Court Opinion

ID: 9617014
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:51:23.507701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:04.635766
License: Public Domain

*489WILKINS, Justice:
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent, believing this search was not proper as an inventory search. In Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 61 L.Ed.2d 235 (1979), on an informant’s information that defendant would arrive aboard an airplane at the Municipal Airport, Little Rock, Arkansas, and had a green suitcase containing marijuana, police officers placed the airport under surveillance. These officers watched as defendant retrieved this suitcase from the airline baggage service and put it in the trunk of a taxicab in which he rode for several blocks before the officers stopped the vehicle. They asked the cab driver to open the vehicle’s trunk and without asking permission of defendant opened this unlocked suitcase and found marijuana. Defendant was charged with the crime of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver in violation of Ark.Stat.Ann., § 82-2617 (1976). Before trial in state court, defendant moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the suitcase as violative of his rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, Constitution of the United States, and the trial court denied his motion. Defendant was convicted, and appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court which reversed, ruling that there had been an unlawful search of the suitcase. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed.
I believe it wise to quote somewhat extensively from the majority opinion in Sanders, authored by Mr. Justice Powell, as it constitutes a statement of principles which govern Fourth Amendment violations that focus on the warrant requirement of this Amendment as it applies to personal luggage taken from a vehicle.
Although the general principles applicable to claims of Fourth Amendment violations are well settled, litigation over requests for suppression of highly relevant evidence continues to occupy much of the attention of courts at all levels of the state and federal judiciary. Court and law enforcement officials often find it difficult to discern the proper application of these principles to individual cases, because the circumstances giving rise to suppression requests can vary almost infinitely. Moreover, an apparently small difference in the factual situation frequently is viewed as a controlling difference in determining Fourth Amendment rights. The present case presents an example. Only two Terms ago, we held that a locked footlocker could not lawfully be searched without a warrant, even though it had been loaded into the trunk of an automobile parked at a curb. United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, [97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538] (1977). In earlier cases, on the other hand, the Court sustained the constitutionality of war-rantless searches of automobiles and their contents under what had become known as the “automobile exception” to the warrant requirement. See, e.g., Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, [90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 489] (1970); Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, [45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543] (1925). We thus are presented with the task of determining whether the warrantless search of respondent’s suitcase falls on the Chadwick or the Chambers/Carroll side of the Fourth Amendment line. Although in a sense this is a linedrawing process, it must be guided by established principles. [442 U.S. at 757, 99 S.Ct. at 2589]
The Court continues, with an important reminder that “(i)n the ordinary case ... a search of private property must be both reasonable and pursuant to a properly issued search warrant. The mere reasonableness of a search, assessed in the light of the surrounding circumstances, is not a substitute for the judicial warrant required under the Fourth Amendment.” 442 U.S. at 758, 99 S.Ct. at 2590 (emphasis added). The Court then acknowledges that there are “... a few ‘jealously and carefully drawn’ exceptions (quoting from Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 499, 78 S.Ct. 1253, 1257, 2 L.Ed.2d 1514 (1958)) (which) provide for those cases where the societal costs of obtaining a warrant, such as danger to law officers or the risk of loss or destruction of evidence, outweigh the reasons for prior recourse to a neutral magistrate.” 442 U.S. at 759, 99 S.Ct. at 2591.
*490The Court then pursues the automobile exception by saying that “(o)ne of the circumstances in which the Constitution does not require a search warrant is when the police stop an automobile on the street or highway because they have probable cause to believe it contains contraband or evidence of a crime,” 442 U.S. at 760, 99 S.Ct. at 2591, but concludes by holding that personal luggage taken from an automobile does not fit within that exception. Its clear expression is:
In sum, we hold that the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment applies to personal luggage taken from an automobile to the same degree it applies to such luggage in other locations. Thus, insofar as the police are entitled to search such luggage without a warrant, their actions must be justified under some exception to that warrant requirement other than that applicable to automobiles stopped on the highway. Where-as in the present case-the police, without endangering themselves or risking loss of the evidence lawfully have detained one suspected of criminal activity and secured his suitcase, they should delay the search thereof until after judicial approval has been obtained. In this way, constitutional rights of suspects to prior judicial review of searches will be fully protected. [442 U.S. at 766, 99 S.Ct. at 2594]
I believe that Sanders and Chadwick, ante, control here on this critical point. These cases emphasize a more elevated status of protection that luggage enjoys than other items in an automobile because. “(u)nlike an automobile, whose primary function is transportation, luggage is intended as a repository of personal effects. In sum, a person’s expectations of privacy in personal luggage are substantially greater than in an automobile,” Chadwick, 433 U.S. at 13, 97 S.Ct. at 2484, and “. . . a suitcase taken from an automobile stopped on the highway is not necessarily attended by any lesser expectation of privacy than is associated with luggage taken from other locations. One is not less inclined to place private, personal possessions in a suitcase merely because the suitcase is to be carried in an automobile rather than transported by other means or temporarily checked or stored.” Sanders, 442 U.S. at 764, 99 S.Ct. at 2593.
I do not agree with the majority opinion’s statement that South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1976) is dispositive here and that Chadwick and Sanders do not apply. Opperman does not address the significant matter involved here of personal luggage and Chadwick and Sanders do. These last two cases state the relevant law on this point and will not allow, in my opinion, standard inventory procedures of an automobile’s contents, even though unaccompanied by an investigatory impulse, to be catapulted into a permissible search of personal luggage just because that luggage happens to come from or is identified with an automobile.
I now discuss another matter, viz., whether defendant consented to this search of his suitcase. Because the District Court made no findings on this point of consent, or addressed it at all in the ruling from the bench, and the issue is critical, I believe we should remand for that Court to make a determination concerning this matter, the testimony of which has already been taken and is in the transcript. See United States v. Griffin, 530 F.2d 739 (7th Cir.1976), for a good statement on the law of consent generally and where the Court specifically notes: “The existence and voluntariness of consent is a question of fact... . ” Id. at 742.
One final matter should be mentioned for clarification. Though the' District Court stated from the bench in ruling on the motion to suppress, that “. . . the search of the luggage was reasonable . . . particularly in view of the fact that there was a representation (that) there was a gun in the luggage ... ”, the State on appeal does not pursue this point, and I believe properly so, as there is no evidentiary basis under the facts of this case that the “immediately dangerous instrumentality” exception would lie. See Chadwick, ante, 433 U.S. 15, n. 9, 97 S.Ct. 2485, n. 9, 53 L.Ed.2d 538.
MAUGHAN, J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of WILKINS, J.