Court Opinion

ID: 9462493
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:42:28.382888+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:37.159647
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The police inventory of the currency claimed to have been taken into custody for safekeeping was a search under the Fourth Amendment. The invasion of Lacey’s right to privacy with respect to the serial numbers of the currency can be justified only if the intrusion was reasonable. To say that the copying of the serial numbers was a mere “second look” at property which had been fully exposed to law enforcement officers at the time of the initial taking, is a fiction in which I am unwilling to indulge. Moreover, unlike the identification of a particular car, which has been found to be reasonable in light of the need to protect the police against groundless claims for “lost” property, the identification of each bill served no reasonable police purpose. Given the fungible nature of money, Lacey’s property claim against the police was for $700, not for the particular bills seized. United States v. Lawson, 487 F.2d 468 (8th Cir. 1973), is controlling and should be followed.
Bit by bit, over the last few years, we have eroded the protections of the Fourth Amendment. The erosion is often justified on the grounds that the guilty should not go free because of a technicality. In using this rationale, we close our eyes to the daily erosion of the privacy of innocent citizens; erosion which ordinarily does not come to the public’s attention and which the citizen is largely powerless to prevent. One day soon, if the erosion continues, the Fourth Amendment will be a “dead letter,” the rights of our citizens will have been diminished, and the Republic placed in danger.