Court Opinion

ID: 9428486
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:56.837172+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:13.767066
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
dissenting.
I have previously stated why I believe the so-called “exclusionary rule” created by this Court imposes a burden out of all proportion to the Fourth Amendment values which it seeks to advance by seriously impeding the efforts of the national, state, and local governments to apprehend and convict those who have violated their laws. See California v. Minjares, 443 U. S. 916 (1979) (Rehnquist, J., joined by Burger, C. J., dissenting from the denial of a stay). I have in no way abandoned those views, but believe that the plurality opinion of Justice Stewart announcing the judgment of the Court in the present case compounds the evils of the “exclusionary rule” by engrafting subtleties into the jurisprudence of the Fourth Amendment itself that are neither required nor desirable under our previous decisions. As Justice Harlan stated in his concurring opinion in Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 490-491 (1971):
“State and federal law enforcement officers and pros-ecutorial authorities must find quite intolerable the present state of uncertainty, which extends even to such an everyday question as the circumstances under which police may enter a man’s property to arrest him and seize a vehicle believed to have been used during the commission of a crime.
“I would begin [the] process of re-evaluation by overruling Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961), and Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23 (1963). . . .
“Until we face up to the basic constitutional mistakes of Mapp and Ker, no solid progress in setting things straight in search and seizure law will, in my opinion, occur.”
The 10 years which have intervened since Justice Harlan *438made this statement have only tended to confirm its correctness.
The harm caused by the exclusionary rule is compounded by the judicially created preference for a warrant as indicating satisfaction of the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment. It is often forgotten that nothing in the Fourth Amendment itself requires that searches be conducted pursuant to warrants. The terms of the Amendment simply mandate that the people be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that any warrants which may issue shall only issue upon probable cause: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Not only has historical study “suggested that in emphasizing the warrant requirement over the reasonableness of the search the Court has 'stood the fourth amendment on its head’ from a historical standpoint,” Coolidge, supra, at 492 (Harlan, J., concurring) (quoting T. Taylor, Two Studies in Constitutional Interpretation 23-24 (1969)), but the Court has failed to appreciate the impact of its decisions, not mandated by the Fourth Amendment, on law enforcement. Courts, including this Court, often make the rather casual assumption that police are not substantially frustrated in their efforts to apprehend those whom they have probable cause to arrest or to gather evidence of crime when they have probable cause to search by the judicially created preference for a warrant, apparently assuming that the typical case is one in which an officer can make a quick half mile ride to the nearest precinct station in an urban area to obtain such a warrant. See, e. g., Steagald v. United States, 451 U. S. 204, 222 (1981). But this casual assumption simply does not fit the realities of sparsely populated “cow counties” located in some of the Southern and Western States, where at least *439apocryphally the number of cows exceed the number of people, and the number of square miles in the county may exceed 10,000 and the nearest magistrate may be 25 or even 50 miles away. The great virtue of the opinion in Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25 (1949), was that it made allowance for these vast diversities between States; unfortunately such an approach to the Fourth Amendment in the true spirit of federalism was, as Justice Harlan observed, rejected in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961).
Recent developments have cast further doubt on the emphasis on a warrant as opposed to the reasonableness of the search. In Shadwick v. City of Tampa, 407 U. S. 345 (1972), the Court ruled that clerks of the Municipal Court of the city of Tampa, Fla., not trained in the law, are “neutral and detached magistrates” who may issue warrants which satisfy the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment. And in Franks v. Delaware, 438 U. S. 154 (1978), the Court held that a defendant can go behind a warrant and attack its validity on a motion to suppress. In emphasizing the warrant requirement the Court has therefore not only erected an edifice without solid foundation but also one with little substance.
Even aside from these general observations on the warrant requirement, the case we decide today falls within what has been and should continue to be an exception to that requirement — the automobile exception. In Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U. S. 433, 439-440 (1973), we explained that one class of cases which constitutes “at least a partial exception to this general rule [of requiring a warrant] is automobile searches. Although vehicles are ‘effects’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, ‘for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment there is a constitutional difference between houses and cars.’ Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42, 52 (1970). See Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 153-154 (1925).” We also stated in Cady:
“[T]he application of Fourth Amendment standards, originally intended to restrict only the Federal Govern*440ment, to the States presents some difficulty when searches of automobiles are involved. The contact with vehicles by federal law enforcement officers usually, if not always, involves the detection or investigation of crimes unrelated to the operation of a vehicle. Cases such as Carroll v. United States, supra, and Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160 (1949), illustrate the typical situations in which federal officials come into contact with and search vehicles. In both cases, members of a special federal unit charged with enforcing a particular federal criminal statute stopped and searched a vehicle when they had probable cause to believe that the operator was violating that statute.
“As a result of our federal system of government, however, state and local police officers, unlike federal officers, have much more contact with vehicles for reasons related to the operation of vehicles themselves. All States require vehicles to be registered and operators to be licensed. States and localities have enacted extensive and detailed codes regulating the condition and manner in which motor vehicles may be operated on public streets and highways.” Id., at 440-441.
