Court Opinion

ID: 9752942
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:46:37.713446+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:26.083008
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Watkins, J.:
I would reverse the Decree of Forfeiture of the Court below for the reason that the evidence obtained was without warrant in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and so constituted illegal search and seizure, and the defendant’s motion to suppress should have been sustained. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 81 S. Ct. 1684, 6 L. Ed. 2d 1081 (June 1961).
The officers were observing the building and the automobile for four days and during the entire time had probable cause to obtain the necessary warrant. This could have been at any time during the four days without interrupting surveillance and to say, as the majority opinion does, that “it would have been unreasonable to expect the officers to go some distance away to obtain a warrant for search and seizure when the moving automobile, within a few minutes, probably would have been out of reach of the officers,” is a tortured interpretation of the facts.