Court Opinion

ID: 9489150
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:07:10.586833+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:21.506208
License: Public Domain

PORFILIO, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I agree with the court’s Fourth Amendment analysis, as far as it goes, but I do not join the decision to avoid consideration of the issues relating to the government’s use of a thermal imager. Having given notice to the parties that the court was going to hear “the entire Fourth Amendment question,” including the use of the thermal imager, and having been treated to excellent arguments on both sides addressing only the use of the thermal imager, I believe the court makes a mistake to avoid the issue.
If en banc consideration is to be devoted to securing the uniformity of our decisions or to resolving “question[s] of exceptional importance,” as required by Fed.RApp.P. 35(a), the court’s decision here does neither. The resolution reached by the majority rests upon a routine Fourth Amendment analysis already undertaken by the panel. Not only was the panel’s decision routine, but it also was totally in keeping with this Circuit’s precedents. Moreover, no fair stretch of the imagination will allow the issue resolved here, which takes its place in the choked ranks of search and seizure cases, to assume the garb of an exceptionally important question.
In the last analysis, then, the decision was reached because the majority simply disagrees with the way in which the panel analyzed the case. To me, that is an improper and unwarranted reason for action by the en banc court.
Yet, the issue the court chooses to overlook is precisely the kind of conundrum that meets the important question test of Rule 35(a). Therefore, I would have reached it, and I cannot join the decision not to do so.
Having arrived at that conclusion, I could indulge my ego and review the thermal imaging issue on my own. I choose not to do so because of the futility of the effort, except to note that within the very narrow facts of this case, I could not conclude use of the imager constituted a search within the limits of the Fourth Amendment.