Court Opinion

ID: 9451984
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:28:21.121738+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:00.551125
License: Public Domain

On Petition for a Rehearing En Banc
HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge:
I join my brothers in an order denying a petition for rehearing en banc, but I take advantage of the occasion for a word of explanation.
The question in this case has been the subject of extended debate within the court. Judge Bell and I were not members of the panel that originally heard it, but we have participated actively in the discussion. As a result, it is apparent that a majority of the court is of the view that we are bound to apply the “mere evidence” rule because of the broad language employed by the Supreme Court in those opinions holding that private papers which could not have been classed as instruments of the crime are not subject to seizure.
Nevertheless, I think that the language the Supreme Court has employed must be read in the light of what it has held. Neither in what it has held nor in what it has said can I find an inexorable command that we hold inadmissible these articles reasonably seized in the course of a reasonable search.
The Fourth Amendment prohibits only those seizures that are unreasonable, as *658it prohibits only those searches that are unreasonable. It is one thing to say that a seizure of a diary containing incriminating entries is unreasonable as is a search having as its objective the discovery and the seizure of such a document. Each is prohibited by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. It is quite another thing to say, however, that tangible articles discovered in the course of a reasonable search have the sanctity of private papers if they cannot be readily classified as instruments or fruits of the crime. An accused’s cap on his head or his shoe on his foot has no such sanctity, and, in my view, such articles acquire none when removed from his person and placed in his closet. If the shoe is useful in comparison with the footprint which the culprit left when he fled the scene of the crime, or if a cap is useful in resolving the uncertainties of visual identification, neither should have an immunity from seizure when discovered in the course of a reasonable and lawful search.
With the amendment’s proscription of unreasonable searches and unreasonable seizures in mind, I can find nothing in what the Supreme Court has done and said which requires the rejection from evidence of these articles of clothing reasonably seized in the course of a search, which, concededly, was reasonable and lawful. We are not instructed to apply the underlying rule of reasonableness in an unreasonable manner.
As the standards for the admission of confessions are undergoing a continuing process of stiffening, the police are admonished to place greater dependence upon their resources for scientific investigation. Make an impression of the footprint discovered at the scene, they are told, and be prepared to make extensive laboratory analyses of the dried blood on the shirt. Such investigatory procedures will be of little use, however, unless investigators are afforded a reasonable opportunity to obtain possession of the shoe for comparison with the impression and of the bloody shirt for laboratory analysis.
I find nothing unreasonable in the majority’s preference that the Supreme Court deal with the matter but, until it does so explicitly, I think subordinate courts are free to declare seizures of articles such as these to be reasonable and not unconstitutional. Merely because of difficulty in stretching the term “instruments of the crime” to encompass them, I do not think they are immune from reasonable seizure in the course of a lawful search. The fact that articles are incriminatory has never in itself been an objection to their seizure.
A majority of the court, however, is of the view that we may not consider the question unsettled. Since, informally, the entire court has thoroughly canvassed our freedom to follow our own notions, it is most unlikely that a rehearing en bane would serve any useful purpose whatever. It is for that reason that I join in the order denying the petition.