Court Opinion

ID: 9483740
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:30:26.805777+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:48.995929
License: Public Domain

BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Although I concur in the majority opinion in this case, I write separately to express my disagreement with some of Chief Judge Merritt’s rhetoric. It is not necessary to the decision in this case to express any opinions about the motives of the U.S. Attorney in setting up procedures for obtaining telephonic warrants, or the motives of the DEA in failing to obtain a warrant, or the general motivation of the police to comply with the requirements of the Constitution. Since those observations are not necessary, I do not believe they should be included in the opinion; in any event, they do not reflect my view of this case.
The evidence demonstrated that the DEA did not expect to be making the controlled drop. This was not a case in which a cooperating informant participated in a well-planned undercover operation. Here, the DEA stopped Yosuf at the airport and discovered that he was en route to make delivery of heroin to two people of whose existence the DEA had been entirely unaware until that moment. They persuaded him to cooperate with them, and, knowing that his arrival was expected imminently by those two people, the DEA hurriedly set up this controlled drop.
The DEA agent in charge had probable cause to believe that the suspects were engaged in criminal activity. The problem in the case was that he believed that he had to make a difficult choice: the agents could make a warrantless entry into the room and nail the suspects, or they could take the time to get the warrant but risk the suspects’ fleeing before the warrant could be obtained. The agent opted not even to attempt to obtain the warrant. But for two reasons, the facts known to the agents, although providing probable cause, did not support a warrantless search. First, the heroin, which- was essential to the criminal activity in which the suspects were believed to be engaged, was entirely within the control of the agents. Second, without better information about the likelihood that the suspects would become suspicious and flee, the agents had insufficient reason to assume that the hour or so it would require to obtain the warrant would foil the operation. It must be noted, however, that the first of these reasons, while arguing against the agents’ having a basis for a warrantless search, provides the strongest impetus for their believing that time was of the essence, since, even if the agents had the suspects under surveillance, if the suspects did indeed become suspicious and attempt to flee before the drop was accomplished, there would likely be no evidence of the crime which would justify their apprehension.
In my view, therefore, the reason that the warrantless search must be found to be illegal is that the government simply did not demonstrate that the timing of this *1006operation was such that a warrant could not have been obtained sufficiently quickly to avoid the probable escape of the defendants. For that reason, I concur in the opinion.