Court Opinion

ID: 9465665
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:52:38.662438+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:18.397977
License: Public Domain

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in parts I and III of the opinion and in the result reached in part II. I agree with my brethren when they say, near the end of their opinion, “We need only decide whether the fourth amendment allows the boarding of a pleasure craft, sighted initially in intercoastal waters, as to which officers have a reasonable suspicion of a customs violation — a boarding that occurred only after an unsatisfactory document cheek on shore” (my emphasis). And I agree with their answer: The boarding and what ensued did not violate the defendant’s constitutional rights. But I disagree respectfully with the necessity of the tacking and hauling by which they arrive at that point and many of the sightings they take along the way. Because these passages have potentially dangerous impact on fourth amendment rights, I think it necessary to set forth my own views on how the fourth amendment applies to official action on navigable waters lest its bulwarks be imperilled by the hazards of the sea.
My brethren assume at the outset that the fourth amendment protects seafarers as well as those who fly planes or operate vehicles or live on land. I would again emphasize what they only suggest before they turn to search the horizon for exceptions: those aboard vessels are protected by the fourth amendment, and no vessel may be stopped or boarded or searched except in compliance with its requirements. Without a warrant, law enforcement officers may not even stop, and, a fortiori, may not board or search a vessel unless the action is reasonable by fourth amendment standards.
With the fourth amendment as their lodestar, the majority then appropriately sail on to explore whether exceptions to the requirement of a warrant justify the actions customs officials took with respect to Whit-mire’s Nova. They correctly note that the border search doctrine, in limited or extended form, allows official searches without warrant and without reasonable suspicion. Subject only to scrutiny of the manner in which it is conducted, the search of people or things that cross our borders is “reasonable” for fourth amendment purposes even in the absence of probable cause or a warrant merely by virtue of the fact of border crossing. Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 1973, 413 U.S. 266, 272, 93 S.Ct. 2535, 2539, 37 L.Ed.2d 596, 602; United States v. Soria, 5 Cir. 1975, 519 F.2d 1060, 1063. Therefore, if an American vessel is known or reasonably suspected to have come directly from seas beyond the three-mile limit,1 the border search doctrine validates a complete search of the vessel even without a modicum of suspicion of wrongdoing. See, e. g., United States v. Ingham, 5 Cir. 1974, 502 F.2d 1287, cert. denied, 1975, 421 U.S. 911, 95 S.Ct. 1566, 43 L.Ed.2d 777; United States v. Lonabaugh, 5 Cir. 1973, 494 F.2d 1257. Here, however, as my brethren state, the customs officials could not *1318reasonably have concluded that the defendants’ vessel had recently crossed an international border, and the later discovery that it had come directly from Bimini could not retroactively convert the customs officers’ actions into a valid border search.
At locations other than the border and its functional equivalents, both stops and searches are subject to strict limitations. In Almeida-Sanchez, supra, the Supreme Court held that searches by border patrols roving on land must be premised on probable cause, and in United States v. Ortiz, 1975, 422 U.S. 891, 95 S.Ct. 2585, 45 L.Ed.2d 623, the Court struck down a border patrol search without a warrant or probable cause at a fixed checkpoint that was not the functional equivalent of the border. We have held the Almeida-Sanchez precepts applicable to customs authorities. United States v. Brennan, supra, 538 F.2d at 719.
When we reach this point on our charts, we have reached the limit of permissible warrantless searches, absent the combination of probable cause and exigent circumstances. See, e. g., United States v. Cadena, 5 Cir. 1979, 588 F.2d 100 (on petition for rehearing); United States v. Weinrich, 5 Cir. 1978, 586 F.2d 481, 492-93. I emphasize the word “searches,” for government agents do have authority to take action less intrusive than a search without violating the fourth amendment.
Limited investigatory stops for routine document and safety checks without a warrant, or probable cause and exigency, have been held permissible.2 In United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 1975, 422 U.S. 873, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607, the Court held that officers on roving land patrol may stop vehicles “if they are aware of specific articulable facts, together with rational inferences from those facts, that reasonably warrant suspicion [of illegal activity].” 422 U.S. at 884, 95 S.Ct. at 2582, 45 L.Ed.2d at 618. We applied this principle to vessels in United States v. Williams, 5 Cir. 1977, 544 F.2d 807, where, however, we concluded that customs authorities had no power to board and search a houseboat moored at a marina four miles from open waters if there was neither any likelihood of a border crossing nor reasonable suspicion of any violation of law.
Finding no safe harbor in the border search doctrine, the majority abandon that tack and sail all too briefly with the Brignoni-Ponce doctrine. They conclude that the stop and interrogation of Whitmire and Williams were safely within the investigatory channel, but then retreat, finding no basis for boarding the docked vessel because the officers did not have “probable cause.” I do not see that probable cause to board is necessary if the officers had reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, not allayed by initial questioning. An “investigatory stop” as applied to a vessel embraces both stopping and boarding it for a routine document and safety check, cf. United States v. Williams, 5 Cir. 1979, 589 F.2d 210, 214; the majority agree that, had the customs agents overtaken defendants’ vessel before it moored, a boarding would have been permissible. I cannot place the same significance as apparently do they in the vessel’s newly assumed docked condition.
Here, within sight of shore, the majority turn back to sea and rely on the existence of “pure statutory authority” which, they assert, has been found “independently reasonable” for fourth amendment purposes as to “some searches on water” (emphasis supplied). I respectfully differ with them in this legal conclusion. The existence of a statutory provision such as 19 U.S.C. § 1581 authorizing law enforcement officials to do what they did is essential to the validity of their action. The statutory authority here is not challenged. But, however broad a *1319statutory grant of authority, it is limited by constitutional restraints.3 Cf. Almeida-Sanchez, supra; United States v. Cadena, 5 Cir. 1978, 585 F.2d 1252. Section 1581 does not create a sort of nautical exception to the fourth amendment.
United States v. Freeman, 5 Cir. 1978, 579 F.2d 942, on which my brethren rely, did not uphold a search on the basis of § 1581. Rather, the court there found a routine stop and boarding for a safety and document check fourth-amendment-reasonable, and the subsequent search justified by the plain view of hiding aliens. In United States v. Whitaker, 5 Cir. 1979, 592 F.2d 826, a majority of this panel extended the reasoning of Freeman to uphold the stopping and boarding of a vessel first sighted in “customs waters” but apprehended only after it had passed into inland waters.4 They noted then that, if the customs officers had initially sighted the vessel on inland waters, “which are frequented by many vessels having no apparent customs connections,” the result might have been different.
The different case is now before us, and I would conclude that, when a vessel is seen only on inland waters, and there is nothing to connect it with the border, customs authorities must have reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing to justify their intrusion on those enjoying this nation’s waterways just as is required before land or air travellers are stopped and questioned. I do not think the craft’s watery location of itself distinguishes a vessel from a land vehicle or a plane. The fourth amendment makes no such distinction.5 Moreover, I do not understand the majority’s explanation that even those who live aboard ships do not live in “a fixed location” on the water; automobiles and aircraft are equally mobile, and far less likely to serve as a permanent abode. Cf. United States v. Cadena, supra, 588 F.2d at 100. Those who sail our nation’s waterways are entitled to the same protection as those using its roads or airspace: freedom from unreasonable stops and searches.
My brethren attempt to minimize the intrusiveness of searches on the water by observing that “smugglers form the main class of sailors in whom the approach of . officers provokes anxiety.” The notion that only law-breakers need fear unlimited police action is at the root of all police state rationalization. The essence of the Bill of Rights is the protection even of wrongdoers. And those of us who have nothing to hide are guaranteed safety from the annoyance of intrusive police conduct even if it provokes only irritation and not anxiety.
Here, as in all the prior vessel search cases that have come before us, the search was successful; contraband was discovered. We have no way to know in how many cases vessels are stopped, the privacy of citizens is invaded, and nothing is found to be amiss. I would, therefore, strike the balance between individual privacy interests and governmental concerns differently from my brethren, at least when customs *1320authorities have no reason to believe a vessel is returning from a venture beyond American waters.
The principles that I deduce can, therefore, insofar as they are applicable here, be simply stated: when a vessel is seen only on inland waters, the customs officials may search it without probable cause only if they demonstrate reasonable grounds to believe a border crossing has taken place; they may make a limited investigatory stop and boarding if they can articulate specific facts that, together with logical inferences drawn therefrom, reasonably warrant their suspicion of illegal activity.6 The search here was not a valid border search, but it was justified as an investigatory stop prompted by reasonable suspicion of law violation under Brignoni-Ponce.
This is where my brethren began. At this point I would have ended.

