Court Opinion

ID: 9471261
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:28:11.258603+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:19.464086
License: Public Domain

JAMES DICKSON PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
I concur in that portion of the majority opinion which affirms the Upchurch conviction. I dissent from that portion which affirms the Poole conviction. I believe the evidence seized from the trunk of Poole’s automobile was the product of an unconstitutional search and seizure and should have been suppressed.
My reasons can be summarized very briefly. The majority concedes the warrant was fatally defective, so that it did not authorize the search. With commendable candor the government has conceded on this appeal that the Poole search and seizure is most properly, and possibly only, defensible by the adoption and application of a “good *676faith” exception to the exclusionary rule. I agree with the majority that we should not adopt such a rule in this case (though we possibly differ as to the reasons).
That leaves only the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement— specifically the special application of that general principle embodied in the “automobile exception.” And that exception — if we are faithfully to apply it — simply does not fit here, even under its recently expanded and clarified scope in United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982).
There is no doubt that the probable cause element of the exigency exception existed here. Probable cause abounded, either to support the issuance of a warrant or to support a warrantless search if exigency then demanded it. The majority opinion easily demonstrates the existence of probable cause, but essentially then rests decision upon that element alone.
But here there was no exigency, in conjunction with probable cause, to support a warrantless search. That there was no exigency (any special considerations attaching to automobiles momentarily aside) is shown most clearly by the fact that the searching officer considered there was none. He went dutifully — taking the time required and accepting whatever risks might have been assumed to arise from the lapse of time and the lack of surveillance during his absence — to procure a warrant. He returned to execute a warrant, not to conduct a warrantless search that he then properly deemed to be reasonable because of exigency manifest in the circumstances. Any exigency justifying this search and seizure must be one reconstructed post-hoc by an officer who could not conceivably have acted upon any notion that exigency existed at the critical time.
Reserving the difficult conceptual question whether exigencies objectively present but not subjectively acted upon at the time of a search may ever be drawn upon after the fact to validate a search not otherwise valid, it is obvious that here no exigency existed in either sense — unless it be found in the special quality of the automobile as the target of search. I believe it cannot be.
United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982) has not broadened the automobile exception to the point that an automobile may be searched without a valid warrant in all its parts and under any circumstances simply because it is an automobile. See Ross, 456 U.S. at 800, 804-09, 102 S.Ct. at 2160, 2162-65 (upholding a warrantless search of vehicle stopped on the highway by police who had probable cause to believe vehicle was transporting contraband); see also Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 461, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2035, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971) (“The word ‘automobile’ is not a talisman in whose presence the Fourth Amendment fades away and disappears.”). Practical considerations of the automobile’s ubiquity in our society, of its high degree of mobility, and of the way in which persons in contemporary society commonly view its low level of “privacy” define the present, recently expanded contours of the automobile exception. But limits on the “exception” remain. Generally diminished privacy expectations while an automobile is in use on public ways are justifiably heightened once the automobile comes off public ways into the residential driveway or garage. Mobility — the hallmark of the special exigency associated with the vehicle — becomes less inherently an aspect of its nature when it is parked within the residential curtilage. Cases recognizing the importance of the vehicle’s location — whether on public ways or on private residential property — see United States v. Bradshaw, 490 F.2d 1097 (4th Cir. 1974), have not been displaced by any new charter emanating from Ross.1
*677In this circuit, Bradshaw remains the law and continues to extend general fourth amendment protections to the automobile, no matter how much the target of suspicion, so long as it sits at rest on private residential property of its owner — at least until its departure from those premises appears imminent. Id. at 1103-04. That was essentially the factual situation presented to the officer here: an automobile, rightly under suspicion, but at rest and not manifestly on the brink of departure, on its owner’s residential premises. Under our precedents I am satisfied that if this case were looked at solely as an “automobile éxception” case, this search would not be upheld.
I suspect that what has lured the majority into an encroachment on fourth amendment core protections of the home and curtilage is the unfortunate aspect of the invalid warrant. This case affords a prime example of police and magistrate “good faith” error in procuring and issuing a warrant whose “technical” invalidity is then seized upon to challenge the search. In consequence, it is a case quintessentially made for the sort of “good faith exception” that some think is now needed and constitutionally justified to curb excessive protections being accorded criminals such as Poole by application of the exclusionary rule. The government in this case — as earlier indicated — has candidly conceded in oral argument that in its view this is the most defensible basis for upholding the Poole search.
I think we should forthrightly face up to this as the only possible basis for holding this a valid search. The government has formally urged this course upon us. Squarely considering it, I would decline to uphold the search on this basis.
I do not now see how a “good faith exception” — even if confined narrowly to a very few circumstances such as “technically” invalid warrants, see Illinois v. Gates, -U.S.-,-, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2339, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983) (White, J., concurring) — is compatible with and adequately protective of the genius of the fourth amendment. If such a means were made readily available to validate improper warrants, I am satisfied that its effect over time would be completely to eviscerate the general in terrorem effect of the designedly rigorous warrant requirements. Most “bad” warrants must result from “good faith” bumbling under the interpretation I am persuaded would be given to “good faith” in this context. Human nature and the incessant pressures to avoid undue protection of criminals — particularly those now engaged in the drug traffic that ravages our society, see Turner v. United States, 396 U.S. 398, 426-27, 90 S.Ct. 642, 657-58, 24 L.Ed.2d 610 (1969) (Black, J., dissenting)— would, I fear, inevitably lead to that result.
I would not uphold the search here by adopting in this circuit a good faith exception, as the government — essentially resting its case on our willingness to do so — has urged that we do. Because the search was not otherwise justified by warrant or any recognized exception to the warrant requirement, I would hold it invalid.

. The sole question addressed in Ross was “the extent to which police officers — who have legitimately stopped an automobile and who have probable cause to believe that contraband is concealed somewhere within it — may conduct a probing search of compartments and containers within the vehicle whose contents are not in plain view.” 456 U.S. at 800, 102 S.Ct. at 2159. The Ross Court’s reliance on and extensive discussion of Carroll v. United *677States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925), makes clear that Ross was essentially concerned with the problem created by “automobiles in transit,” 456 U.S. at 806, 102 S.Ct. at 2163.