Court Opinion

ID: 9469011
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:29:31.686121+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:10.033390
License: Public Domain

BREYER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
I dissent from the court’s reversal of the conviction of appellant Guilbe Irizarry. The district court in this case denied the appellant’s suppression motion and then later sustained the reasonableness of the search at trial because the district court believed that the search was justified by “exigent circumstances.” That is to say, the district court found the search “reasonable” in light of the risks to the searching officers and the nature of the intrusion upon privacy interests. The government has not abandoned that theory on appeal. And, the record supports the district court, particularly if reasonable factual inferences are drawn in its favor. Cf. United States v. Weber, 668 F.2d 552 at 558-559 (1st Cir., 1981), and on petitions for rehearing, at 565 (1st Cir. 1981); United States v. Sears, 663 F.2d 896, 902-04 (9th Cir. 1981).
The record indicates that the following events occurred. Six officers went to Room 360 of the Isle Verde Holiday Inn as part of *563a drug raid seeking the arrest of several persons throughout the city. They expected to find one man. Instead they found three, one of whom they saw through a window holding a gun. Before coming out of Room 360, one of the suspects reached through a hole that had been pushed open in the bathroom ceiling and placed the gun in the space beyond. (Other guns and narcotics were also hidden there.) He evidently failed to pull the ceiling panel back over the entire hole, leaving the opening half uncovered. One officer then left to find adequate transportation, which — because of the raid’s equipment needs and the surprising number of suspects — was not readily available. The remaining officers decided that, since hotel guests and curious onlookers were beginning to congregate outside the room, they should -move the suspects back inside. Three or four of the officers went with the three suspects back into the room where they were to wait twenty to twenty-five minutes for a police van. Agent Swint immediately looked into the bathroom to see if anyone else was there. Soon thereafter agent Philip entered the room to see if Swint was all right; he walked past the three suspects sitting on the bed, entered the bathroom, saw the half-opened hole in the ceiling and looked inside, presumably for the gun. There was no search of wardrobes, drawers, or any other closed space in the rooms. These facts — all directly supported or reasonably inferred from the record — are sufficient, in my view, to support the district court’s decision for two related sets of reasons.
1. The Supreme Court’s discussion in Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 143-44 n.12, 99 S.Ct. 421, 430-31 n.12, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978) seems to me to require a holding here that Guilbe, as well as Garcia, lacks standing to assert a Fourth Amendment claim. The Supreme Court there makes clear that standing exists only if the record contains some facts from which one might infer a “legitimate expectation of privacy.” See United States v. Miller, 636 F.2d 850 (1st Cir. 1980). Such an expectation is “legitimate” only if it is one that “society is prepared to recognize as reasonable,” and it must have a “source outside of the Fourth Amendment, either by reference to concepts of real or personal property law or to understandings that are recognized and permitted by society.” The only fact in the record here suggesting that Guilbe might have had a “reasonable” or “legitimate” expectation of privacy in the space above the ceiling when (as this court today holds) Garcia did not, is that Room 360 was registered to Guilbe (though he was apparently not living there). This fact alone, in my view, is insufficient. Compare United States v. Weber, 668 F.2d at 560.
For one thing, the right that Guilbe obtained from the hotel to remain under the ceiling of Room 360 was not a right to break through the partition and reach into a space over the ceiling. It was not a right to invade any niche, cubbyhole, conduit, passage, air conditioning vent, water pipe or any other imaginable place outside the room’s physical boundaries — particularly when he could break through to such space only through the use of physical force. See Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. at 145-47, 99 S.Ct. at 431-32. Guilbe had no right to exclude others from the areas between the walls and ceilings of adjoining hotel rooms. See Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. at 143-44 n.12, 99 S.Ct. at 430-31 n.12; Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 105, 100 S.Ct. 2556, 2561, 65 L.Ed.2d 633 (1980). Had a hotel employee, repairman, or any other person been quietly working in a space between the walls, having entered that space from outside the room (or for that matter from inside the room assuming a legitimate presence there) Guilbe could not have complained. Rather, it is the hotel that had every right to complain about Guilbe’s unlawful entry through force into a space that it owned, controlled and did not rent. Cf. Civil Code of Puerto Rico, Art. 1445, 31 L.P.R.A. § 4052. The Supreme Court has written that a “burglar plying his trade in a summer cabin during off season,” despite a “thoroughly justified subjective expectation of privacy” has no expectation that is “legitimate.” Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. at 143-44 n.12, 99 S.Ct. at 430-31 n.12. How can a *564registration slip here make any more “legitimate” Guilbe’s interest in a space outside the physical bounds of his room?
