Court Opinion

ID: 9453848
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:25:50.630787+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:49.828975
License: Public Domain

KILEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent. The issues which this court must resolve in deciding this case are whether petitioner voluntarily consented to the search of his home which produced a bottle of poison introduced as evidence against him, or whether the search, if not consented to, was nevertheless justifiable as incidental to petitioner’s arrest. In my view the record now before us does not contain sufficient information to enable us to make an intelligent determination of these issues.
The theory on which petitioner relied in his brief in this court is that the consent to search his house, which he signed on March 15, was invalid because it was signed, without proper warning, while petitioner was under arrest. During the oral argument the prosecuting attorney stated that the record of petitioner’s state trial showed that the *756search of petitioner’s home which yielded the bottle of poison was made on March 16, and not on March 15 when the consent had been signed.
A review of the trial court record shows that the police officer who found the bottle of poison testified unequivocally that the bottle was found on March 16 and the bottle itself was labeled with the policeman’s initials and the date “3-16-61.”
In the light of the strong indication in the record that the search was made on March 16, we should not ignore the significance of this pertinent information for the determination of the questions before us.
The questions of law that must be considered by us are: was the consent to a search of petitioner’s home signed on March 15 an effective waiver of petitioner’s Fourth Amendment rights with regard to the March 16 search; and was the search made on March 16 incidental to the arrest on March 15.
In order for a search to be justifiable as incident to an arrest it must be contemporaneous in time and place with the arrest. If the search in this case was made one day after the arrest, it was not made contemporaneously with the arrest and was therefore not incidental to the arrest. Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 84 S.Ct. 88, 11 L.Ed.2d 777; United States v. Harvey, 7th Cir. July 5, 1968, 397 F.2d 526.
The district court must decide in the first instance the factual question whether there was a valid consent to the March 16 search. The government has the burden of proving by clear and positive evidence that an unequivocal, specific, intelligent consent for the search has been given. United States v. Smith, 2 Cir., 308 F.2d 657; Channel v. United States, 9 Cir., 285 F.2d 217; Judd v. United States, 89 U.S.App.D.C. 64, 190 F.2d 649.
The most that can be gleaned from the record before us is that petitioner met the police outside his home on March 15, 1961. He was escorted inside where police told him he was under arrest and asked him to sign a consent to search his home. He signed the consent. A bottle of poison was found twenty-four hours later during a search of his home. Important questions of fact left unresolved include: what did the consent signed by petitioner say; was there an initial search made on March 15 when the consent was signed, or was the search on the 16th the first to be made; was petitioner aware, at the time of signing the consent, that the search would be delayed or that more than one search would be made, or was he under the impression that he was agreeing to a single immediate search; was petitioner aware that the March 16 search was being made; was he in custody when it was made; was he represented by counsel at the time the March 16 search was made, and if so was his lawyer aware of the consent and of the March 16 search.
It is my opinion that this court cannot, without the answers to at least some of these questions, determine that the state has met its burden of proving that there was an unequivocal and specific consent to the March 16 search. We cannot speculate or presume in favor of the waiver of a vital constitutional right.
I would retain jurisdiction and remand with directions to the trial court to conduct further hearings and to make additional findings of fact, to be certified to us, in order that we may make a sound determination of the issues before us. See Willing v. Binenstock, 302 U.S. 272, 277, 58 S.Ct. 175, 82 L.Ed. 248.