Court Opinion

ID: 9423826
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:09:09.816164+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:46.280521
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Harlan,
dissenting.
A police officer filed a sworn affidavit that he had personally witnessed the commission of a crime, to wit, the possession and exhibition of obscene motion pictures. He was granted a warrant to seize the pictures, and did so.
*638In Marcus v. Search Warrant, 367 U. S. 717, officers were given a general warrant to seize obscene materials, pursuant to which they selected and seized 11,000 copies of 280 publications most of which were later found non-obscene. With barely a nod to the difference between 11,000 books and magazines selected for seizure by the officers themselves after a warrant had been issued and two obscene movies named in the affidavit, the Court reverses the present conviction on the authority of Marcus.
I think that Marcus was correctly decided, but I cannot discern its application here. Police officers may not be given carte blanche to seize, but they may certainly seize a specifically named item on probable cause, before the work “taken as a whole” has been adjudicated obscene. Any other rule would make adjudication not merely “not as easily arrange[d]” in the case of movies but quite impossible. If the Court means only that the officer should not merely say that he has seen a movie and considers it obscene, but should offer something in the way of a box score of what transpires therein, I consider it absurd to think that a magistrate, armed with the luminous guidance this Court has afforded, will be thus able to make a better judgment of probable obscenity.
Since the petitioner does not contend that the movies in question here were not obscene, I find it unnecessary to reach the point relied on by my Brothers Black, Douglas, and Stewart.