Court Opinion

ID: 9472385
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:58:39.07813+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:54.388256
License: Public Domain

MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
While I do not dissent from the holding, my essentially contemporaneous dissent in United States v. Porter, 738 F.2d 622, demonstrates why the rationale of the majority, deriving as it does from what I regard as an unsound reading of United States v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), does not command my support. Therefore, I concur specially to make clear my differences.
My reasons for doing so are the perceived exigencies evident here which were so indisputably lacking in Porter. The place of meeting between Litman and law enforcement officers was neutral ground, with the selection of which Litman appears to have had as much to do as those he was to meet. Porter, on the other hand, had accompanied her questioner to an airport police station.
Litman’s bags were first viewed and ren-. dered available for search at the moment of meeting, which coincided with arrest. Porter, on the other hand, was for a substan*140tial time previously in the company of the arresting officer, who had, by earlier consensual 1 search, satisfied himself that the threat of weapons did not exist. He also had never surrendered control of the bag in which cocaine was secreted, so far as the record demonstrates, following the consensual search, so any risk that Porter might destroy evidence had evaporated.
It is on those grounds, and not because of some supposed, but in my judgment non-existent doctrine excusing application of heretofore applicable Fourth Amendment principles, that I conclude that the warrantless search of Litman’s bags was justified by exigency.
HARRISON L. WINTER, Chief Judge, authorizes me to say that he concurs in this opinion.

. It does not appear to be seriously contested that arrest put an end to any continuing nature of the consent to search Porter’s bag.