Work v. United States

• Decision Date: 22 April 1957
• Docket Number: No. 13241.,13241.
• Citation: 243 F.2d 660,100 US App. DC 237
• Parties: Ella Mae WORK, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

100 US App. DC 237, 243 F.2d 660 (1957)

Ella Mae WORK, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

No. 13241.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued November 30, 1956.

Decided April 22, 1957.

Petition for Rehearing Denied May 16, 1957.

Mr. E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., Washington, D. C. (appointed by the Court), for appellant.

Mr. Richard J. Snider, Asst. U. S. Atty., with whom Messrs. Oliver Gasch, U. S. Atty. Lewis Carroll and Victor Caputy, Asst. U. S. Attys., were on the brief, for appellee.

Before EDGERTON, Chief Judge, and FAHY and BURGER, Circuit Judges.

Petition for Rehearing In Banc Denied May 16, 1957.

FAHY, Circuit Judge.

Trial by jury having been waived, appellant was convicted by a District Judge on the second count of an indictment for violation of 35 Stat. 614 (1909), as amended, 21 U.S.C. § 174 (1952), 21 U.S.C.A. § 174, concealing narcotics known to have been illegally imported.

Before trial she moved under Rule 41 (e), Fed.Rules Crim.Proc., 18 U.S.C., for the suppression as evidence of a phial containing pills. The motion was denied, and the phial and contents were admitted in evidence as a material part of the proof against her. The circumstances in which these articles came into the possession of the United States are not in dispute: Two officers went to appellant's dwelling place¹ after receiving information that a young girl known to them to be a prostitute and drug addict was using narcotics there. They obtained no warrant of arrest or search warrant; and it is not claimed that when they first went to the house they had cause to make an arrest or a search without a warrant. They knocked on the door. Receiving no answer they opened the door and took "a few steps" into the first floor hallway.² Appellant then walked past the officers, making some comment about the open door. She went out the front door through which they had entered, walked a few feet across a porch, down a few steps, and turned there down another step or two to an area under the porch. There she was seen by the officers, who had followed her, to make motions as if putting something in a trash can located under the porch. But they saw nothing in her hand. Shortly thereafter one of the officers lifted the top of the trash can and took out the phial containing the pills in question.

However well intentioned, the entry into the home without a warrant of any kind was not under "exceptional circumstances" dispensing with the necessity for a warrant.³ Accordingly, it was the beginning of an unreasonable search:

"* * * Belief, however well founded, that an article sought is concealed in a dwelling house furnishes no justification for a search of that place without a warrant. And such searches are held unlawful notwithstanding facts unquestionably showing probable cause. * * *" Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 33, 46 S.Ct. 4, 6, 70 L.Ed. 145.

See also, United States v. Jeffers,⁴ 342 U.S. 48, 72 S.Ct. 93, 96 L.Ed. 59; and Lee v. United States, 98 U.S.App.D.C. 97, 232 F.2d 354. Both the Agnello and Jeffers cases involved the seizure of contraband narcotics. This did not deter the Supreme Court from making effective the protection of the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure. Indeed, Jeffers explicitly rejects the effort there made to exempt contraband from the rule excluding evidence obtained in violation of the rights of an accused person under the Amendment.

Assuming that appellant placed the phial where it was found it would be unacceptably naive to conclude that this attempt by her to hide it immediately following the presence of the officers in the hall, and that the finding of the phial by the officers, were not direct consequences of their unlawful entry. The phial accordingly could not be used in evidence. Johnson v. United States, supra; Nueslein v. District of Columbia, 73 App.D.C. 85, 115 F.2d 690; Lee v. United States, supra; cf. Williams v. United States, 99 U.S.App.D.C. 161, 237 F.2d 789. We need not decide whether the officers would have obtained the phial independently of their illegal entry, since the circumstances show that the seizure was a direct consequence of the search which began with the entry which did occur. An imaginary case postulated upon what might have happened if there had been no illegal entry is not before us.

