Court Opinion

ID: 9466933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:33:09.039967+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:03.177236
License: Public Domain

TANG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent. In Part II of the majority opinion, Judge Wallace upholds the warrantless search of the paper bag on the ground that Mackey did not have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in such a bag. The majority’s analysis in reaching that result inverts what is the correct analytic approach to this issue. Implicit in the majority’s analysis is the presumption that the burden is on Mackey to show a reasonable expectation of privacy entitling him to the Fourth Amendment’s protection of a search warrant, as though he had to show that the police needed a search warrant rather than the government’s having to show a warrant was not required. For further elucidation of the reasons for my dissent, see Judge Bazelon’s excellent dissenting opinion in United States v. Ross, No. 79-1624 (D.C. Cir. April 17, 1980).
Normally searches of private property must be performed pursuant to a search warrant. Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 758, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 2590, 61 L.Ed.2d 235 (1979). Searches conducted without a warrant “are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 514, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). Each of these exceptions is carefully drawn and is to be strictly construed. The burden is on those seeking the exemption to show the need for it.
One might claim that the search of the bag was part of the search of the car and so was within the automobile exception. But this is erroneous. See Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. at 765 n.13, 99 S.Ct. at 2593 n.13 (applicability of warrant requirement to searches of containers does not depend on whether they are seized from automobiles). And, in any event, the burden still is on the government to show that such a container search would be within the automobile exception. Cf. Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. at 763, 99 S.Ct. at 2593.
Since the search was not an automobile exception search, the person is protected by the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment unless another exception is clearly shown to be applicable. The burden is on the government to show an exception to the warrant requirement; it is not on the person to show an entitlement to the protection of the warrant requirement.
The majority opinion today and the district judge below places on Mackey the burden of showing he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the bag and so deserved the warrant safeguard. But the burden should have been on the government. Here the government barely presented any justification for excepting this search from the warrant requirement, let alone carried its burden. It merely argued that Arkansas v. Sanders applies only to luggage. As even the majority states, that argument is incorrect. If this is to be a new exception, the government presented neither evidence nor argument about what compelling societal reasons justify this new exception. The applicability of other existing exceptions is doubtful. Mackey and his co-defendant had been arrested before the closed bag was discovered and seized. Thus there was no danger of evidence being lost. The government does not argue this was a search incident to a lawful arrest. Nor were the contents of the bag in plain view. The container was not of a type whose outward appearance reveals its contents.
The government does not contest Mackey’s standing to challenge the warrantless search of his own personal property, although from all the discussion of “reasona*689ble expectation of privacy” one might think that standing was the issue here.
The majority’s analysis effectively reads Arkansas v. Sanders as creating, as it were, a “container exception” to the automobile exception. That is, warrantless searches of automobiles is the antecedent condition into which the Supreme Court has interjected a container exception: for searching containers a warrant is required. But since this is an “exception,” the burden is on the one claiming it to show the particular container involved is within the exception. This reasoning is erroneous. Arkansas v. Sanders takes searches of containers out of the automobile exception. Under that case, warrantless searches of containers — however humble — must be justified by those seeking to uphold the search.
The majority opinion today and the district court below in ruling on the suppression motion does not allocate the burden correctly between Mackey and the government. Since this flaw substantially affected the suppression ruling and since the use of the evidence at trial was not harmless error, I would reverse and remand for a new suppression hearing and trial.