Court Opinion

ID: 9459668
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:27:47.438929+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:16.407624
License: Public Domain

HUFSTEDLER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
The tips of the untested citizen informant, coupled with corroborating circumstances, adequately supplied probable cause to justify the search of the Buick. (E. g., Buelna-Mendoza v. United States (9th Cir. 1971) 435 F.2d 1386; cf. Draper v. United States (1959) 358 U.S. 307, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327; United States v. Acosta (5th Cir. 1969) 411 F.2d 627.) The question whether exigent circumstances justified the failure to get a warrant is a close one. The district court found against the Government on this point, and that finding is not clearly erroneous.
However, if exigent circumstances had existed when the police were on their way to the Kane residence, they vanished before the Buick was opened and the footlocker was searched. By that time Evans was in custody on the outstanding traffic violation. Kane’s Buick was parked in the driveway, and Kane herself was not implicated in any criminal activity. Kane did not consent to a search, as the district court found on ample evidence. The majority’s conclusion that exigencies still existed is based at best on tenuous inferences that are not supported by the evidence. But even if the inferences were permissible, it was the district court’s task to draw them; we are not at liberty to overturn the district court’s findings on the basis of inferences that the law does not compel.
All that is involved in this case is the mild inconvenience of staking out a vehicle while awaiting a warrant, or, taking the majority’s alternative, the even milder inconvenience of staking out a footlocker.
Chambers v. Maroney (1970) 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419, will not carry the majority opinion. Unlike Chambers and like Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971) 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564, the Kane automobile was parked in a private driveway. An opportunity to search either the car or the footlocker was hardly “fleeting” (403 U.S. at 460, 91 S.Ct. 2022), and it was not impracticable to obtain a warrant (403 U.S. at 462, 91 S.Ct. 2022). Accord, United States v. Payne (9th Cir. 1970) 429 F.2d 169, cited with approval in Coolidge, supra, 403 U.S. at 462 n. 19, 91 S.Ct. 2022*
I would affirm.

 United States v. Capps (9th Cir. 1970) 435 F.2d 637 does not support the majority. In Capps, Treasury agents liad a warrant to searcli a Pontiac containing a machine gun located in a red bowling bag. The described Pontiac and an Oldsmobile were found parked together. The search of the Pontiac yielded nothing. The agents saw the red bowling bag in plain view on the rear seat of the adjacent Oldsmobile. We upheld the search under the exigent circumstances doctrine: “The object to be seized was an extremely dangerous weapon. It was located in a movable target for the search. Neither appellee nor Elkins was under arrest, and they were both alerted to what the officers were seeking.” (435 F.2d at 642.)
In our case, the object of the search was burglary tools, not weapons; Evans was under arrest; and there was no evidence that Evans’ confederate had been alerted or that the car would be spirited away.