We should add that the search and seizure were not incident to a valid arrest which would have made it reasonable without the necessity for a search warrant. In fact there was no arrest at all preceding the search and seizure. See United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 595, 68 S.Ct. 222, 92 L.Ed. 210; Johnson v. United States, supra.⁵

None of the cases relied upon by the United States involved a situation where the original entry, initiating a search and leading to the securing of the evidence, was, as here, an illegal entry into a private dwelling. In Lee v. United States, 95 U.S.App.D.C. 156, 221 F.2d 29, there was no entry; in McQuaid v. United States, 91 U.S.App.D.C. 229, 198 F.2d 987, certiorari denied, 344 U.S. 929, 73 S.Ct. 499, 97 L.Ed. 715, and Fisher v. United States, 92 U.S.App.D.C. 247, 205 F.2d 702, the entry was into the public part of a store; in Ellison v. United States, 93 U.S.App.D.C. 1, 206 F.2d 476, the evidence sought to be suppressed was secured before entry was made.

The articles seized in the present case had not been abandoned either "to the open fields," as was done in Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57, 44 S.Ct. 445, 446, 68 L.Ed. 898, or otherwise abandoned so as to lose the protection of the home provided by the Fourth Amendment, however mean the home. The trash receptacle in which the phial was found was in close proximity to the house. It was an adjunct to the domestic use of the home by appellant. It was within the curtilage or "general enclosure surrounding the dwelling." Care v. United States, 10 Cir., 231 F.2d 22, 25. See Walker v. United States, 5 Cir., 225 F.2d 447, 449; Wakkuri v. United States, 6 Cir., 67 F.2d 844; Childers v. Commonwealth, 198 Ky. 848, 250 S.W. 106. A photograph of the lower half of the premises,⁶ when viewed in light of the evidence, shows that the receptacle was under the stone porch or stoop constituting a part of the house itself. That the receptacle might have been partially visible from the street is immaterial. We point out, however, that no evidence indicates that it was visible from the street. The placing of the phial in this receptacle, so situated and used, is not to be construed as an abandonment of the phial unless to persons impliedly or expressly authorized to remove the receptacle's contents, such as the trashmen, for purposes of destruction. In the alleged circumstances of this case there could not be said to be an abandonment even to those persons; there was, rather, a hiding.

The phial and its contents should have been suppressed as evidence against appellant in response to the motion under Rule 41(e).⁷

We do not consider other questions raised on the appeal.

Reversed and remanded.

BURGER, Circuit Judge (dissenting).

I dissent because I do not find in this record an unreasonable search and seizure prohibited by the Constitution. Reasonableness is determined neither by a piecemeal examination of the facts nor by application of rigid formulas; the question must be resolved upon an appraisal of "the total atmosphere of the case." United States v. Rabinowitz, 1950, 339 U.S. 56, 66, 70 S.Ct. 430, 435, 94 L.Ed. 653. I do not believe it is unreasonable for narcotic agents, making a call on the appellant's premises for the purpose of investigating the reported use of narcotics by one of her tenants, while there to remove the lid of a trash can located outside the home, after the agents had observed appellant leave the house and surreptitiously cast something into the can in circumstances which excited their suspicions. On the contrary, the failure of the agents to have followed this course once their suspicions were aroused would amount to a dereliction of duty on their part.

The Fourth Amendment was designed to safeguard the individual's right of privacy in his home¹ and in his personal effects against arbitrary intrusion by government officials. I cannot find a fundamental constitutional right to privacy in the garbage or trash pail of a rooming house where the receptacle is located out of doors in sight from the street and where there is an admitted constant invitation to the public authorities of the District to remove the contents as refuse. If the trash collector or District sanitary inspector had observed the "throwing motion" and promptly retrieved the contraband narcotics, I doubt anyone would seriously contend that an illegal search and seizure had occurred or that the narcotics could be suppressed as evidence.² Yet the majority would require one narcotic agent to stand guard over the garbage can while his colleague, if he has one handy, attempts to go downtown to secure a search warrant.³ To me the search and seizure does not become "unreasonable" merely because the sight of agents in the vestibule of the rooming house⁴ induced appellant, a previously convicted narcotic violator, to make a hasty disposal of incriminating evidence. It was not an unlawful or indeed any search which "produced" appellant's action; it was the sight of the two callers, whom her experienced eye detected to be narcotic agents, which caused fear and panic, and there is no reason to believe her reaction would have been different had she seen the officers approaching her from the public sidewalk rather than from the vestibule of her rooming house.

If, as the majority contends, it was the entry into the vestibule which invalidated the subsequent seizure, it would follow logically that the conduct of the officers would taint any subsequent seizure of the narcotics. Thus had appellant discarded the narcotics in the center of the street or in a neighbor's yard...