People v. Maldonado

• Citation: 431 N.Y.S.2d 580,76 A.D.2d 691
• Parties: The PEOPLE, etc., Respondent, v. Patricia MALDONADO, Appellant.
• Decision Date: 02 September 1980
• Court: New York Supreme Court Appellate Division

Page 580

431 N.Y.S.2d 580

76 A.D.2d 691

The PEOPLE, etc., Respondent, v. Patricia MALDONADO, Appellant.

Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department.

Sept. 2, 1980.

Sarisohn, Sarisohn, Carner, Thierman, Steindler & Le Bow, Commack (Walter G. Steindler and Floyd Sarisohn, Commack, of counsel), for appellant.

Patrick Henry, Dist. Atty., Hauppauge (Charles M. Newell, Riverhead, of counsel), for respondent.

Before HOPKINS, J. P., and DAMIANI, TITONE and LAZER, JJ.

TITONE, Justice.

The sole issue presented on appeal is whether, under the circumstances, a police search of an unsealed cardboard box was proper. The appellant contends that the trial court's denial of her motion to suppress the contents of the box, a quantity of cocaine, mandates reversal.

The pertinent facts, as revealed from the minutes of the suppression hearing, are not in dispute. On the morning of April 30, 1979, Detective Angelo Carrion, an undercover Suffolk County narcotics officer, telephoned one Pedro Tavares Castillo to arrange for a purchase of cocaine. Tavares agreed to sell Carrion a kilogram of cocaine for $44,000, and arranged to meet the latter at a specified location on Route 110 in Melville at 1:00 P.M. After meeting with a group of Federal and State narcotics agents, Carrion proceeded in an unmarked car to the agreed upon meeting place. Tavares arrived at 1:05 P.M. in a Vega, accompanied by the appellant, Patricia Maldonado. After Carrion entered the Vega and sat down on the rear seat, Tavares handed him a white cardboard box with the name "Ripley Howard" printed on the cover. ¹ Carrion opened the box, and observed five packages of cocaine. He then closed the box and returned it to Tavares, who, in turn, handed it to the appellant. The latter placed the box at her feet on the floor of the car. Carrion then explained that Tavares would have to follow him in order to obtain the money. The undercover officer proceeded to leave Tavares' car, walk to his own vehicle, and drive onto the Long Island Expressway, followed by Tavares in the Vega. Carrion proceeded to a rest area, where both he and Tavares stopped their vehicles.

At the rest area, where a backup team waited, Carrion left his car and gave his colleagues a prearranged signal indicating that drugs were present in Tavares' car. Tavares and appellant were promptly removed from the car by law enforcement officers and arrested. A Federal narcotics agent, Robert O'Leary, removed the "Ripley Howard" box from the floor of the car, opened it, and displayed its contents to Carrion. ² Before opening the box, O'Leary had not known that it contained the cocaine which he had been seeking.

After indictment on charges of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the first degree, and criminal sale of a controlled substance in the first degree, the appellant moved for suppression of the contents of the cardboard box. Relying on United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538, and Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 61 L.Ed.2d 235, appellant contended that the warrantless opening of the box was violative of her constitutional rights. Following a hearing, appellant's application was denied. She subsequently pleaded guilty to one count of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the second degree, and was sentenced accordingly. The instant appeal ensued.

Appellant does not contend that the police lacked probable cause to search the automobile and seize the cardboard box. The facts of the case clearly demonstrate that, from the signal given by Detective Carrion, law enforcement agents knew that contraband was in the car and had ample reason to believe that it could be found in the "Ripley Howard" box. Nor does appellant deny that the circumstances were sufficiently exigent to justify the warrantless seizure of the box. The thrust of appellant's argument is that the law enforcement officials, having lawfully seized the box, should have held it unopened until a warrant could be procured. The warrantless search, appellant argues, was violative of her expectation of privacy in the contents of the box (United States v. Chadwick, supra; Arkansas v. Sanders, supra ), and can be justified by none of the "jealously and carefully drawn" exceptions to the warrant requirement (Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 499, 78 S.Ct. 1253, 1257, 2 L.Ed.2d 1514). The issue thus presented is whether the warrantless search of the "Ripley Howard" box violated the rights of the appellant under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

In Chadwick, the United States Supreme Court held that although Federal agents were acting with probable cause when they seized a locked footlocker as it was being placed in the trunk of a car, they should not have opened the luggage without first obtaining a search warrant. The court noted (433 U.S. p. 13, 97 S.Ct. p. 2484) that "luggage is intended as a repository of personal effects" and (p. 11, 97 S.Ct. p. 2483) that the defendants, by placing their property in a locked footlocker, "manifested an expectation that the contents would remain free from public examination." Given the defendant's constitutionally-protected privacy interest in the contents of the luggage, the law enforcement officers should have taken the footlocker into their custody and held it, unopened, until a search warrant could be obtained.