I would not draw from the language of either Cady or of South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364 (1976), the conclusion which the plurality draws today that “ ‘inherent mobility’ cannot alone justify the automobile exception, since the Court has sometimes approved warrantless searches in which the automobile’s mobility was irrelevant.” Ante, at 424. Logically, it seems to me that the conclusion to be drawn from Cady and Opperman is that one need not demonstrate that a particular automobile was capable of being moved, but that automobiles as a class are inherently mobile, and a defendant seeking to suppress evidence obtained from an automobile should not be heard to say that this particular automobile had broken down, was in a parking lot under the supervision *441of the police, or the like. Thus, I continue to adhere to the view expressed by Justice Blacicmun :
“If ‘contraband goods concealed and illegally transported in an automobile or other vehicle may be searched for without a warrant,' Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 153 (1925), then, in my view, luggage and similar containers found in an automobile may be searched for contraband without a warrant. The luggage, like the automobile transporting it, is mobile. And the expectation of privacy in a suitcase found in the car is probably not significantly greater than the expectation of privacy in a locked glove compartment.
“In my view, it would be better to adopt a clear-cut rule to the effect that a warrant should not be required to seize and search any personal property found in an automobile that may in turn be seized and searched without a warrant pursuant to Carroll and Chambers.” Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753, 769, 772 (1979) (Blackmun, J., dissenting).
The proper application of the automobile exception would uphold the search conducted by the California Highway Patrol officers in this case inasmuch as the plurality acknowledges that the officers could constitutionally open the tailgate of the station wagon and then open the car’s luggage compartment. Ante, at 428.
The plurality, however, concludes that the opening of the two plastic garbage bags which the officers found in the luggage compartment is unconstitutional. In so doing, the plurality relies oh its earlier decision in Arkansas v. Sanders, supra, and rejects the argument that the search of the garbage bags should, at a minimum, fall within the exception noted in footnote 13 of the Sanders opinion. There, the Court had explained:
“Not all containers and packages found by police dur*442ing the course of a search will deserve the full protection of the Fourth Amendment. Thus, some containers (for example a kit of burglar tools or a gun case) by their very nature cannot support any reasonable expectation of privacy because their contents can be inferred from their outward appearance. Similarly, in some cases the contents of a package will be open to 'plain view,’ thereby obviating the need for a warrant. See Harris v. United States, 390 U. S. 234, 236 (1968) (per curiam)” 442 U. S., at 764-765, n. 13.
It seems to me that the search conducted by the Highway Patrol officers falls squarely within the above exception. This is revealed by an examination of the events which prompted the search of the luggage compartment in the first place — events which are conspicuously absent from the recitation of the facts in the plurality opinion. Prior to opening the tailgate of the car, the Highway Patrol officers had already discovered marihuana in the passenger compartment of the car. While the officers were retrieving this marihuana and other drug paraphernalia from the front of the car, petitioner stated: “What you are looking for is in the back.” Only then did an officer open the luggage compartment of the station wagon and discover the two plastic garbage bags being used to wrap the blocks of marihuana. One of the officers then testified that he was aware that contraband was often wrapped in this fashion — a fact of which all those who watch the evening news are surely well aware. Given these factors, particularly the petitioner’s statement, it seems to me that petitioner could have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of the garbage bags. Surely, given all the circumstances, the contents of the garbage bags “could be inferred from their outward appearance.”
The present case aptly illustrates the problems inherent in the Fourth Amendment analysis adopted by the Court in the past two decades. Rather than apply the automobile excep*443tion to a situation such as the present one, the Court in United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977), and Sanders, supra, attempted to limit that exception so as not to include certain, but not all, containers found within an automobile. Apparently, the plurality today decides that distinguishing between containers found in a car is too difficult a task and accordingly denudes the language found in footnote 13 of Sanders of most of its meaning. It does so evidently in search of a workable rule to govern automobile searches. I seek such a workable rule as well, but unlike the plurality I feel that such a rule cannot be found as long as the Court continues in the direction in which it is headed. Instead, I would return to the rationale of Carroll and Chambers and hold that a warrant should not be required to seize and search any personal property found in an automobile that may in turn be constitutionally seized and searched without a warrant. I would not abandon this reasonably “bright line” in search of another.
But I think that probably any search for “bright lines” short of overruling Mapp v. Ohio is apt to be illusory. Our entire profession is trained to attack “bright lines” the way hounds attack foxes. Acceptance by the courts of arguments that one thing is the “functional equivalent” of the other, for example, soon breaks down what might have been a bright line into a blurry impressionistic pattern.
If city court clerks who are not trained in the law satisfy the warrant requirement of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, and if a defendant may attack the validity of a warrant on a motion to suppress, it seems to me that little is lost in the way of the “core values” of the Fourth Amendment as made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth if Mapp v. Ohio is overruled. This will not establish a bright line except to the extent that it makes clear that the exclusionary rule is not applicable to the States. And it will leave to the Federal Government, with its generally more highly trained law enforcement personnel, the problems of wrestling with this *444Court’s twisting and turning as it makes decisional law applying the Fourth Amendment, rather than forcing the 50 States, with their widely varying conditions and greater traditional responsibility for prevention of serious crime, to engage in the burdensome and frequently futile efforts which are necessary to predict the “correct” result in a particular case.