Court Opinion

ID: 9477018
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:11:20.642267+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:38.303939
License: Public Domain

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I join the majority opinion’s conclusion but the force of Judge Rubin’s dissent leads me to express caution regarding our holding. There was no evidence that warrants were stored or “warehoused” for a use other than to arrest for the offense charged in the warrants. Moreover, the “stale” warrant was not only valid under state law, the arresting officers returned the warrant to the issuing judge and obtained his permission to execute it before they did so. By its nature the offense of failure to appear did not depend on stale facts but was continuing. We do not decide today the longevity of an issued and unexecuted arrest warrant under the fourth amendment.1
The validity of an arrest warrant is encircled by the fourth amendment’s requirement that the arrest be objectively reason*1186able. The magistrate issuing the arrest warrant here concluded that there was legal cause to arrest for the charged offense. That the police may have been motivated to execute the warrant for reasons extrinsic to the offense ordinarily is irrelevant so long as there is probable cause for the arrest. Viewed objectively the arrest still is for the charged offense. An issued warrant ordinarily lies within the circle of objective reasonableness because probable cause for arrest has been found by a neutral magistrate. However, this is not always the case. Objective facts extrinsic to those of the particular offense for which a warrant is issued may alter the conclusion of reasonableness.
Serious questions abound in the use of otherwise valid warrants to pocket a onetime pass to the strictures of the fourth amendment rather than to prosecute the offense for which probable cause was found. Stated more directly, there is a risk that with the storage and retrieval capability of today’s computers, warrants may function in a manner similar to the old general writs of assistance.2 There is no suggestion that the warrant served in this case was issued or held for any purpose other than its execution for the charged offense. Our conclusion today regarding the relevance of subjective motivation then does not tolerate such a storing of warrants. We decide no issues attending a system of obtaining warrants and “warehousing” them for a purpose other than to arrest for the offense for which probable cause is found. With this reading of the opinion, I concur.

. Cf. Sgro v. United States, 287 U.S. 206, 210, 53 S.Ct. 138, 140, 77 L.Ed. 260 (1932) (deciding that under a section of the National Prohibition Act providing for warrants issued on probable cause "the proof [of probable cause] must be of facts so closely related to the time of the issue of the warrant as to justify a finding of probable cause at that time”).

. Quincy’s Massachusetts Reports, 1761-1772, App. 1, pp. 395-540; 2 Legal Papers of John Adams 106-147 (Wroth & Zobel eds. Boston: 1965).