Chadwick was followed by Arkansas v. Sanders (supra). In Sanders the United States Supreme Court held that although a vehicle was properly stopped by police in a search for contraband, a warrantless search of an unlocked suitcase found within the trunk of the car was unlawful under Chadwick. Sanders expanded upon the Chadwick rule in two important respects. First, Sanders indicated that the Chadwick rule applied with equal force to unlocked pieces of luggage and so long as the container, whether locked or unlocked, may be characterized as personal luggage, a warrant had to be obtained before a search could be effected. Second, Sanders made clear that the "automobile exception" to the warrant requirement, under which warrantless automobile searches have frequently been justified (Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543; Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419) does not apply to the search of containers found within a vehicle: "the extent to which the Fourth Amendment applies to containers and other parcels depends not at all upon whether they are seized from an automobile" (442 U.S. at p. 765, n.13, 99 S.Ct. at p. 2594, n.13). ³

The question left unresolved by Sanders, and posed by the instant appeal, is whether a container dissimilar to personal luggage, which has been properly seized in exigent circumstances, must, like luggage, be left unopened until a warrant is obtained. In terms of constitutional analysis, it makes no difference whether the container is seized in an automobile, or somewhere else. Yet, as the Sanders majority intimated, in a footnote, the warrantless search of some types of containers, found either within or without an automobile, may be justifiable (442 U.S. at 764-765, n.13, 99 S.Ct. at p. 2564, n.13):

"Not all containers and packages found by police during the course of a search will deserve the full protection of the Fourth Amendment. Thus, some containers (for example a kit of burglar tools or a gun case) by their very nature cannot support any reasonable expectation of privacy because their contents can be inferred from their outward appearance. Similarly, in some cases the contents of a package will be open to 'plain view,' thereby obviating the need for a warrant. See Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234, 236 (, 88 S.Ct. 992, 993, 19 L.Ed.2d 1067) (1968) (per curiam ). There will be difficulties in determining which parcels taken from an automobile require a warrant for their search and which do not. Our decision in this case means only that a warrant generally is required before personal luggage can be searched and that the extent to which the Fourth Amendment applies to containers and other parcels depends not at all upon whether they are seized from an automobile."

The dissenters in Sanders complained that the rule adopted by the majority would engender confusion, and that "the briefcase, the wallet, the package, the paper bag, and every kind of container" were "(s)till hanging in limbo, and probably soon to be litigated" (442 U.S. at p. 768, 99 S.Ct. at p. 2595). A large number of recent cases in State and lower Federal courts, have, in fact, considered the effect of Chadwick and Sanders on warrantless searches of various types of containers. Not all of these cases, however, have presented difficult issues for judicial resolution.

For example, many of the cases pertain to objects which undoubtedly constitute personal luggage, such as suitcases (see, e. g., United States v. Montano, 6th Cir., 613 F.2d 147; United States v. MacKay, 9th Cir., 606 F.2d 264), a duffle bag (United States v. Johnson, 5th Cir., 588 F.2d 147), a backpack (United States v. Meier, 10th Cir., 602 F.2d 253), a tote bag (People v. Minjares, 24 Cal.3d 410, 153 Cal.Rptr. 224, 591 P.2d 514, cert. den. 444 U.S. 887, 100 S.Ct. 181, 62 L.Ed.2d 117), and a travel bag (People v. Little, 598 P.2d 140 (Colo.)). Such items clearly fit within the purview of the Chadwick and Sanders decisions. (However, see State v. Schrier, 283 N.W.2d 338 (Iowa), upholding the warrantless search of a knapsack on the ground that the contents could be seen by pushing a flap aside.)

Other cases concern containers which, although not considered to be luggage, are nevertheless treated as repositories for personal belongings and associated with a similar expectation of privacy. Thus, warrantless searches of briefcases (United States v. Presler, 4th Cir., 610 F.2d 1206; Moran v. Morris, D.C., 478 F.Supp. 145; Webb v. State, 373 So.2d 400 (Fla.App.); Araj v. State, 592 S.W.2d 603 (Tex.Cr....