. The three-mile limit establishes the boundary of the territorial sea. See United States v. Freeman, 5 Cir. 1978, 579 F.2d 942, 944. See also United States v. Ingham, 5 Cir. 1974, 502 F.2d 1287, 1290, cert. denied, 1975, 421 U.S. 911, 95 S.Ct. 1566, 43 L.Ed.2d 777; United States v. Hill, 5 Cir. 1970, 430 F.2d 129, 131.

. In Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., 1978, 436 U.S. 307, 98 S.Ct. 1816, 56 L.Ed.2d 305, the court refused to sanction inspections of private industrial premises for OSHA purposes. It recognized that some searches of “pervasively regulated businesses” and of “ ‘closely regulated’ industries ‘long subject to close supervision and inspection’ ” are valid sans warrant. Id. at 313, 98 S.Ct. at 1820-21, 56 L.Ed.2d at 311. I do not believe that merely sailing a vessel is sufficient to make every navigator subject to search or that helmsmen constitute an industry having “such a history of government oversight that no reasonable expectation of privacy . could exist.” See cases cited therein.

. There is superficial appeal in the observation that the statutes on which the customs officials now rely stem from laws enacted by the Congress that adopted the fourth amendment. This suggests that what was authorized by statute then is constitutional now without taking the slightest note of the many changes in fourth amendment interpretation that have since occurred, some commented on and others sought to be distinguished by the majority itself (e. g. the decision in Carroll v. United States).

. I concurred only in the result in Whitaker, due to my concern about apparently inconsistent language in Freeman and United States v. Williams, 5 Cir. 1977, 544 F.2d 807. The majority here in no way allay that concern. See note 6 infra.

. Except to the extent that circumstances determine what is reasonable with respect to the searching of each, I do not agree with the observation in footnote 32 that “maritime law enforcement practices” may be distinguished from “the random stops of automobiles recently prohibited in Delaware v. Prouse,” 1979,-U.S.-, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660. Even if 1 did agree that random stops of ships are likely valid although random stops of automobiles are prohibited, I would not speculate about these, nor about whether planes are more like automobiles than ships; I would trim sails and answer only the question presented, rather than dealing discursively with them and the other matters about which I feel constrained to comment.

. Of course, Coast Guard officers are authorized by statute to stop and board a vessel for a document and safety check, even in territorial waters. See 14 U.S.C. § 89(a). Cf. United States v. Warren, 5 Cir. en banc 1978, 578 F.2d 1058, 1065, upholding a stop and boarding on the high seas for safety and document checks, and “to look for obvious customs and narcotics violations.” The constitutionality of such discretionary stops, as well as those authorized in Freeman and Whitaker, supra, must be reexamined in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Delaware v. Prouse, 1979,-U.S. -, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660.