For another thing, unlike the summer cabin burglar, Guilbe could not even have had much of a subjective expectation of privacy in an open cubbyhole — at least none which he took any reasonable precaution to protect. See Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. at 105, 100 S.Ct. at 2561; Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. at 152, 99 S.Ct. at 435; United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 11, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 2483, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977). Guilbe and the other suspects left the ceiling panel ajar — clear notice to anyone entering the room that something was wrong with the ceiling. This fact was likely to draw a hotel employee to investigate the space rather than to warn outsiders that privacy was intended. See Morale v. Grigel, 422 F.Supp. 988, 992 (D.N.H.1976). Cf. United States v. Cleary, 656 F.2d 1302, 1305 (9th Cir. 1981); United States v. Ramapuram, 632 F.2d 1149, 1156 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 1030, 101 S.Ct. 1739, 68 L.Ed.2d 225 (1981).
The room that Guilbe rented was not in his own home, a condominium, or an apartment house. It was in a hotel. As both the Second Circuit and the Fifth Circuit have recognized, although “an individual’s Fourth Amendment rights do not evaporate when he rents a motel room, the extent of the privacy he is entitled to reasonably expect may very well diminish. ... [T]here is ... an element of public or shared property in motel surroundings that is entirely lacking in the enjoyment of one’s home.” United States v. Agapito, 620 F.2d 324, 331 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 834, 101 S.Ct. 107, 66 L.Ed.2d 40 (1980) (quoting United States v. Jackson, 588 F.2d 1046, 1052 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 442 U.S. 941, 99 S.Ct. 2882, 61 L.Ed.2d 310 (1979)). The additional facts that the space at issue here was not Guilbe’s but the hotel’s, that it was apparently entered by force, that it was left in a condition that would attract, rather than repel, investigation, all suggest that this space between the walls was not a “place in which society is prepared, because of its code of values and its notions of custom and civility, to give deference to manifested expectations of privacy.” United States v. Taborda, 635 F.2d 131, 137-38 (2d Cir. 1980). If I am correct, then, as the court holds in the case of Garcia, there are not sufficient facts in the record “from which a court might reasonably infer .. . standing.” Majority Opinion at 557. And, even though the district court did not discuss standing, its decision must be affirmed. Securities & Exchange Commission v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 88, 63 S.Ct. 454, 459, 87 L.Ed. 626 (1943).
2. At the very least, the facts just discussed show a diminished privacy interest in the space that was searched. And, given the very limited extent of any legitimate privacy protection here, I do not see how this court can overrule a district court’s determination that the search was reasonable. Certainly the record facts reveal some risk — some danger — to the officers from the presence of a nearby gun. The facts that there were three suspects, not one; that a gun had been seen by the officers; that the officers had to wait with them for twenty to twenty-five minutes; that there was noise and confusion outside the room; all justify some concern on the part of the officers. The thought that the missing gun was only a few feet away in the bathroom in an open hole above their heads could reasonably have increased their concern for their own safety. Perhaps it would have been better practice to handcuff the suspects and shut the bathroom door, but that could well not have alleviated all of the officers’ legitimate concerns. And, when the fact that they did not go through drawers or closets but simply looked into so obviously suspicious and “non-private” a place as the half-opened ceiling space is added to this legitimate concern for safety, it becomes impossible for me to say that the officers did not behave reasonably when a district court has concluded that they did.
I find no absolute rule of law, either in the Constitution itself or in prior precedent, requiring reversal here. The Constitution itself uses the phrase “unreasonable” searches and seizures, a word that, as the *565Supreme Court held in Camara v. Municipal Court of the City and County of San Francisco, 387 U.S. 523, 536-37, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 1736-35, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967), calls for “balancing the need to search against the invasion which the search entails.” Indeed, in language recently quoted with approval by the Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Black pointed out that the Fourth Amendment
prohibits only ‘unreasonable searches and seizures. The relevant test is not the reasonableness of the opportunity to procure a warrant, but the reasonableness of the seizure under all the circumstances. The test of reasonableness cannot be fixed by per se rules; each case must be decided on its own facts.’
Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 509-10, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2059-60, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971) (concurring and dissenting opinion) (quoted with approval in South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 372-73, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 3098-99, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1976)). Given the risk to safety posed by the nearby presence of guns, and the limited privacy interest, this search seems to me to be “reasonable.”
There are, of course, a plethora of subsidiary legal rules, stating, for example, that warrantless searches of areas in a house outside the immediate control of an arrested person are unlawful, Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969); that warrantless searches of an automobile’s passenger compartment (pursuant to an arrest) are lawful, New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981); that warrantless seizures of items in “plain view” are lawful, Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234, 88 S.Ct. 992, 19 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1968), and so forth. See generally W.R. LaFave Search and Seizure § 6.7 (1978). These subsidiary rules, however, do not seem to require that a reasonable search be held unlawful or an unreasonable search be allowed simply because the search falls on the wrong side of the line that they draw, for there is no absolute line that will separate for all future cases the safe from the dangerous, the reasonable from the unreasonable. Rather, these opinions, offering the guidance of precedent for police and courts alike, appear sufficiently flexible to take differing circumstances into account, compare Chimel v. California, supra, with New York v. Belton, supra, and nowhere seem to relieve a court of all responsibility for assessing the circumstances of an individual case against the ultimate constitutional touchstone of “reasonableness.”
In any event, the rules set forth in recent Supreme Court decisions seem to me to support, rather than to condemn, the search at issue here. The strongest contrary precedent is Chimel v. California, supra, in which the Court condemns warrantless searches outside the area subject to the arrested person’s immediate control. Chimel, however, concerns a search of a house —where privacy expectations are explicitly protected by the Fourth Amendment, which consecrates “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects.” (Emphasis added.) In the case of houses, one might wish to err, if at all, on the side of privacy. When the court has considered places where the interest in privacy is less intense, however, it has allowed warrantless searches well outside the area delineated in Chimel. Thus, in Belton v. New York, supra, the Court allowed a search of a car’s glove compartment for marijuana well after the suspects had been taken away from the car and there was no possibility that they might have obtained access to the compartment to destroy evidence. See Robbins v. California, 453 U.S. 420, 423, 101 S.Ct. 2841, 2844, 69 L.Ed.2d 744 (1981); United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. at 12-13, 97 S.Ct. at 2484-2485. Since the privacy interest in the ceiling space here is significantly weaker than that in an automobile glove compartment and since it is more important to look nearby for a gun than to look across the road for marijuana, it seems to me that this is a stronger case for allowing the search than Belton. Chimel, which concerns a home, not an unrented ceiling space in a motel, does not hold to the contrary.
Finally, I might add that affirmance of the district court’s opinion for the reasons here stated would .not authorize the general search of a student’s dormitory (“a student’s home away from home”), Morale v. *566Grigel, 422 F.Supp. at 997, or bring about the other evils that the court fears would accompany an extension of the “plain view” doctrine.1
For these reasons, I would affirm the district court’s decision.

. I might add two points about the arguments advanced in the concurring opinion in this case. First, we are reviewing a factual record made in a district court which upheld the search here at issue. We are not free to read the record subjectively, but must ask whether, drawing reasonable inferences against the defendants, it supports the district court’s conclusion. Thus, I cannot infer that defendants were handcuffed. And, I must infer there was some danger, both from the objective circumstances and from such subjective statements as that of agent Philip that in such circumstances “I am always worried about [damage inflicted upon my person].” Even were I reading the record totally subjectively, however, I would still find some risk of harm, some danger, present here.
Second, whether or not agent Philip had a legal right to stand on the toilet, while relevant to the matter of “plain view,” is not relevant to my understanding of this case. The question is one of the strength of defendant’s privacy interest. That privacy interest was in the ceiling space. There is no significant additional invasion of his privacy arising out of the fact that the officer, lawfully in the bathroom (“to see what was detaining special agent Swint”), stood on the toilet.