Anglin v. Director, Patuxent Institution

• Decision Date: 29 March 1971
• Docket Number: No. 14583.,14583.
• Citation: 439 F.2d 1342
• Parties: Morris E. ANGLIN, Jr., Appellee, v. DIRECTOR, PATUXENT INSTITUTION, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

439 F.2d 1342 (1971)

Morris E. ANGLIN, Jr., Appellee, v. DIRECTOR, PATUXENT INSTITUTION, Appellant.

No. 14583.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued January 4, 1971.

Decided March 29, 1971.

Alfred J. O'Ferrall, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., of Maryland (Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen., of Maryland, on the brief), for appellant.

William John Giacofci, Baltimore, Md., for appellee.

Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge and CRAVEN, and BUTZNER, Circuit Judges.

CRAVEN, Circuit Judge:

This appeal involves the exclusionary rule of Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), and the extent of the right to search and seize under a valid search warrant. Specifically, the question presented is whether stolen property, seized in the course of execution of a valid search warrant, but unrelated, as it turns out, to the offense under investigation, may be used as the basis for prosecution for other offenses. In proceedings under petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the district judge concluded that certain items offered as evidence at the state trial of the appellee, Morris E. Anglin, were the products of what he characterized as a general exploratory search, and were unreasonably seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. We disagree and reverse.

I.

On November 1, 1965, the Baltimore County police began surveillance of the Anglin residence, a house trailer, because he was known to them as a professional burglar and was then suspected of burgling the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Fox¹ of Baltimore County. At that time Anglin was under indictment for another unrelated break-in for which he was subsequently convicted on November 17. On the evening of his conviction for the prior offense, two members of the Baltimore County police force went to the Anglin trailer and, being admitted, asked the appellee's wife for permission to search the premises for items taken in the Fox break-in. Although fully aware that her house had been under surveillance, she refused the officers' request for the stated reason that she feared what her husband would do to her if she consented. The police honored her refusal, left at once, and returned the next afternoon, November 18, with a search warrant describing generally, but with as much specificity as possible, 27 items from the Fox break-in thought to be in the trailer.² The sufficiency of the warrant is not in question.

Mrs. Anglin was presented with the warrant, read it, but not very carefully, and failing to distinguish between the Fox burglary then under investigation and others perpetrated by her husband, assumed it authorized the seizure of all stolen property in the trailer which, other than furniture, appeared to be most of its contents. She not only accepted the authority of the warrant, but proceeded to help matters. Presumably referring to the Fox burglary, the officers asked Mrs. Anglin to point out "anything that she knew to be stolen * * * to simplify matters." Mrs. Anglin "went to a small room with Sgt. Donovan and began taking clothing from a rack that contained many articles of women's clothing, fur coats and such, and handing them to me * * *. She handed us many articles of clothing, jewelry, appliances * * *." Mrs. Anglin described her actions:

A I can remember saying something like "If there is anything here that doesn\'t belong to me" that they can take it. But the things that did belong to me, I didn\'t want them to take.

Q Alright. And you proceeded then, to separate your goods from what you didn\'t know belonged to you?

A No, I did not.

Q What did you do then? Tell us.

A I was walking back and forth in the trailer, trying to assist them as best I could.

Q You helped them?

A The things that I actually bought and paid for myself, I was trying to save.

With Mrs. Anglin's help, indeed at her "insistence",³ the police finally took to headquarters and displayed over 700 items of property thought to have been stolen in numerous burglaries. Sergeant Donovan later testified about the search:

Q Now, the goods that you seized over and above those which were described in the original warrant, of what character and nature were they?

A Of the same character as those directed in the search warrant.

Q Now, did Mrs. Anglin do anything after the goods were carried out of the trailer?

A Mrs. Anglin came outside and I believe helped carry some of the stuff to the police vehicle.

At the police station the seized property was put on display and victims of break-ins in the Baltimore area were invited to come in and identify, if possible, their missing property. Anglin's convictions of which he complains were based upon the subsequent identification by two such victims of items belonging to them.

