Court Opinion

ID: 9478034
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:37:42.266526+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:11.299076
License: Public Domain

MAGILL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Since Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), the Supreme Court has consistently held that the application of the Fourth Amendment depends on whether the person invoking its protection can claim a “justifiable,” “reasonable,” or “legitimate” expectation of privacy. See, e.g., Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 143, 99 S.Ct. 421, 430, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978). This inquiry normally embraces two discrete questions: (1) whether the individual, by his conduct, exhibited a “subjective” expectation of privacy; and (2) whether such subjective expectation, in the words of Justice Harlan, is “one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’ ” Katz, 389 U.S. at 361, 88 S.Ct. at 516 (Harlan, J., concurring). It is with Barry’s subjective claim of privacy that we are concerned.
The facts each side relies upon to advance its argument about Barry’s subjective expectation of privacy in the suitcase are of doric simplicity. Barry maintains that his retention of the suitcase key and Tele-Ticket claim check shows that he intended to retain control over the suitcase and thus gives him a subjective expectation of privacy in its contents. The government argues in equal timbre that Barry had no intention of retaining any interest in the suitcase because he deposited it at the Tele-Ticket counter under the FBI agent’s undercover name, “G. Nelson,” an act the government contends evidenced Barry’s intention to relinquish ownership and control of the suitcase.
The case law that the parties rely on is equally boldfaced. Barry directs us to a line of cases emanating from United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977), which have consistently held that retention of a suitcase key is an effective expression of an individual’s subjective expectation of privacy. See Robbins v. California, 453 U.S. 420, 101 S.Ct. 2841, 69 L.Ed.2d 744 (1981); Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 61 L.Ed.2d 235 (1979); see also United States v. Oswald, 783 F.2d 663 (6th Cir.1986); United States v. Sanders, 719 F.2d 882 (6th Cir.1983).
The government relies on Abel v. United States, 362 U.S. 217, 80 S.Ct. 683, 4 L.Ed.2d 668 (1960), United States v. Hershenow, 680 F.2d 847 (1st Cir.1982), and others as authority for its position that Barry abandoned the suitcase or alternatively, sold his interest in it to the undercover agents. It can fairly be said, however, that none of these cases presented such ambiguous evidence of the defendant’s subjective expectation of privacy in the container searched as does the case before us.
The danger in close cases such as this is that, in attempting to distinguish between these precedents, we spin the thread of argument so thin that we depart from a common-sense approach to all of the facts in the record. When considering the record as a whole, it is clear that any subjective expectation of privacy on Barry’s part was undone by his own actions. He left a suitcase, one latch unlocked, in the name of the FBI undercover agent, at a public baggage claim counter, where common experience suggests that an individual seeking the suitcase might request the suitcase by name. Barry also made elaborate arrangements to turn over the luggage key and claim check, arrangements that, insofar as the record reflects, were frustrated only by Barry’s untimely arrest. Both of these alternatives were to the same end — to get the suitcase to “G. Nelson” after Barry collected the payment from Anderson. In light of these circumstances, I would hold that Barry cannot substantiate a subjective expectation of privacy in the suitcase, and that his suppression motion must fail.
This approach finds support in United States v. Capra, 501 F.2d 267 (2d Cir.1974), *1486cert. denied, 420 U.S. 990, 95 S.Ct. 1424, 43 L.Ed.2d 670 (1975), a case very near to the one before this court.1 In Capra, the defendants sought to deliver drugs to the buyer by the same method that Barry used to deliver stolen tickets to the buyer in this case: they put the drugs in a locked suitcase and checked the suitcase at a railroad station baggage- room. The Capra court held that the defendants had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the suitcase, even though they retained the baggage claim check:
Where defendants, through the use of front money and baggage checks, have exerted such efforts to insulate themselves from personal possession of [contraband], they are hardly in a position to object that they have been “hoist with their own petard.” None of the defendants was able to prove that his reasonable expectations of privacy were infringed by the search of the suitcase.
Id. at 272 (citation omitted).
The majority, in attempting to distinguish Capra, makes much of the Capra court’s intimation that one of the defendants “might have been able to establish a possessory interest [in the suitcase] on the basis of the money owed” to that defendant by the buyer. Capra, 501 F.2d at 272. The majority suggests that Barry was able to establish a possessory' interest on the same ground here. This reasoning escapes me. It is simply wrong to suggest that the Capra court dicta applies in the present case, because Barry was paid all of the money he was owed by the undercover agents and thus, to use the majority’s epigram, “the transaction was completed with respect to Barry.”
The majority also suggests that Capra did not involve the Fourth Amendment. At 1480 n. 1. This argument takes a bit of license with the Capra court’s opinion. A close reading of that case shows that the court performed a traditional Fourth Amendment analysis, and only mentioned the “private search” rationale as an alternative holding in a footnote. Capra, 501 F.2d at 272 n. 4. In sum, there is little profit in maintaining, as the majority does, that Capra is distinguishable; if the majority is not persuaded by Capra, it should simply say so.
I also believe the majority rests more weight on United States v. Presler, 610 F.2d 1206 (4th Cir.1979), than that decision will support. As the majority’s quote from that case makes clear, at 1482, Presler took great pains to ensure that the briefcases he entrusted to a friend for safekeeping remained free from search. Barry did just the opposite here, by putting the undercover agent’s name on the suitcase, and leaving it for him at the Tele-Ticket counter. More to the point, Presler did not involve a delivery arrangement for contraband, and a search of a suitcase by a party whose name was on that suitcase, as this case does.
Finally, I am baffled by the majority’s reference to United States v. Van Leeuwen, 397 U.S. 249, 90 S.Ct. 1029, 25 L.Ed.2d 282 (1970). While I understand that the majority is attempting to analogize between the constitutional impregnability of letters or packages entrusted to the United States Post Office and the facts of this case, it has been clear for at least 110 years that the Fourth Amendment protection against intrusion into letters or packages does not extend to “searches” by the intended recipient of the letter or package. See Ex Parte Jackson, 96 U.S. 727, 733, 24 L.Ed. 877 (1878). The search in this case was conducted by the “addressee” of the suitcase, “G. Nelson.” Van Leeuwen is thus inapposite.
In closing, I emphasize that I recommend only a limited departure from the understanding that suitcases will generally be entitled to the full range of Fourth Amendment protections once the defendant has *1487demonstrated a reasonable expectation of privacy in the suitcase’s contents. Sanders, 442 U.S. at 763-65, 99 S.Ct. at 2592-94. I would hold only that, under the circumstances, Barry had no subjective expectation of privacy in the suitcase because he clearly intended that the suitcase be turned over to a third party.

. Additional support, although perhaps of a more analogous nature, is found in an espionage "drop” case, United States v. Walker, 624 F.Supp. 99 (D.Md.1985), where the district court held that the defendant relinquished his expectation of privacy when he attempted to leave property in a public place for a specific third party, his espionage contact. Id. at 101. Both Capra and Walker demonstrate judicial reluctance to endorse a claimed subjective expectation of privacy in property that the defendant clearly intended to transfer to a third party.