which Knotts expressly rejected. Id. at 1086. It certainly does not fit the facts of this case. The signals that revealed Butts’ illegal activity were monitored three days after the warrant-authorized surveillance period. The rule the majority establishes is that tracking during days covered by the warrant is not a search or seizure, but the tracking on the sixty-third day somehow becomes a search and seizure. I cannot comprehend how the transformation from “no search” to “search” occurs when all that has happened is that an officer has not reentered the airplane to remove the beeper.
There simply is no fourth amendment right in any way implicated in the failure to remove the beeper installed in this plane. Because there is not, it is altogether wrong to punish the public by denying it validly acquired information of criminal drug activity. The officers who violated the court’s order to reenter the plane and remove the beeper are liable in contempt to the court whose order they infringed. Butts was not a victim of that infringement. Indeed, had they complied and again entered the airplane they may have come in view of other evidence of criminal activity. Butts surely had no interest in the reentry and removal of the beeper except to stop the transmittal of signals. Because Knotts teaches that the monitoring of the signals constituted neither a search nor a seizure, I respectfully dissent.