Court Opinion

ID: 9484088
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:40:05.329835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:00.607609
License: Public Domain

WIGGINS, Circuit Judge, specially
concurring:
I write separately to express my disapproval of this court’s decision in United States v. Turner, 926 F.2d 883 (9th Cir.1991), which, to my mind, unnecessarily and illegitimately expanded the search incident to arrest exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.
The search incident to arrest exception to the warrant requirement was enunciated in Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969). In Chimel, the Supreme Court specifically stated:
[I]t is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee’s person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. And the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary items must, of course, be governed by a like rule. A gun on a table or in a drawer in front of one who is arrested can be as dangerous to the arresting officer as one concealed in the clothing of the person arrested.
Id. at 763, 89 S.Ct. at 2040. The Chimel exception primarily is justified by two concerns — officer safety and preservation of evidence.
Turner, however, expanded the search incident to arrest exception beyond the logical boundaries of the rationale of Chimel. Specifically, the Turner court upheld as a valid search incident to arrest the search of the defendant’s bedroom after the defendant had been arrested, handcuffed, and removed from the room.
Adopting a two pronged test first enunciated in United States v. Fleming, 677 F.2d *1054602 (7th Cir.1982),1 the Turner court first inquired into whether the searched area was within the arrestee’s immediate control when he was arrested. Turner, 926 F.2d at 887. Because Turner was on the bed with the baggies of cocaine when arrested, the court had little difficulty in concluding that it was. The Turner court second inquired into whether events occurring after the arrest but before the search made the search unreasonable. Because of the concern for officer safety, the court concluded that they had not.
The officers handcuffed Turner and took him into the next room out of a concern for safety. We cannot say that these concerns were unfounded, for they had already discovered a concealed weapon beneath the bedding. They did not take him far away or delay for long before conducting the search. Under the circumstances, we cannot find the search that revealed the baggies of cocaine inconsistent with Chimel....
Id. at 888.
Chimel, however, specifically indicated that the availability and scope of a search incident to arrest should not be expanded beyond the reasons for allowing it. Chimel, 395 U.S. at 763, 89 S.Ct. at 2040. Because neither of the concerns motivating Chimel — officer safety and preservation of evidence — are present once a defendant has been arrested, handcuffed, and removed from the room subsequently searched, it seems clear that Turner did just that. Although I share Justice Scalia’s doubts regarding the validity of the “general rule” that a warrant is always required under the Fourth Amendment, see California v. Acevedo, — U.S. -, -, 111 S.Ct. 1982, 1993, 114 L.Ed.2d 619 (1991) (Scalia, J., concurring), so long as that “general rule” is the law, where there is no danger either to the arresting officers or to the evidence in waiting for a search warrant, then the arresting officers should be required to do so.
I therefore recommend that Turner be overruled. Until that time, however, because we are bound by Turner and because, as the opinion points out, this case squarely fits within the two pronged test there adopted, and may even be valid under Chimel, I concur in the conclusion that the search of the desk incident to the arrest of Mr. Tarazón was valid.

. In Fleming, the Seventh Circuit permitted a search incident to arrest to include the search of paper bag the defendant was carrying at the time of arrest even though the search occurred after the defendant had been handcuffed.