The convictions were affirmed on appeal. Anglin v. State, 1 Md.App. 85, 227 A.2d 364 (1967).

II.

This is a search warrant case. It is not a case of search and seizure incident to arrest. From the time of adoption of the Fourth Amendment until quite recently search warrants have been stepchildren of the criminal process — mostly ignored and neglected by the police.⁴ The high water mark of search incident to arrest and without a search warrant was Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145, 67 S.Ct. 1098, 91 L.Ed. 1399 (1947). In that case police spent five hours combing Harris' apartment for incriminating evidence and their activity was approved as incident to the arrest. After Harris it was quite clear that the obtaining of a search warrant was simply a handicap rather than a help, in most circumstances, and the wise policeman simply arranged to make the arrest at a place where incriminating evidence would likely turn up.

But the warrantless search incident to arrest has now been severely limited. In Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969), the Court held that officers cannot search beyond the immediate area of an arrested suspect. The general exploratory search of an entire apartment or house, approved in Harris, as incident to arrest, was disapproved and Harris specifically overruled. The Court concluded that "the search went far beyond the petitioner's person and the area from within which he might have obtained either a weapon or something that could have been used as evidence against him" and further concluded that "there was no constitutional justification, in the absence of a search warrant, for extending the search beyond that area." 395 U.S. at 768, 89 S.Ct. 2034.

We think the Court in Chimel has clearly indicated that searches without search warrants, even incident to arrest, are not favored, and, conversely, that in order to encourage police use of them, searches and seizures pursuant to a valid search warrant will carry a presumption of legality. But see, Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969).

The police were clearly entitled under the search warrant to enter Anglin's trailer and to search for the 27 items of personal property particularly described in the warrant. Anglin may not properly complain of the search. He does complain of the seizure as a general seizure of property not particularly described in the warrant.

Anglin relies heavily upon Von Cleef v. New Jersey, 395 U.S. 814, 89 S.Ct. 2051, 23 L.Ed.2d 728 (1969), and Kremen v. United States, 353 U.S. 346, 77 S.Ct. 828, 1 L.Ed.2d 876 (1957), but neither is a search warrant case. In Von Cleef the Court found that a search conducted incident to a lawful arrest that resulted in "combing a three-story, 16-room house from top to bottom and carting away several thousand papers, publications, and other items could not under any view of the Fourth Amendment be justified. * * *" Id. 395 U.S. at 816, 89 S.Ct. at 2052. In Kremen the indiscriminate seizure of the entire contents of a cabin by FBI agents incident to an arrest was condemned as a general search.

The seizure in the Anglin trailer search was roughly similar in magnitude to the Von Cleef and Kremen seizures — some 700 items of personalty. But it is not how many items may be seized that determines validity of a search. The rule against general exploratory searches is not aimed against quantity, nor even designed to protect property quantitatively, but, instead, is designed to prevent indiscriminate searches and seizures that invade privacy. Mr. Justice Harlan noted in his concurrence in Von Cleef v. New Jersey, supra, that "Kremen simply prohibits the police from seizing the entire contents of a building indiscriminately, without considering whether the property they take is relevant to the crime under investigation; it does not bar the removal of all property that may reasonably be considered evidence of crime." 395 U.S. at 817, 89 S.Ct. at 2053. (Emphasis added.) Simply because the seizure in the Anglin search was of greater magnitude than the officers had anticipated, such occurrence should not force us to "exclude the products of legitimate police investigative techniques on the ground that much conduct which is closely similar involves unwarranted intrusions under constitutional protections." Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 13, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1875, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). The large seizure must be judged, rather, on the basis of whether it was an unreasonable extension of the valid power contained in the search warrant.

The officers were authorized entry upon the premises by the search warrant they had obtained and were duty bound to carry out their search in a thorough manner until the items listed in the warrant were found. We think the limits of the warrant were not exceeded by the officers despite the quantitative magnitude of the seizure as compared with the small number of items particularly described in the warrant.

Anglin would have us read the search warrant as a constitutional strait jacket: that only those items particularly described in it may be seized without regard to the facts and circumstances of the particular case. Principal reliance is placed upon...