Court Opinion

ID: 9658987
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:25:14.197548+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:02.694590
License: Public Domain

JONES, Justice
(dissenting).
I admit this is a close case. My dissent is based on an interpretation of one of the “warrantless” exceptions to the search and seizure rule rather than any disagreement with the rule or its recognized exceptions. In Daniels v. State, [Ms.], April 5, 1973, 290 Ala. 316, 276 So.2d 441, Mr. Justice Bloodworth, speaking for a unanimous court, set out the “warrantless” exceptions —a total of six — one of which is enumerated as the “plain view” exception. I believe the “plain view” exception to the warrant requirement is applicable to this case.
Admittedly, a vast majority of the cases applying this doctrine have dealt with situations in which the police have a warrant to search for specific objects and in so searching come across some other article, or where the police by inadvertence come across evidence while in “hot pursuit” or “incident to arrest”; but the “plain view” doctrine has a field of operation where the police officer, though not searching for evidence, nevertheless sees an incriminating object or substance.1
Here an extraneous valid reason for the officer’s presence existed; and, given the initial intrusion, the seizure of an object in plain view is consistent with the constitutional protection served by the warrant requirement if such seizure is based on probable cause. The existence of probable cause under the facts and circumstances of this case is, then, our point of difference.
It seems to me that the conduct of the defendant in attempting to secrete the two packages containing white powder in plain view of the police officer must be weighed in light of the total circumstances of the situation. Defendant was a passenger in the car that had just been stopped by a police officer. Immediately thereafter, almost as if by reflex action, the defendant transferred two cellophane packages from one hand to the other and then to his boot top. The officer’s testimony that he did not know what was in the packages does not distract from the suspicious circumstances generated by the defendant’s conduct.
The majority opinion stresses the point that the only testimony we have is the officer’s testimony that “it was a white substance, and [he] had reason to believe it wasn’t headache powder.” I would submit that the witness had ample reason to believe that the white powder was contraband as opposed to headache powder because of the defendant’s attempt to hide the same from the police officer immediately upon his awareness of the officer’s presence. The officer had the right to assume that a substance other than contraband would not have been an object of hiding.
Under the holding of the majority, one of three alternatives necessarily obtains; (1) We will induce the enforcement officer to include in his testimonial repertoire the magic phrase “in my best judgment the substance was contraband”; (2) we will require the law officer to become an expert in the identification of illicit drugs by mere sight, smell, or taste; or (3) we will take from the law enforcement machinery the *490“plain view” exception when applied to facts and circumstances such as those at bar, and thus leave the police officer to helplessly witness an apparent crime. I view neither of these alternatives as acceptable.
I would hold that probable cause existed, and that the warrantless seizure of the contraband came within the “plain view” exception and its introduction into evidence was not violative of the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights.
I would grant the writ and affirm the conviction.
MERRILL, MADDOX and McCALL, JJ., concur.

. For an excellent discussion of the “plain view” exception, see Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed. 2d 564 (Part II-C) (1971).