Court Opinion

ID: 9638338
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:41:28.032799+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:05.713216
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
As the opinion candidly concedes, reversal here requires us to do what the Supreme Court has so far carefully refrained from doing, namely, to overrule Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145, 67 S.Ct. 1098, 91 L.Ed. 1399. Since here the search was so much more restricted than that in the Harris case, we must in fact go further and repudiate what, as it seems to me, has been clearly permissible police *736activity in the past.1 There is, indeed some irony in the fact that the long delay in the prosecution is what has 'given this guilty defendant his chance; at the time the search was made in 1943 or the first motion to suppress was denied in 1944, he would have been given short shrift judicially. But, even so, we have not been oversuccessful in attempting “to embrace the exhilarating opportunity of anticipating a doctrine which may be in the womb of time, but whose birth is distant” 2 and I think it would be the part of wisdom to desist here, lest we “confound confusion in a field already replete with complexities.” 3 This seems particularly -so in view of the circumstance that proof of the crime charged in the first count was overwhelming and uncontradicted on the facts; yet reversal (for retrial) is also found necessary as to that.
In frankness I must add -that, to me, a search within the limits here disclosed seems in the interest of -justice, rather than otherwise. Since a warrant had been obtained for the arrest of the accused, it is thought that he has- had all the benefit which an ex parte action by, usually, a minor federal official, a United States commissioner, can afford. The -formality of signing an additional legal document, a warrant for search, will not add more of deliberation or .concern for individual rights ,to the police activity. It is not a full answer to say that the officers must, a fortiori, have had time to procure such a warrant, for that overlooks the practical problems of foreseeability of all eventualities which they then have to face. Involved is not only the question of “identifying the property,” and of “particularly describing” it in advance, F.R.Cr.P. 41(c); and compare the former 18 U.S.C.A. §§ 613, 616 — I hope this becomes as simple a matter as my brothers indicate, although I have some misgivings — but the whole problem of whether the officers are to be confined to looking' for what they already know about or whether, instead, they may not remove what is before them in the culprit’s place of business and use it to show the extent and ramifications of a criminal course of conduct they had already uncovered. This decision must mean quite simply that no search without a warrant of even a business office can ever be made unless the arrest can also be made without a warrant. Since the pressure of public opinion compels police officers to secure convictions, at least of the obviously guilty, the practical answer will be to arrange for such arrests and such searches only, resulting in rather less than more protection of the individual in the long run. Moreover, while search of a man’s home is a serious infringement-of personal liberties, I do not believe a like view should be taken of a man’s place of business where acts of crime have already been found to have been committed by him.

 See our analysis of past precedents in Matthews v. Correa, 2 Cir., 135 F.2d 534, and United States v. Lindenfeld, 2 Cir., 142 F.2d 829, certiorari denied 323 U.S. 761, 65 S.Ct. 89, 89 L.Ed. 609, relied on in the Harris case, 331 U.S. at pages 151, 152, 154, 67 S.Ct. at pages 1101, 1102, 1103, 91 L.Ed. 1399; and note the recent reinstatement of Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L. Ed. 543, 39 A.L.R. 790, in Brinegar v. United States, 69 S.Ct. 1302; and see 18 U.S.C.A. § 2236, formerly § 53a.

 L. Hand, J., dissenting in Spector Motor Service v. Walsh, 2 Cir., 139 F.2d 809, 823, judgment vacated in Spector Motor Service v. McLaughlin, 323 U.S. 101, 65 S.Ct. 152, 89 L.Ed. 101.

 Vinson, C. J., dissenting in Trupiane v. United States, 334 U.S. 699, 716, 69 S.Ct. 1229, 92 L.Ed. 1663.